This summer I am starting a NEW project — a big, ambitious, extended project. Attentive readers know that my OLD project is still under review at University Press. I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed that the OLD project will soon become the PUBLISHED Project and I can very quickly begin to forget all about it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve started on the NEW project … and I’m remembering what it’s like to be at the very inception of something. Because I worked on OLD project for so goddamned long, it had become an albatross and there was very little that I enjoyed about it. But, at least I knew what I was doing — I knew the field backwards and forwards. I knew where I was going — well, eventually, I figured that out. I knew what the end goal was: publication, then tenure.

It’s both wonderful and rather terrifying to be working in an entirely new realm. I have a distinct feeling of humility about how little I know about this New Area; there’s a lot I need to learn very quickly. But, it is also incredibly liberating to be doing something completely new. For me, it is also meaningful to be embarking on an academic project that is not directly tied to tenure. Of course, this work will help me make a case in my tenure file but it’s unlikely to be completed by the time I submit all my paperwork — and, more importantly, in my own mind I am aware of the fact that I’m not doing it because I have to — which was my generally pouty attitude about OLD project: I don’t wanna do it! Why are they making me? Is it any wonder I had a dysfunctional relationship with OLD project, with an attitude like that?

NEW project is entirely of my own creation and instigation. It is a work of scholarship that will make a specific and important contribution (if I may say so, myself). It builds upon recent developments in the materials available in my field. Okay, I admit it — but only to you — I am actually excited about my research.