A year

Well, grades are in. I’ve written thousands of words of feedback in the last two weeks, and I’ve had moments of real delight in seeing what my students come up with. One of my weaknesses as an academic writer early on was failing to escape the trap of writing almost exclusively for my doctoral advisor, with her in mind…but when my undergraduate students seem to write for me, it doesn’t bother me. It’s a continuation of a conversation by other means; their chance to monologue a bit, while I sit and listen. They can figure out how to make themselves more generally understood later on.

I didn’t have nearly as much writing come out in 2022 as I did in 2021, which was a remarkably productive year by my standards. In 2022 I spent most of my time caring for my kids during the final few Canadian Covid lockdowns, and then playing “domestic quarterback” as my wife, a Ph.D., went back to university to become a secondary school teacher. I’ve been happy to do it, but it’s been difficult. I really hate the contemporary tendency to mawkishly claim that the joys of your children immediately compensate for whatever difficulties you might encounter as a parent. When my three-year-old punished me for giving her a banana instead of a cookie by throwing a crazed tantrum, which culminated in her pooping on the floor, I didn’t think to myself: “what a privilege it is to be your dad, you little miracle.” No, I cleaned up the poop, took away Bluey, and finished cooking dinner. It’s all joy, no fun.

As a parent you give up your freedom, including the freedom to make your mind your own: if I’m making sure everyone has a lunch, gets to ballet, and practices piano, or advising about a classmate who has said something senselessly cruel, dealing with preteen existential crises (even though I know the answer is almost always food and rest), I’m simply not also writing or thinking. There was a great viral tweet spoofing the “my year in writing” tweets by someone who gave birth this year. But, I’m sorry to say, reproduction places a permanent check on other sorts of production. I hope this doesn’t read as defensive, but in evaluating my year, it seemed important to note.

---

Anyway, most of the time I had for writing was spent working on my two book projects—my academic book on Kierkegaard as a Socratic political thinker and my book of essays about winter. I spent a really fruitful couple of weeks as a fellow at the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. I wrote the application for, and won, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant, which will take me to Denmark this summer to complete some archival research on Kierkegaard.

And both the Kierkegaard Book and the Winter Book, as they’re known around here, will, God-willing, both be wrapped up by about this time next year.

So with all of this by way of a preface, here’s my modest year in writing:

• A review of Benjamin and Jenna Storey’s Why We are Restless for the Hedgehog Review. (Curio Audio here).

• My original winter essay made the rounds again after it was featured on Longreads.

• My favourite piece this year was my second “dad” essay— “It’s Time for Some Dad Theory,” which I wrote under the superb editorial guidance of my talented buddy Marty Wendell Jones for The Bulwark.

• I wrote the lead essay for an “Author-meets-critics” roundtable on my friend Ann Ward’s The Socratic Individual for The Political Science Reviewer.

• I wrote and presented conference papers on Jane Austen and Tom Stoppard, both of which you may see in some form around here in the near-ish future.

• And, finally, faced with the possible end of twitter, I decided to start this substack, which I’ve enjoyed writing more than I expected. Thanks—and I really mean it!—for reading.

I also failed to meet three or four deadlines! I’m sorry this happened. Kids got sick, everything took longer than expected, and sometimes my three-year-old pooped on the floor. I’m sure it’s the last time any of this will happen.

Happy holidays!