May 9, 2007

quick freakout

Posted by dogpossum on May 9, 2007 1:29 AM in the category dogpossum

Right now I have some pretty nasty anxiety.
Got a sore neck and an achey head. And even some stomach churning.

Why?
I'm trying to finish the editing on an article for an important journal I've had accepted. It's neat, but the pressure, the pressure! I'm out of academic practice and I can't remember how to think, let alone make articles wonderful.
Plus, what do you do when one referee says "perfect - change nothing" and the other says "this sounds like a rough draft"? I vote with doing the latter's changes - no article is ever perfect. But at least it makes me sound like my ideas are clever, even if I can't seem to use the English language properly.

Other anxiety issue? The MLX is coming a bit slowly - we are a bit behind schedule and it's causing me anxiety. We don't have our logo done yet (argh! we got on it too late!), we haven't started operation PR Snowstorm yet, we have some decisions to make about venues and bands, I have to do the website (www.mlx-7.com btw) and...

Now I write about it, it's actually not very important stuff. Certainly nothing that can't be solved quite simply. We have a meeting on Friday night where we'll make new decisions. I want to write about our new MLX apprentice/handover scheme, but I don't really have time now (The Squeeze is patiently waiting for me to come back to the last half of a West Wing episode while I send of a freaky email), nor am I sure it's appropriate.
But it's making me think more about a paper I wanted to write about labour and administrative management in events management in swing dance culture. Whatsit who writes about girls and raves in the UK (Birmingham school - can never remember her name... Mcsomething?) talks about cottage industries and rave culture. I have some stuff I've written about volunteer labour and exploitation of volunteers by for-profit bodies and individuals in swing, and how that's justified by the communitarian bullshit that gets around... I also want to write some stuff about gender and volunteering and event management - is it any surprise that there are only 2 men on the 8/6 person MLX committee?

...and I need to start sending off emails getting some serious facts about women DJs in Australia in swing culture - I need to do some follow up research stuff (I think there's been some serious changes lately). How come Melbourne has a zillion female DJs, but nationally there are about 4 who are well known? How come Perth has so few DJs? I suspect it's because Melbourne has so many social DJing opportunities - DJing has become lower status/more accessible. There's also a strong network of new women DJs. And all that illicit file-sharing and music swapping? It's definitely an important counter measure for high-priced and inaccessible CDs and the 'high art' 'professional knowledge' 'heirarchy of knowledge' thing in swing DJ culture. No one's bothered to tell these Melbourne chicks that you have to know every major song by Artie Shaw before you can DJ, or that you have to have been dancing for 5 years or have 60 thousand CDs. So they're just getting on in there and learning on the job. Often in pairs or buddies - all-girl buddy partnerships.

Ok, CJ calls....

Posted by dogpossum on May 9, 2007 1:29 AM in the category dogpossum