Those who know me know that I have a serious obsession with Mad Men. I have seen every episode at least four times and I never get sick of it. I love the furniture, love the clothing, love the tragic genius that is Joan Holloway, and of course, I have a serious weakness for Donald Draper (note, I don't particularly like John Hamm, just Draper). This obsession brings me to why I have not posted for the past two days. On Thursday I actually did do some serious writing. I can now live with my intro and I have made some serious connections across key terms, arguments, and chapters. In addition, I am just about done the first section of the chapter (I break each chapter up by way of three sub headings), and have sketched out tons of notes for the second and third sections. I also made it to an amazing gym class on Thursday called shred, need I say more?, and I also went to dinner and drinks with some friends. I got home super late and didn't have time to post but Goals Were Met!!! So that was Thursday. But what, you ask, did I do towards my goal on Friday?
On Friday I decided that I was just too tired to write. I also know that when I force myself to write when tired I usually regret it, in the 'i ruined the chapter, sort of way. So I turned to Don Draper. I happen to particularly love the first season of Mad Men and there is something really fun about turning back to the characters to look for clues about their persona's that will shed some light on how they develop in seasons to come. Its almost like rereading a book over and over and over. Last night I tuned into the episode in which Peggy Olsen gets her second copyrighting assignment for a female weight loss "machine". In the process of sharing her ideas, which are good but not great, Don effortlessly dispenses with the following wisdom: "Think about it really really hard for a long time. And then just forget it".
Oh Don, how you make so much sense! Suddenly I realized that I couldn't force myself to write when there was nothing there. My thoughts would come out overworked, overwrought, and as Don says a few episodes later, I would have "been selling to hard". The logic behind Don's genius is that you have to make the idea become a part of you, so that it then manifests naturally in copy or in my case, in an argument. I guess what I am getting at is the way in which I realized that it is absolutely crucial for me to take a step back and look at the world through the conceptual lens that I am trying to hard to create in this chapter. I am, after all, writing about race, photography, and politics at the turn of the century, and theories that I setting forth are not reserved to the years 1899-1903. I realized that like Peggy, I needed to start believing what I was writing, arguing, and creating and sometimes that is a process that demands that I stop writing and just live with these ideas. Maybe I am giving Don too much credit, but I like to think otherwise, this way I get to justify my obsession even more.
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