Yesterday morning I woke up with an epiphany, a sudden understanding about how I will frame the argument in my current writing project. This is always an exciting step in any writing project--the moment when a nebulous mass of ideas starts to crystallize around a core insight that will shape my work from this point on.
Epiphanies like that come along only after proper preparation; all the reading, thinking, talking, writing, and traveling I've been doing created the right conditions for the production of epiphanies. I'll have to work pretty hard to transform a momentary epiphany into a polished journal article, but that's what my sabbatical is for. For once, a great idea won't get shoved aside by committee work, grading, and all the petty annoyances of the academic life.
That's the magic of the sabbatical. I'm living in Epiphany City, where ideas can come out and play without fear that shopkeepers will shoo them off the sidewalk.
2 comments:
You close with Epiphany City, but as I read your second paragraph I began inventing an epiphany factory where all the parts are assembled by a zippy, diverse workforce, each member in a different thinking cap. They laugh at the idea of Lean Sigma and instead re-member by way of fearless experimentation. The factory is fueled, of course, by M&Ms.
Sounds like my kind of factory--especially the M&Ms!
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