Climb every mountain (except, maybe, this one)

When is research ever wasted?

That's what I've been wondering today as I've spent half of a morning trying to sort through massive mountains of notes related to one small part of my sabbatical project. I gave a conference paper two years ago that I've wanted to transform into a full-fledged journal article dealing with certain elements of 9/11 literature, but as I look over the paper and then track down notes contained in a host of different computer files, I'm wondering whether the universe might be better off if I just drop this task. I mean, it's not as if there's any great demand for one more theory-laden academic journal article belaboring a point that seems, at this juncture, fairly obvious.

But if I let the article slide, what will I have to show for all that research? Won't it be wasted? And what does that even mean?

Surely the results of that research have deepened my understanding of the topic and informed my teaching, preparing me to teach a capstone class this fall on literature responding to the 9/11 attacks. And abandoning the journal article would not mean abandoning the topic entirely: I'd like to use the material in an essay aimed at a wider audience, something a little more casual and less footnote-laden. I revised and resubmitted another journal article last week and I'll soon be working on the comedy pedagogy project (here's the CFP!), so it's not as if I'm spending my sabbatical slacking off; I just dread the drudgery involved in this particular revision. 

But maybe that's a normal response to my note-sorting foray this morning. I found full texts of articles and notes on many other articles and books in files all over my computer, some of them dating back close to 20 years; the prospect of beating all those ideas into some semblance of order hurts my head. When the mountain of notes stretches so high that I fear I'll need oxygen to climb to the top, it's time to step back and reconsider.

I'm tempted to toss a bomb at the mountain and level the whole thing, but that would be a bit extreme. Instead, I think I'll walk around and look at other things for a while. Maybe the mountain of research notes will look more manageable from a different perspective--or maybe it's time to find a different mountain to climb.