This website was intended to be a log of my life and a lab for theological thought experiments. I was going to save more developed ideas for the Huffington Post and other publications. That ended up not happening for various reasons, but I think I am ready to return to Plan A. The Huffington Post is making blog submissions a bit more efficient, and I am tired of feeling ashamed of being an independent scholar.
This blog really is supposed to be about my life, and being an independent scholar is who I am. I have been silent at times because I felt like I should be more successful by traditional academic measures. More publications. More presentations. More awards. But there are a lot of people like me. I feel like a failure sometimes because I did not land the tenure track job my mentors expected, but if I am a failure, I am in good company. There are a lot of people like me, and a lot of them are worse off than me. I am not on food stamps, trying to piece together a living at $2500 per class.
This is uncharted territory for people with PhDs. Funding for education ain’t what it used to be. Funding for the humanities is even worse. White males like me have saturated the market, and the academy is making a much-needed course correction. There are people smarter and more published than me who are in the same situation I am in.
This weblog is going to be more of a chronicle of my experiences than it has been. That means I will be posting more often, and my posts will be a bit more confessional and less professional. This is not just about me being a scholar. This is about me being an independent scholar. That means it is about work and family too. Maybe these entries can be a word of encouragement, a cautionary tale, or probably a bit of both. At any rate, they can only be about who I am and what I am experiencing, which as I keep saying, is like what a lot of other people are experiencing too.