Jottings From aBlockdownJournal

Abstract

These jottings are a series of journal entries for the six months from December 1, 2019, until June 1, 2020. They focus mainly on my attempts to write when blocked and suffering from pneumonia during that period which also coincided with the United Kingdom’s pandemic lockdown from March 23, 2020. My “block” and their “lock” became “blockdown.” I have survived both. So far.

Posthumous Autoethnography?

“…I still live a sort of post-academic, emeritus, after-life with a virtual tombstone strapped to my back and my physical state a mixture of the benign and the malign. I recorded many of my frailties including heart problems, kidney failure, and pneumonia, in Badley (2021). I have already mentioned the most irritating of other recent problems-blurred vision-as a result of a difficult cataract operation that left me needing a corneal transplant.…”

“…I made a similar point previously when I described the growth in mutual aid during the pandemic as one given in a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity , often with a view toward liberation and social change. The key issue is that of solidarity as a horizontal process rather than that of a top-down form of charity: “we seek to embody solidarity and contribute to the movement for global health equity led by communities themselves” (Solnit, 2020, p. 7, quoted in Badley, 2021).…”

“…I get blocked occasionally. I noted down a serious episode of being stuck in Jottings from a blockdown journal (Badley, 2021). I know how to get out of such a writers’ block: particularly just get on with the job and try not to be so hyper-self-critical, use critical friends (cultivate them) to act as constructive feed-backers as well as detectors of bullshit.…”

Common—Reading—Placing—Writing

“…These were suggestions rather than prescriptions though I may have failed to emphasize the distinction. My most recent attempts to characterize and improve my own (and others') common-writing include the following: (Badley, 2020c); • • working through writer's block by using a notebook as a journal of ideas about culture, narrative, politics, and solidarity during a pandemic lockdown (Badley, 2021b); • • creating our own narratives of everyday truth, our own interpretations and perspectives, means admitting that the idea there is some unmediated access to truth, a god's-eye view, out there, is a seductive fantasy (Badley, 2021a); • • adopting a posthumous posture, writing as if we were already dead, to inoculate ourselves against the intellectual and artistic viruses that try to infect us (Badley, 2022a(Badley, , 2022b.…”

“…My first entry in my new commonplace book featured a quotation from James Joyce that, to impress myself, I wrote out as neatly as possible: we must write dangerously (see Badley, 2021b, p. 742). This became the idea and title for another article (Badley, 2020a).…”