If only we could bottle the atmosphere at conferences

I have just returned from Toronto, where I attended two conferences: The Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, followed by a smaller event focused on rebirth narratives, at the Royal Ontario Museum. Both were excellent in their different ways: IABS is such a wonderful opportunity to take the pulse of the field, to catch up with areas of scholarship, and of course to meet with colleagues old and new. It is, however, very big, and peppered with clashing parallel panels and half-conversations. The rebirth narratives conference was much smaller: we were all in one room for two days, hearing a series of closely related papers about the art and literature of the Buddhist world.

I wish I could bottle the atmosphere at such conferences – “eau d’IABS” perhaps – so I could take a healthy sniff of it mid-semester, to remind me that I am a scholar, and not just a teacher and administrator. My rather tired brain, so over-stimulated and still processing everything I heard and reflected on in Toronto, will now have to shift focus to the start of the new academic year, and I know I will struggle – as I always do – to keep that momentum of learning and thinking going as the more immediate demands grow.

Alongside many conversations on topics related to the conference, recent scholarship and the like, I was surprised by a recurring comment that I had not anticipated: quite a few people commented that they enjoyed my blog. Given that I hardly ever post anything, and it is rare indeed for me to post something really interesting (even by my own standards!) I was rather taken aback by this. In addition, I had actually decided to shut the blog down, since I could not find time to use it properly. Now, as a result of these conversations in Toronto, I have had a rethink.

The reason I have not been blogging very much recently is of course workload. I spent much of the past year juggling multiple commitments and feeling generally run down. In the new year I sought a new approach, and took up what I believe is called “time-theming”. This involves clustering similar tasks together, concentrating on one key task / cluster of tasks per day (or half day), and thus lessening the exhaustion that comes from trying to multi-task. As all the science now agrees, there is no such thing as multi-tasking: we just switch quickly back and forth between the tasks, and get worn out in the process.

Since blogging didn’t have any similar tasks to cluster with, it dropped off the list completely, but now I think I will reinstate it, and cluster it with the important task of reminding myself that I am a scholar. This task will be flexible – maybe simply trying to read an article or a chapter of a book each week. I will also challenge myself to think interesting scholarly thoughts, and share them here!

Hopefully this blog can be reborn as a way of keeping scholarly conversations alive between conferences. I will also use it to share papers and other research resources that I am creating. But, having resolved to use it better, you should be warned that this may necessitate quite a few retrospective posts, about events and thoughts and questions from earlier in the year…