Oh, there you are! On identification, action, and inaction

I rarely do anything without first envisioning myself doing that very thing. Take driving. I would never, could never, just get into the car and drive because I needed something or needed to be somewhere. I'd need, instead, to first see myself getting into my car, pulling out to the street and (hopefully) making it to wherever I needed or was expected to be. I imagine myself getting into the car, hearing NPR, pulling onto the street, encountering stop signs and stop lights, and detours (and how in the case of detours, I'd just turn around and go back home), and I always imagine how grateful and lucky and accomplished I'll feel if/when I arrive back home safely.

Or take writing my dissertation: I knew I had to do it, and I wanted to do it, but I was unable to do anything until I could see myself writing a diss. [Of course, part of the problem here was that I hadn't really seen or even read a diss till I audited a class with Peter Mortensen, so part of the problem was not even knowing what I was going for--what I was supposed to envision and then envision myself doing.]

I've written elsewhere about the moment when I knew I'd have to interview people for this new book project--that it made little sense for me to write exclusively about what cookbook authors said should or shouldn't happen in the kitchen. Yet before I could imagine myself even interviewing people (a daunting prospect for me because I'm shy and always assume people will be very mean to me for no reason, but not quite as scary as the prospect of getting in a car), I needed first to envision myself going through another equally daunting process, the IRB approval process, something which, in turn, would eventually allow me to begin envisioning myself interviewing people about their lived experiences in and around the kitchen.

As I detailed in that earlier post, the catalyst for all these actions, for all this necessary envisioning, began pretty much seconds after I read this line in the 1932 edition of Ida Bailey Allen's Modern Cookbook: "By her kitchen shall she be known." My first thought: I don't know that that's true, but I like the way the line sounds--if I could ever really envision myself writing another book, it would make for a good chapter title or epigraph. My second thought: Oh shit, having read this line, having considered this thought (can people really be known by/through their kitchens?), I know that I cannot not interview people. Put otherwise, the book I had been trying to envision myself writing just became dependent on still other envisionings.

*Apologies in advance for the second sentence of this next part if anyone I've interviewed 

for this project is actually reading this post and has expressed interest in learning what I find!*

At this point, I've interviewed about 39 people for this project, with another 47-50 interviews scheduled to take place in the next month and a half. Nothing makes me more anxious than when an interviewee asks when I'll be sharing my results and/or expresses interest in seeing the finished product/s, in learning what I find, in looking forward to reading what I find. With regard to the first question my answer has been "at CCCC 2020, I suppose. . .I mean, if I get in," and with regard to the matter of being interested in what the final product will be, in what I find/learn, all I can say is, "yeah. me too. tee-hee."

In all fairness, I knew the nice, smooth, tidy rug I'd begin fashioning for myself based on the cookbooks I was reading would be pulled out from under me when I started listening to what women (and men) actually did in the kitchen, how they learned who, what, and how to be with food, and how they felt about baking/cooking/food. So it makes sense to say that I know way less now about this project than I did (than I could begin to envision) before reading that page in Ida Bailey Allen's text which caused me to begin envisioning everything leading me to the point at which I am currently at now. In fact, I might know just a little bit less with each and every interview I do. But this is, I believe, ultimately a good thing. A great thing, in fact. A thing that will make for a much better book, something that underscores for me that there is so much about these complex worlds of cooking and baking and food that I hadn't imagined being possible (that the cookbooks couldn't help me imagine), that I hadn't thought to ask about, that I wasn't aware of even mattering. So, I'm okay with not knowing what the data, these stories, these lives, will ultimately suggest or reveal. 

My bigger problem (and what really unnerved me about people expressing interest in my findings) is that it wasn't until this morning (yes, really, this very morning) that I could actually envision myself *really* writing another book, this book, the point of which (at least insofar as the interview data is concerned) is, of course, still tbd. My biggest source of anxiety since starting the interview process  has been this: While I knew there was decidedly a book here--even a good book here (and this is something that seems a bit more clear with every interview I do), I worried that I would choke, that I not be able, ultimately, to help it come together. That, in the end, I would just not be able to see myself doing so. 

Just as Bailey's line triggered something that allowed me to begin envisioning the steps I've have to take to help ensure this would be a more successful book project (compared, for instance, to one that just dealt with the cookbooks), a line from page 168 of Sarah Walden's Tasteful Domesticity triggered something in me that has (finally) allowed me to begin envisioning--not, of course, the book I will eventually, finally complete (again, it's too early in the interview process to see what, specifically that will be), but the one I will begin--and, insofar as I've spent the past two years thinking and writing about cookbooks, the one I have already begun--to write. There is nothing particularly revealing or revelatory about the line itself (save for the fact that it, just like this very blog post, is about the relationship between identification and action/inaction), but I include it here, mainly so I don't have to go looking for it again: "Cookbooks guided women to form a sense of collective identity and turn that identification into action."

And so, with the help of Walden's words, I finally sat down this morning to begin drafting the prospectus, writing down ideas for chapters, chapter titles, epigraphs, arguments, and authors that I can envision using in certain parts of the book, leaving blank the portions of the prospectus that deal specifically with the interview data.  And for me, at least when it comes to the envisioning of a book, it's all a matter of prospectus. If I can prospectus it, I can see it. And vice versa.