Mark D. White

Answer: lotsa blogging and popular writing, and dealing with departmental stuff as chair, but alas no progress on book projects…

• Wrote two pieces for The Good Men Project: my first original article, "How Professional Women Can Objectify Men (and Why Waitresses Don't)" (as of this writing, the most popular page on the site, with a lot of mostly insightful commentary), and my first blog post, "Do Guys Really Think This Is What Lesbians Do?" (discussing the GQ photo of Community stars Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs, with a shout-out to The L Word, one of my favorite shows). My new column there will be named either "It's All About Character" or "Strength of Character"–everyone at GMP has been very welcoming and supportive, and I'm very excited about this! (And those of you who know me know I don't get excited often.)
• Wrote several posts for Psychology Today: a trilogy of posts on the Taoist principle of wei wu wei ("The Wisdom of Wei Wu Wei: Letting Good Things Happen," "How Much Work Should You Put into Your Relationship?", and "The Serenity of Wei Wu Wei") and one on adultery ("How You Can Resist the Urge to Cheat on Your Partner"). (Also, one of my posts from last week, "Why It's So Difficult to Love People Who Don't Love Themselves," got a huge number of hits on Wednesday, no idea why–but thanks, whoever who are!)
• Finished my first piece for Complete Wellbeing magazine on self-loathing, submitted it early to make sure it's stylistically approprirate; no idea when it will see print.
• Finished revising the chapter I cowrote with Maryanne Fisher for The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy, which is being edited by Dean Kowalski for the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series; very happy with the way it turned out.

A disappointing week in terms of scholarly writing, but very satisfying in terms of popular writing; it's becoming harder not to think this might be the way I should go, but it's early yet…

(And I did discover I rather like the South Orange, NJ, Starbucks early in the morning; I might make that a regular thing, at least until the semester starts.)