Sinking down

I’m starting to sink into my usual AAR/SBL slump. I don’t know what my problem is, but there comes a point every year in this meeting when I start to wonder what I’m doing here. I don’t know if it’s the context — fancy hotels, everybody dressed up in professional clothes, orange juice costing $4 a glass — or the basic sense that I’m not “getting enough” from this meeting to warrant the time and money going into it. I began my morning quite early, listening to a paper. And that was literally what I was doing: listening to someone read their paper. I couldn’t avoid thinking that it would have been a lot easier to grab the paper from the web and just read it. I have only seen a few of my friends, probably another reason I’m feeling “slumpy.” Still, that’s not even the main reason. I think I just don’t feel comfortable inhabiting this part of the role of “professor.” It somehow feels too self-important, too disconnected from the real world, too much of an internal dialogue. At the same time, though, I don’t feel free enough to simply chuck the whole thing and go out and enjoy Atlanta. I keep going to sessions, thinking that the next one will be really interesting, and I’ll learn something crucial I otherwise wouldn’t have learned. Is there a way to engage this meeting well? Is it worth the time and money that goes into it? I wish this wasn’t a question for me, but today it’s all too pressing.