Boice advices new faculty to moderate strong emotions in both teaching and writing. Avoid bingeing, he says, and the euphoric emotions that come with intense productivity. The crash just isn’t worth the high. His reasoning is sound and his evidence quite respectable.
However, I’m sure that pointing out to addicts that their behaviour is suboptimal has been tried before. I try to live moderately of course, but sometimes I just need the electric feel of words coursing through my fingers and into my computer. Watching the sentences unfold and give life to the plan that’s worked out in my head, the skeleton of thoughts given flesh.
As Boice points out, this leads both to depression and to less than organized prose. I wind up with my own Frankenstein monster instead of a sleek productive machine, ideas that crush and rend instead of harvest.
See, like that.
But the thrill ride is just too much.
