Cork board with personal and professional memorabilia, 1994 - 2025

So this cork board of memory pieces has been in development for about 30 years, and this past week I moved it from one office to another, as part of my now-complete transition from department Chair to mere citizen of my institutional unit, if also currently a citizen-in-hiatus ('on sabbatical' in academe-speak) of said unit and said institution. I half-considered dismantling it and putting its archive of images and objects away as part of whatever "fresh start" into the "rest" of my career this move might occasion, but have so far decided against that, if only because I want to live for a while longer with the "history" assembled there. among other personal and professional milestones, 2021 marks 35 years since I taught my first undergraduate class as the instructor of record (first-year writing, fall of 1986, while a PhD student at UCLA), 30 years since I completed my fellowship year in the inaugural cohort of what was then UCLA's Paris Program in Critical Theory, 25(!) years since I left my first job at San Jose State U (and a wonderful relationship in SF, and my family, and my entire California world) for a job at Dartmouth College in 1996, and 15 years since I started a visiting gig at Cal State LA in 2006 that changed my sense of vocation in relation to my job, my work (not the same thing), and I think maybe my life (the last in that it gave me a chance to return to my family when I really really needed that). a very early artifact on the cork board is a button from Roberta Achtenberg's historic mayoral campaign in SF in 1994, and the most recent item I recognize is probably a postcard advertising Kyla Tompkins' brilliant 2012 book "Racial Indigestion," though there might be something more recent here that I can't see. this bizarre summer, which is currently winding down and actually ends on the day I turn 60, has given me multiple opportunities (thanks especially to many conversations with a literal multitude of beloved family, friends, and colleagues over meals, drinks, phone calls, zoom calls, etc) to reflect on whatever the past and present might be conspiring, especially as the latter continues to unfold, to create into whatever future remains for me to imagine having, and using, and making, even if in the moment of writing these words all I can say about it is that I don't see it, not yet, at least not clearly, and for whatever reason I mostly feel like that's okay. what I have realized recently is that six years ago (then turning 54) I gladly took on a specifically and uniquely demanding, and often gratifying, job, knowing then that if I did it for the fullest term I'd indeed awaken back to life to find myself turning (gasp) 60; so here, now, the one thing I know about the time to come is that I'm not going to opt for any new tasks that similarly speed time up, but instead opt for ones (if they exist, and present themselves) that slow time down, even if that makes whatever I'm doing look to others like nothing.

- Originally posted by Ricardo L. Ortiz on Facebook, August 14, 2021.