Clarissa AL Lee's Lateral Worlds

 It has been awhile since i have updated here, as life has taken a different turn this past year. I left my tenure-track position at Universiti Malaya (despite having three more years on the contract, although that had since reduced to 2 years and 4 months by the time I left) to pursue the broadening of horizons and also to make my own creative and intellectual dreams come true (and go through). This is done by giving myself this year, through the affordances of a fellowship, to reconfigure things I am doing so that they are more in line with the direction I am seeing myself increasingly converging on. It has been a challenging yet good year of new experiences, new insights, and self-reflections. I was losing the ability to try new things and take risks in what I do, and now, I see myself returning, taking a small step at a time, to what had made life worthwhile in the first place. Before that, I had spent the months between June 2022 and September 2022, which was about 4 months, t...

UPDATE: Someone pointed me to this common-sensical and yet often forgotten tenet of self-care, especially for those in the intellectual/creative profession s.  One thing that comes to mind, especially in that powerful opening, is how we sometimes transfer our own insecurities/inadequacy/self-loathing into our interaction with others - we say and do things that hurt others without thinking of the consequence, perhaps because we do not have to bear the consequence directly, at least not immediately. I think an important thing to do is learn how to balance between truth-telling and thoughtfulness in all our actions, which could only come with cultivated EQ. Many of us in intellectual-centric professions tend to valorise intellect over intra- and interpersonal intelligence, and put minimal effort into cultivating the latter; which is dangerous for society especially if your work involves influencing lives, and detrimental to your own personal life in the longer term.  In the pro...

Today is the last day of 2016, just over 3 hours away from midnight in my timezone. I've been debating over whether I've anything to post to usher out this year, and worried having anything worth saying. While most people instagram or vlog their way into the new year, as one who cut her teeth writing for the public in a blog-like medium (long even before blogger or wordpress became popular), I still find this medium to work well for me. Moreover, I do like to maintain a distance from the public in the way I feel an instagram or vlog does not quite allow. So today, I have decided that I will make my final listicles for the year! 1. It is ok to be anxious about a new beginning, but also, be willing to concede control. As one gets older, it is usual to become increasingly concern over one's life direction; unlike the years during and immediately after college, I no longer feel I have that luxury of time to be moving around aimlessly while not building my way towards ...