a bad talk, good networking and arrogance in the early morning

Last night Bharati Mukherjee gave the WEB du Bois lecture at Humboldt university - I admit I used to have my reservations against her and really do not care for her early work very much or for her stance against Canada which she often publicly voices in a very angry and reductive way - falling into the same trap she sometimes accuses other (or Canada) to do in so far as she does not differentiate between the situation in the early 80s and today's society and political landscape. However, in SF in December she was honored at the SALA conference and gave a short acceptance speech which was not only taking complex cultural developments into account due to globalization but also showed some development towards these in her latest books. Thus, admittedly I expected a nice critical talk especially as her topic was "Towards a Post-Racial Society: An American Experiment". While the invitation by Mita Banerjee was quite nice (a lot better than both introductions to Judith Butler) the presentation by Mukherjee was pure disappointment - an anecdotal something about American society from her very personal experience that was banal at best and less informative than media reports at most times. It seemed as if the thing was quickly put together during the 12 hour flight from SF but still was an embarrassing presentation by someone who is also professor at Berkeley - even if she may have been asked to present a positive image to please the sponsoring embassy...
But the evening was not a total waste, as the sponsoring embassy was present with three members and that gave a nice opportunity for networking and asking for support for our upcoming conference ...
And this morning actually great news - however these kinds of news by now tend to only elicit a heartfelt 'oh shit' from me.... because I had in September applied (with a late entry) for the GNEL conference this year and had now been put into the second call and been accepted. Which is GREAT and I really want to go to that conference and need to get more conference participations and publications on this year's schedule still - lacking behind already - but at the same time I am already postponing and rescheduling so many tasks this early spring because I just don't sit down to do them, that yet another one - no matter how great - right now only means panic....