Shiny Ball Syndrome

Teuta says that I have shiny ball syndrome because every single day I change my mind about the things that I want to study in Albania. I started off working on an archaeological project in 2006 and then in 2007, I worked on that same project while conducting independent research on Albanian hip-hop. In 2008 when I came to live in Tirana for a year, I was still interested in ideas surrounding hip-hop but more as they related to questions dealing with identity, nationalism and what it means to be Albanian (primarily influenced by this song "Proud To Be An Albanian"). While living in Albania for a year and learning Albanian I became more and more fascinated with how Albanians construct their identity and in particular about the ways in which Albanians in Albania relate to Albanians in Kosovo and even in Macedonia. So with these thoughts I came here this summer to work on my Albanian language but also to hammer out I'm going to be writing about. Yet as Teuta says, I'm suffering from shiny ball syndrome because my thoughts have been ranging from:

- The story of Skanderbeg and how that relates to nationalism
- Reading everything about Enver Hoxha
- What it means to be a democracy now but how this relates to socialist ideas, how people feel "free" to do so much but yet feel still trapped (so for example, trapped and not being able to travel)
- Migration (both legal and illegally, especially waiters who have gone to other countries for work and come back here and speak English and want to tell their stories)
- Storytelling
- Albanian feminine identity (huge topic)
- Greetings and expressions (Albanian language has a whole category of grammar for wishing things, such as wishing someone a good day)
- Representation of Albanian identity in literature and poetry
- Men who sit at cafes all day and watch the road
- Trauma experienced in the 90s with the end of communism in Albania, the eruption of crisis from the pyramid schemes, but also in comparison with trauma in Kosovo as a result of the 1999 war
- Refugee status in both Albania and Kosovo
- The "city" vs. "the village"
- The ways in which people remember - and for this I would have to choose something specific to target

Okay so these are just some of the ideas I'm having and everyday I move around from one to the other, constantly journaling about these ideas - there just seem to be so many!