Week One

So! No, I haven't actually deactivated this blog. Nor do I promise to write regularly in the future. But I had the idea early this morning (I think) to use it to keep myself organized with my eight million summer projects, and today was graduation, so here goes.

I--probably like many academics--get way too ambitious every summer. It's like I have this idea that, if I just finish all the projects, I can totally relax and not work anymore, ever. Clearly, that is not the case, especially since I'm constantly coming up with new projects (work- and leisure-related). I've been this way for a long time: When I was about twelve, in great excitement over the coming summer, I wrote out a detailed weekly schedule for myself, which included things like going to swim practice, playing video games, reading, and working on these puppet videos that my brother and I used to make. When I had finished it, I had a moment of blank despair: It was like summer was already over and it hadn't been any fun. I didn't look at the schedule again (and had a lovely summer).

However, I haven't learned my lesson. A partial, but not complete, list of my summer projects includes

• fix everything that needs fixing (e.g. car windshield) and clean everything that needs cleaning, including the garage
• put paving sand between all the bricks on our 60' brick sidewalk, which involves first digging out between all of said bricks (we've done about 10')
• finish the chapter of Book 2 that I've been working on this semester
• finish and submit two encyclopedia articles (these have deadlines, so they'll get done)
• read for, outline, and roughly sort-of draft the Framework chapter of Book 2
• 3 syllabi, including one totally new course (developmental comp)
• the Year Two portion of Bonaventure's baby book
• various knitting and bookmaking projects
• make a lot of paper
• finish A l'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs

 My plan, I think, is to think weekly. Maybe try for five things per week? Thus, for Week 1, here's what I'd like to do:

1. take care of car stuff
2. photocopy Honors theses (thus ending my 6-year term as director of the honors program)
3. read 1 research-related book
4. write 2000 words
5. submit first encyclopedia article (due 5/15)

Also: Possibly try a new yoga class and do some of the work on that brick walk. (Like how I made five tasks into seven there?)

That seems...I don't know, doable? Right now, it's the brink of summer, and everything seems possible. On the other hand, I look at my list and I have that summer's-over feeling which is so terribly sad. I must remember the other goals: Spend time with TM and Bonaventure, read for fun, take naps, eat well, eat outside, visit friends and family!

One more thing

Here's a way to liven up a week packed with meetings: Have a natural disaster!

(Field Town proper is fine. We had a day without power and two days without Internet--which was kind of freeing, in truth. The bigger town up the road is not okay, and will be dealing with this for quite a while.)

Agh gah gah gah

The car is in the shop (for a $500 repair). The baby is sick (a cold or something equally snotty that makes him cranky). I'm conferring (can I stop saying "conferencing"?) with two classes over the next week and a half. Campus interviews for the search committee I'm on start tomorrow. I'm learning how to hire adjuncts for next semester. I need to meet with four Honors thesis writers and their committees before Thanksgiving. And a committee from the Student Senate would like to meet with me about their concerns and suggestions regarding one of our required composition courses.

Can I just skip the rest of the month?

Starting early

It recently occurred to me that I haven't posted a Bonaventure picture in a while. (Yes, this is an easy-post strategy.)

Here he is: my little scholar...

...and my wee sophisticate.

A note on the death of my colleague

First, I'm doing fine. As I said in my last post, this wasn't someone to whom I was particularly close, although s/he was in my division (and I'll be talking to the Provost about how to staff his/her classes this afternoon). Thank you all for your condolences.

What I want to say is that this death has made me me--and, I suspect, many of my colleagues--think, painfully, about the importance of kindness.

Our late colleague, although s/he had a good heart, was sometimes hard to work with; s/he could be a little...lost in space, seemingly, at times. S/he was never prickly or difficult, but we got impatient. I got impatient.

None of us was responsible for what s/he did. But we could have been kinder. I could have been kinder.

In the last week, I think that we all learned a lot about him/her that we never knew--good things; things about the love that s/he had for his/her students, and how meaningful that was to them. I would have liked to have known these things before. And I would have liked to have had the patience, and the grace, to appreciate them as I ought to have done.

So I hope that I learn that. Because, honestly, there are a lot of people that I could write this stuff about. As one of my co-workers put it: Will this make me less of a bitch? I hope so.

My problems are tiny

We walked into work this morning to discover that a colleague committed suicide last night.*



I don't know what else to write. I keep deleting things.




It's a pretty weird day.

*No one I was particularly close to, although I did have pretty frequent contact with him/her.

Getting better

So we more or less got the daycare situation worked out--we have less coverage for slightly more money, but it's fine, and we're able to go to classes without the baby.

The refrigerator door is holding strong. The garage door still usually won't close unless you push it shut, but that's no big deal. The cat is healthy again (although the other cat continues to pee in inappropriate places). We replaced the broken blender part and the broken wipes warmer part. We're hanging in there.

And I've only graded at home once, so that resolution is mostly working out.

I pretty much stopped working on my own writing for about two weeks there, however. I'm trying to start up again this week. Scratch that--I am starting up again this week, since I've actually done some reading and writing more or less every day since Sunday.

I don't know how to add one of those little meters on the sidebar of my blog, and I absolutely cannot be bothered to find out, so I'll just say that I have now written about 4,200 words of Book Two, and I got a good idea (I hope) for another chapter/half chapter last night. (I mean, I have chapter ideas, but they're not all very fleshed out; I'm a process writer, or something. I have a plan, but I mostly just have to start working and trust that it will all come together; if I wait until I truly know where I'm going, I'll be in the position that I've been in for the last three years: idly jotting down disconnected notes and imaging that I'll write another book some day.)

So here goes. I had a lot more faith in my dissertation, frankly, but it had a tidier structure (one chapter per author) than I want to go with this time around. Anyway, I don't need a second book for...well, anything at Field (I don't need a first book, in fact), so I'm free to plug away and see what happens.

--Unfortunately, I was asked to be on what promises to be a super dull and annoying search committee today, and I didn't have the wherewithal to say no. And so it goes.