I like the way the kids are using "mid" to describe things that are stuck in the middle to mediocre range. Here's my mid list for today.
* Another day of freezing rain and grey skies... but not quite as cold and there was a fair bit of a thaw too.
* I won't have my car back for five weeks (they have to order a part from Germany)... but they gave me a newer model as a loaner.
* I headed to the gas station for the first time in years (Bluey is all electric). It felt spend-y to fork over 50$ for gas... but I found a lucky penny.
* Last semester, I grandly agreed to give a talk in January 2024... and now it IS January 2024 and my talk is on Friday. Thankfully, I was able to use my writing group time to get some slides done... but it did mean that I didn't get any new writing done.
* I love, love, love teaching... but I'm on two search committees (SIX campus interviews--four more to go), three committees that meet every week for a total of four hours, on deadline for two career reviews, on deadline for recommendation letters for people's grad school applications, on deadline for rewriting our land acknowledgment, making final arrangements for two different guest speakers to visit campus (PBK and Women's History Month), arranging travel for the student honorary convention, vetting papers and programming the WGS portion of the MASAL conference, CASA report due next week... And the list for the next month goes on and on. Each of these things is important and has its own bulleted to-dos, and by itself, each would be something I enjoy doing. But cumulatively, having them all clustered together like this, feels overwhelming. One day at a time, I guess.
Pic: I cropped out guests' faces since I didn't ask people if I could post. But now the focus is on the happy plates (everyone is in the clean-plate club!) from our dinner party on Monday. There were two writers with new books out at the table (Sophfronia Scott and Jan Shoemaker) and I enjoyed introducing them to each other and felt a little bit like I was hosting a salon. Bonus peek of Nu at extreme right. I'm the black blob next to the blue-purple sweater (Big A) at the head of the table. Huck and Max are underfoot.
5 comments:
AND you hosted a dinner party!! Love it. (But really, that is A LOT of work stuff all at once)
Take care.
That does sound like an overwhelming amount of service work.
Yikes! You are a wee bit overcommitted. I hope you get a decent break in the action soon. Sometimes, though, I think being that busy forces us to use time more wisely and learn to cut loose a lot of stuff that doesn't really matter. I found myself really prioritizing when things stacked up like that while I was still teaching. You probably do, too.
Peek-a-boo Nu!
Sarah--The dinner party was my reward for checking off a small set of to-dos :).
Gillian--thanks!
Steph--it crept up. The letters will be the biggest time suck because they feel like "writing."
Nance--You're a champion peek-a-boo player; Theo is so lucky! :) I'm taking a four-day break in a week, so I hope to get a lot checked off this weekend.
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