Although I’m not doing any classroom teaching this term* (I am, however, doing plenty of teaching), it somehow started off with a sprint. It’s taken me until week two to get together a plan for the term. Maybe others are more organized in thought and action, but I always have a moment after completing major book projects where I don’t know what the next big project is, and so I go in a million directions at once. This is that moment. I have a(n un)healthy pile of writing and research projects I’m undertaking. Part of it is I said yes to too many different things, each of which seemed perfectly interesting on its own but the sum total of which is taking me away from my own emergent agendas. Part of it is that I have so many directions I want to go in (aka, the emergent agendas) that it seems like there are dozens of moving parts.
So yesterday I sat down, wrote them all down (though I keep remembering new ones to add) and started entering date-specific “to dos” into my calendar in a rather ugly shade of green. Happily, I got to start the list with one thing crossed off (internal SSHRC grant application submitted Monday) and another almost crossed off (my next Flow column, due Friday, which is all-but-conclusion).
While I’m committed to a loud semester on the reading/writing/travel front, I’m hoping for a quieter semester on the political front (though more will be written about that as well). My intent is to use this space to write a bit about stuff I’m working on and thinking about so that others who share my interests might find me and give me good ideas. At least that’s the thought. So lots of projects will be mentioned and named in the coming months. I won’t post them all here just because composing the document was overwhelming enough.
And then there’s the rest of my life beyond the academic stuff–I’ve got a couple audio projects I’d like to finish by summer, one of which is attached to a website, I’m trying to learn a new instrument (an Octatrack) and swimming twice a week, and on and on.
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*I’m collecting on two of three course releases that were owed me after my term as chair. If I took them while chair, I wouldn’t have seen many students, which would have been lame.
swimming! I’ve been doing it as much as possible. So good for you. There’s something about the breathing that is very calming–it took me over six months to learn to stop gasping but now it’s great. Also learning a new instrument–the banjo.