Total words: 0 (it’s still early)
Manuscript total: 42,517
That thing that I’ve been hearing people talk about finally happened to me today: This morning, I became utterly confused as to what day it was.
As I headed downstairs early this morning to make my coffee and oatmeal, I was struck by the terrible realization that the kitchen garbage was full, but the trash bins had not been taken to the curb for the weekly pick-up. I quickly emptied the kitchen garbage and recycling and noisily rolled the first bin to the curb, grimacing the whole time that I might wake my roommates or neighbors.
Triumphant with my achievement, I stood at the curb for a moment and admired the early morning light.
And noticed a lot of my neighbors had also forgotten to take their garbage out.
No, wait, ALL my neighbors had forgotten…?
Only about sixteen hours had passed, and this was already happening.
I glanced down at my watch, and then I understood: My neighbors hadn’t forgotten. It simply wasn’t Friday yet. It was still Thursday.
It had been only sixteen hours since I turned in my final project for graduate school, a stop-motion animation (mostly — the animation took so long that I threw in photos and video clips) critiquing what project-based learning schools could do better to prepare first-generation, low-income students for college, even fewer hours since I’d unofficially finished my student-teaching duties, and somehow the days were already running together.
I thought about wheeling the bin back into the yard but decided it could stay at the curb for an extra day without doing any harm. Then I thought about wheeling the other two bins to the curb early but decided they would be happy where they were until tomorrow.
Finishing graduate school feels rather anticlimactic, given the pandemic.
Back in mid-March, I posited to LT that we would probably still get to go to Los Angeles to attend my graduation ceremony. But LT was skeptical. I argued that surely, by mid-May, we would be back to normal. She told me it probably wouldn’t happen.
As usual, LT was right. (She likes to remind me that she is always right.)
Now that I am finished with school and student teaching (less one final class on Friday morning), I’m wondering how all my time will be spent. Full days of student teaching have been gone since the second week of March, but at least the distance learning thing has been happening. But the seven hours of classes per week along with the twelve or fifteen hours of associated homework? All gone.
I expected to feel celebratory. But to be honest, everything just feels kind of grim. Yes, it’s a milestone, but somehow it feels like a pyrrhic victory.
Which brings me back to… what am I going to do with all my extra time?
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m someone who needs a project at all times in order to feel sane. Graduate school, student teaching, writing a 200,000 word book… several projects at once are generally even better than one.
It goes without saying that my most important project is finding a full-time teaching job for the 2020/21 school year (whatever strange beast that school year might be), but I need more than checking for new postings on EdJoin each day to keep me occupied.
So, some brainstorms…
I think I might start training for Spartan Races again. I found a fantastic hike only five miles from my house yesterday. I only walked part of it, because it was late in the day and I wanted to make it home so I could eat dinner at a decent hour. But the trail made me want to RUN for once. And running makes me want to shed the extra pounds grad school added and get back into competitive, athletic shape again. Alas, I can’t try out the parkour gym I found before the pandemic, but I can certainly up the ante of my daily home workouts.
I’m going to double my minimum daily word count. I’ve been consistently writing at least 1,000 words per day; I want to double that to 2,000 per day now that my other obligations have finished. NaNoWriMo in May again… but this time, I’m on lockdown and not starting a graduate program, so I should be able to stick to my commitment.
I’m going to blog every day. (But they won’t all be this long, don’t worry.)
I’m going to meditate every day. Another habit I stopped with grad school that I’m ready to reinvigorate.
And speaking of writing and blogging, I want to put more effort into extra goodies for my readers. In case you don’t get my newsletter (and if you’re so dedicated that you’re reading my blog post, you totally should get my newsletter!), I mentioned a month or two ago that I’m thinking of rolling out a Patreon service for my most dedicated fans. I gave my email subscribers a 2-minute survey to see what they’d be interested in (you can take it here) and most of them seemed primarily interested in the extra, exclusive content just for them, like excerpts from works in progress and story universe information that you can’t get in my books. Now that I have the time, I’m ready to put together enough content to make being a Patreon supporter actually worth it to my readers.
Got any other suggestions for what I should do with my extra time? I’m open to hearing what you have to say!
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