August: Getting Down to Business

Suddenly, it's August. It's back-to-school time. It's back-to-the-job market time. It's where-did-the-summer-go time. Time for all that self-recrimination. I think I'll just skip that for now. It's pretty useless anyway. With working two jobs, getting bigger and more unwieldily pregnant, and family and Absurdist Lover stuff, well, I've been doing my best -- and to anyone who has anything to say about my not doing enough, I can only say sorry and then, more defensively, tough.

So I promised myself that when August came, I would get down to business with job market stuff. What does this mean? I need to revise my letter, my STP, and other materials, but really this means getting some articles done and out into the "under consideration" world. I have the article that I was working on with Senior Scholar (for a couple years now actually) that I'm determined to get into some sort of shape and send back to him for his comments and revision plans. I also want to revise my first diss chapter into something fit for a journal that I greatly admire. I'm going to do my best to work daily, even if that means doing something wittle and teeny-tiny. As luck would have it, yesterday, the first of August, a.k.a. the month of getting down to business, a friend overseas IM'd me and asked me to help her out with some research. Then she sent me some of her writing, and I sent her some of my writing -- and we made a promise that by the end of the month we'd get drafts of our pieces done. Making plans counts to me as working. But what have I done today? I'm committing to working daily in a public way. And then I'm going to consider what really needs to be done -- and probably check some resources for any recent scholarship that I may have missed. That's enough for one day, I think.

Plus, I have limited time. Absurdist Lover is away for the weekend on a retreat of sorts, so I'm on my own and can devote some time to this work, which is very lucky since often I just want to hang out with him and do nothing that approaches productive anything. But I do have to attend a performance that my littlest sister (get this, ten years old) is very excited about a bit later today. It boggles the mind, but the tickets are $15. $15 for a kid's play!!! As in $15! I can't quite wrap my head around it. Also, there are BBC comedies I want to watch this evening -- and cross-stitch I want to do. So even with this late start, it's a full day.