Friday, February 26, 2010

Could I be worse at updating this?

Yes. Of course I could. But seriously, once a month is terrible, even if I'm the only one looking at this. Got some drawings and other things coming soon. I am currently listening to the Very Best of The Jam and drawing a can of WD-40 and also some clouds. Alternating between two drawings and then stopping to make a crappy entry on my blog is an apt metaphor the scattered and disjointed state of my brain these days. I'm not sure if it is a side effect of being a freelancer for nearly 9 months now, or my more recent reëntry* into academia, but boy do I lack the ability to concentrate for extended periods of time. The mental fortitude, the brain muscles that I use to work on a drawing for four hours straight without stopping are woefully flabby. Let's hope a combination of muscle memory and concentration calisthenics will help get this part of myself back into shape.

One thing I have definitely noticed as I get further into my first semester as a full-time faculty member is how completely disjointed the life is. There is the lesson planning, the actual classes - remembering all the names and different sitations, the grading, the material, the committees, the tenure paperwork that you have to begin immediately, the human resources stuff, the union stuff, and on and on. I like to think of myself as a decently organized person and I am definitely challenged by the splintered nature of all of this material. Office jobs come with their share of work and problems, but hey, you go to the office, you sit at a desk, you heat up your lunch, you go home. NOT COMPLAINING. I love it. Just feeling challenged to raise the bar on my organization and cataloging skills.

And in an effort to remain all over the place, I'm going to go back to drawing now.
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*I am borrowing the New Yorker's type style of putting an umlaut over any situation where a double-e results in two syllables. I.e. feed would not get one but reëmergence would. I think I've also noticed they give the letter "i" an umlaut if it has a double syllable, as in naïve. Quirky, and I like it.
**Images courtesy of google searching, "many arrows"

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