New year, new postings?

Well, I closed this blog for awhile. I didn't post at all last semester and, to be honest, I have no idea if I'll post this semester. There was a time when I really enjoyed writing this blog (and others). I've lost that a bit. Part of it is audience anxiety. Even though this blog was always public, it now feels very public. I suppose that's the new job and the idea that more people know me, more people might find this, and I hate having to be careful about what I say, but that's the electronic age.

I'd like to say this could be a completely honest blog about the struggles of being a young academic, but that wouldn't be true. I can't be -- I'm not sure anyone can be -- completely honest with a public audience. But maybe it can be at least something about being a young academic: a difficult and wonderful career.

One of my colleagues told a room full of upper level undergraduate students and MA students, people thinking about graduate school, that being a professor isn't a job; it's a career. And careers are hard, he said.

Yes. Yes they are.

I'm looking over my goals for the fall semester and I figure I'd update them here, add a few for the spring, yeah?

Things I did well

• Finished, revised, and submitted the book chapter. Waiting to hear back from the editor on the final cuts, but hopefully it's in.
• Finished, revised, and submitted my textbook article. I've been working on that for freaking ever. I'm not sure it's any good, but I sent it off to Cs to at least see if I get any good feedback. Honestly, it's the first time I've sent off an article to a major journal and it's terrifying.
• I have cut back on Caribou, at least I did until they got the Spicy dark chocolate mocha for the holidays. Now that that's gone again, I'll go back to cutting back.
• I did an excellent job when it was hot out eating salads and staying away from fried foods. Dropped about 18 pounds. I'd say 8 of it is back. It's hard to talk yourself into salads when it's cold out. 
• I've mostly kept up with the binder organizational scheme, but need to do something with my materials from last semester that were not 805/expos related. 

Goals for this semester

• Instead of the embodied assessment article, I want to finish a draft of my embodied rhetoric article. I downloaded a bunch of articles yesterday that I'll need to sift through. Right now I have about 15 pages of a draft, but it needs a lot of work. I'd like to have that sent to College English by April.
• I have to write my Cs conference paper. 
• Get back to eating a little better. Bringing my lunch more, at least. Saving a bit of $ that way.
• Try, as always, to streamline the teaching. Do less with more, and all that. 

Personally, I'd like to

• Learn how to make gnocchi
• Learn how to make chocolate truffles
• Learn how to make salted caramels
• None of these leads to losing that 8 lbs that I gained back. But, I would like to do that, too. Contradictory goals, but what's life without a little contradiction?
• Finish Peace Like a River
• Read American Gods
• Write more letters to my dad (as he doesn't have email or facebook). At least one a month.