Reboot

New Year's resolutions are always dicey, so this week's blog reboot comes with no promises to either me or You. Still, if the endgame is more regular writing on top of Life Otherwise, it needs to start somewhere.

So it starts here.

I guess I was most excited about blogging in the pre-Facebook days, when the idea of generating a personalized website seemed far-out and progressive. Now it seems like another (slightly creaky) spoke in the social media wheelhouse. Still, it seems to me that as an outlet for regular and public writing, blogs still have their purpose.

The potential is still there.

So in the spirit of potentials, here's a short-list of three things for me to do this semester to personally increase professional (and therefore personal) satisfaction:

1. Regular writing. Blog as mental stretching exercise...but work on upcoming conferences necessarily opening up into larger projects. Like Blur says, "Yes, it really really really could happen."

2. More face-time. With students, this means scaffolding conferences into larger assignments, revisiting the notion of the Ron Christensen Memorial Oral Final Exam, and leaning on my advisees for more than 15 minutes a semester of "quality time."

3. Manage the inbox. Getting my personal email inbox down to double-digits was a personal victory. The goal is to do the same for the university address. Let's just say that there are miles to go before I sleep.

New Year's Resolutions (I know, I know)

I know what you're thinking, and you're right: new year's resolutions can be pretty lame. Personally, I think what makes them lame is that, if you're not careful, they can really set you up to fail. And who needs that?

Still, there's something to be said for the symbolic attempt to consciously vector one's life in positive directions....even if it IS doomed! And in a public forum, no less. Wait--who thought this was a good idea?

Of the New Year's resolutions I made this year, at least three are applicable here:

1) I hereby resolve to regularly blog once again. I figure if I can write 3x/week here, that's pretty good. Not coincidentally, my father is on a similar 3x/week kind of schedule, albeit not exactly of his own choosing. So if I can manage to have a new post for him every time he logs on for a post-Nadine's read, I'd be a happy camper. And if I'm blogging more, it puts me in a better spot to cajole my students to do the same (are you listening, gang?)....

2) I hereby resolve to get that darned book proposal out. My advisors in graduate school always framed our dissertations as "the first draft of your first book." Ok, then. I love the fact that BSC values teaching so highly, but both myself and the college would like to see some action on the research front beyond conferences and such. Fair enough. For the book to fly, the book proposal has to sing--how's that for a mixed metaphor? So that needs to happen asap, if not sooner. No pressure....

3) I hereby resolve to weed, prune, and ultimately drastically reduce my email inboxes. I'll track the progress of what I lovingly refer to as the "Inbox Reduction Resolution of 2008" (hereafter "IRR'08") through the spring semester....or at least until it gets annoying and/or boring. I'd love to hear your strategies on this--or if you even think this is a problem. For the record, I'm going into this with 365 emails in my Yahoo a/c, and an even 100 in my BSC a/c.

Item last: found two Rainer discs I didn't have, thanks to my friend Ryan who has succeeded in transplanting himself from Bloomie to the Old Pueblo this past year. Maybe more on that next week, but in the meantime here's a clip of him doing "Life Is Fine" on British TV....Enjoy.