PowerPoint get thee hence.

Today was the first day back at school, even though students don't come till tomorrow.

Tomorrow!

I will pause so that you may reflect.

I have thought all summer long about how I would manage my time once I got back in school. How I would find time to exercise a little more. Write. How I would find it in myself to say no to things that aren't really my job and that I don't need to do.

I've let a bunch of things go. I'm not the president of anything. I am no longer the faculty advisor of Folio. I have a course reassigned time this semester, although it's for preparing the lecture I am going to give in the spring. And I am not a faculty senator anymore. There are so many things that I am not doing. I should be able to focus my energies, I really should.


This morning I woke up with this thought: I don't want that one slide in the presentation. That's the presentation a colleague and I made today in the Provost's meeting. The reason we were making a presentation is that she and I had planned a retreat, sponsored by the Provost, in the summer, for the faculty senators and academic administrators and student services administrators. We were telling the faculty et al what had happened at that retreat, what strategic plans we had made, and how they should get involved.

This is a perfect example of what I feel I should not do: get so excited about an idea that I talk non-stop about it to everyone who will listen, then end up planning a retreat about the exciting idea, then make a presentation about the retreat, and wake up the morning of with a dubious slide on my mind. Literally, the people: PowerPoint was my first thought upon waking.

Also, incidentally: two nights in a row, not enough sleep.

So off I go to sleep now. I have another video to make tomorrow, a bunch of discussion prompts to post, readings to post, all manner of LMSery to sort out. And a meeting with a student. But I am going to take the dog for a walk before I go to school, as God is my witness. I feel that this, cooking dinners most nights, and keeping the beginnings and ends of weeks mostly meeting-free, so that I can actually give my online teaching my sustained attention--somehow, I think I will do better if I can just hold on to these things. And also write.