I've been getting back to journalling regularly this week ....3 days in a row.... and it is most definitely starting to have an impact.
School
This morning, I hashed out a bunch of my thoughts re: what I want to do for my research project for the Adolescent Psychology course I am doing over the summer - and more importantly, about what research I need to be getting done to support my applications for further scholarships and for my PhD. Those will all have to be done over the fall semester, so the more that I can get done while I am ~off~ - using that term very loosely - the better.
Not only did I come up with things I need to research, journalling triggered great thoughts re: ways that I can go about doing it. So I've been working on making contacts with people that might be able to help me. Now, whether they will want to help me, who knows - but it can not hurt to ask, right?
Oh, and on the other end of the topic of school ...i.e. teaching instead of student-ing...I have been asked for my resume in regards to teaching another Business Communications course - t'would be through a new department, hence the resume request. Very cool.
I've also been working on rounding up my own replacement for some of the courses I teach. Hopefully that will work out, and my friend Sheila, also a gatherer, although inactive of late, and also an English grad, will end up with a job out of it.
Writing
I also wrote quite a bit about my need to actually get things out there and get published dammit! I have all of these stories and poems sitting here - many of them pretty well honed after having been read at a number of events. They are done. And they aren't doing me a damn bit of good sitting here on my computer going no-where. A couple of them have been out - once - and come back, poor babies... but as Bruce has told me many times, unless you keep sending them out, they're never going to be published. I need publication credits - and if I had done what he - and Ross - and Andrea - and mom - and Jane - and Suey - and...well, you get the idea - had encouraged me to do when they'd told me to, there is at least a possibility I would have them by now.
Also on the topic of writing - I need a name for a children's residential treatment centre.... novel is almost done and I still don't know what the darn place is called! In my mind, it is a modified version of the one I worked at for years ...and although I've changed it some... it is still NDSA. For the grant application I need to have a title for the novel - and I don't. Was thinking that if I had named the damn place, I could use Name of the Centre: Amanda as the title... and then the next one would be : Candy (her story is developing in my head as I finish up the first one) ...and then the third will be : George - and by then, I expect there will be a whole new crop of kiddies to work with :)
Journalling
Journalling is dangerous stuff, for me anyway, because it forces me to actually pay attention to the things it is often easier to avoid looking at. I can write excuses - but then, my pen goes on and grinds those excuses into the paper and I am left with two choices. I can stop looking and accept failure, or I can quit flitting and get fixing.
I have chosen the latter option, and actually, have already submitted one story (French Fries) for consideration this morning, and printed off a couple more to send out by snail mail when I go out today. Just have to decide where to send them.
And then I need to get my class for this evening sorted out (journalling resulted in recognizing that the exercises I provide them didn't all have to be original - can put from my textbooks and NOT, therefore, use that as an excuse not to get some other things done today) ....and then I need to fill out the grant application and write the cover letters for the story submissions before I head into town.
Journalling can be dangerous stuff - and invariably results in more work - but for me, it is also a very effective tool to get me to focus and be productive.
I have already been more productive this morning than I have been in days. Yay me.
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Comments: 66
And get writing on my 'Lowcountry' novella...your dangerous stuff has stirred up my D/S too! Thanks, Flit!
You've got the goods my friend, time to put it out there.
Sometimes things with the greatest danger (risk) has the best rewards. : )
How long will he be at camp?
i actually seal off the books, sometimes in segments even, as my life changes and then every few years i go back and break the seals and read what i wrote and see how far i've come and what mistakes i keep repeating and need to change.
when i die, they will become best sellers, cause they are filled with all sorts of sordid tales.
I'm always worried about someone reading them that shouldn't... especially as I DO have an annoying tendency to misplace things. Yes, even things that should not be misplaced like my journals :)
I'm well on my way to the sort of scatterbraininess one tolerates from PhDs, Ross says
I need the help to focus ...but sometimes I don't want to look at things quite that closely... and when I am the most swamped is probably really when I need to sit my arse down and DO it the most.
is it a safe house?
a place for recovering from terminal illness?
assuasive + niche
where IS my sister when I want her!
I'll keep rolling it round, in my head.
Andrea is at a ball game FYI
I understand about the publishing thing. I start telling myself that I'm never going to be published and to just be happy that I have readers here, then someone lights a fire under me and makes me think differently. I think I'm just a lazy writer. I want to be discovered without actually having to do more than the writing itself.
and THEN I posted from the wrong account... but oh well
As with you, so with me!
grains of sand,
the nest
village
Good luck
Blessings...
Because we care.
Roural Caring Center.
Just throwing some more names out.
Yes I wish I were close so you could teach me some things, Lynn said, She and I would have you cursing and kicking chairs in 20 minutes or less.