When It Rains...

Okay, so my dearth of writing and maintaining any semblance of a web presence is, I hope, coming to an end. There are many old adages about bad luck; a couple even seem to have some teeth to them.

In the last week, the water heater threw up the white flag, I lost some of my data on my computer and my wife's Volkswagon went into the shop. Add that to teaching a full load, taking Lyla to swimming lessons, trying to remain reasonably healthy through exercise and working on the house in 100-degree temperatures...

The blogging, needless to say, has been a little lower on the list.

This has been the busiest summer of my professional life. From committee work at the college (I had a hand in hiring seven new employees this summer) to teaching seven courses and trying to help Jeanne out around the house and with Lyla, I've never felt so stretched. I've put much of that on myself, and Jeanne and I are proud of what we've accomplished since 2005. Every year, we've both worked as much as we could (I taught fifty-five workload units this year; my contract calls for thirty) to make extra money. Jeanne's always worked in the summer, and I've taught at night and online.

I think, moving into next year, I'll be scaling back a bit. I need to focus on making the doctoral program in American Studies at the University of Florida the center of my agenda for 2011/12. I need to maintain my time with Jeanne and Lyla, and with any future blessings that might come into our life. And I need to shift some of my attention back to creative works: be they scholarship or fiction.

Like I said, the extra work has paid off. We paid down a lot of debt and we worked hard to improve our quality of life. This spring we painted the house, put in a new back lawn and replaced the dishwasher.

But the time has come to focus on other things, and not on staying late at work and clocking overtime.

Now that I have my computing access back up to speed and one of my summer classes is drawing to a close, I even hope to write a little fiction later in the week.

If you've dropped by and found the website in stasis--my bad. Do come back in the future. For the last few months, I've had some great ideas for blog posts, but no real time to get to them. I'll try to amend that in the near future...