Today I’m writing up my portfolio for my annual review at work (I am a lecturer at a state university).
It’s intense to scroll back through the calendar, starting in September 19, and see so many events I have forgotten about — and then, as Covid struck, see events just disappear from the calendar as we all retreated to online work.
How’s your work / day job? Busy time?
I had my first virtual teaching observation on Wednesday. I earned our district’s “Distinguished Teacher” level, the highest we can go. I deem this a high reward because I have combined my classes with two others because the teachers were pulled from other departments and they don’t know the content. I am scrambling to research virrual methods, create new assignments, and continue to teach the other teachers, too. Our department head quit last week and they now appointed me to fill the vacancy on Monday. All of this on top of teaching 11 year olds and their parents technology, special education IEP meetings, and endless emails, a.k.a. cries for help.
I appreciate my hour block of writing time on Sunday nights more than ever.
Congrats! This is great news. Sorry you are so busy…
Huge congrats, Sara: you can do it! Just allow yourself some breaks and recharge time to handle the added stresses.
For myself, I’m flat out, trying to finish the edits following the detailed critique of my MS from my editor. I received it at midnight Sept 10th; today, Sept 28th, I’m on page 278 with 158 to go: that’s under 20 pages a day, so I’m slower than I’d hoped. I’m also still waiting for my cover design. But given the worldwide tragedies of this year, I’m not going to complain about that. I’m striving for a pre-launch (pre-sales) by the end of October, to be followed by a more leisurely launch that will allow me to do at least some marketing.
Day job’s been keeping me pretty busy lately since one of my coworkers is on vacation, but I’ve been able to make some headway on the second book of my fantasy series, and get some good reading and other things done.
Luke, it sounds like you have a great plan. Keep the posts coming. I love following them and discovering your insights.
Well done. Hang tough, you got this.
One thing that has been a surprise at work, fresh faces. I work in a compounding pharmacy and it used to be we could not pay people to work there. 
Now we have two new techs which mean less worry over a lot of the smaller details. Last week, we upgraded most of the signage. Sounds like a trivial matter, but it does loads for morale and the professionalism.
