I’m ready for summer.
I had intended to be productive these past months, focused on prolific writing and dramatic remodeling. But on balance, I let myself down a bit.
As an example—and I think this can serve as an illustration of my summer as a whole—I had big plans for the two front rooms, but probably only did about one-third what I’d hoped.
That one-third is a big improvement; I replaced a couple overbearing pieces of furniture, which has opened the rooms up significantly. But the walls are still white (I’d planned to paint with some bold colors), and the couch is still broken (a casualty of teenagers’ wrestling matches).
My online course, which I wanted to have fully prepped before the semester begins (today) is probably only about one-third of the way there, as well. As I’d noted an earlier post, having the online course fully set up makes a huge difference in my effectiveness as a teacher, both in reducing stress and in freeing up time and attention to spend directly with my students.
And yes, online classes are supposed to roll over fairly effortlessly from one semester to the next. Usually, I focus on just a few improvements, which—at least in comparison to the amount of work it takes to put together an entire course from scratch—is relatively simple. But our department made a major change in one of our classes, and that requires me both to create four weeks or so of new content and to restructure the content I already have.
The class will be much better for it, so I’m not unhappy about the change. But I should have been working on it a couple hours a day for the past few weeks.
Instead, I looked at the Countdown Timer on my phone and rationalized putting it off. “I have 45 days until the semester starts,” I said. And then it was 33 days. And then 27. And then 9—only, I was going to be out of town for 6 of those.
Sigh.
“Out of town” refers primarily to Lancaster, where my family lives. It was hot, as would be expected in the high desert in August, but we took a couple day trips. One was to Ventura Beach; I don’t think I’d ever been to a beach in Ventura, though I’d lived for years in LA. It was nice—clean, sandy, hot (but not like the desert), wet. Not too crowded. The younger son spent most of his time in the water with one of his cousins.
The other day trip was to the Getty Museum. I get museum fatigue pretty quickly, so I spent most of my attention in two exhibits: first, in the ancient Egypt exhibit, and then in the 100 years of fashion photography exhibit. I wandered the latter with my younger sister, Fawn, who’s a bit of a photographer, so she could teach me about fashions, models, photographers, composition, and so on. Educational and enjoyable.
But I didn’t do much more this summer. I was pretty consistent with the Couch to 5K program; I made it through the sixth week (though it took 8 weeks to do so), and started the 7th (travel and early morning school activities gave me an excuse to wimp out this week; I jumped back in this morning). And I kept up with my blog’s schedule—including finally finishing my video essay on Black Panther’s Wakanda and its relationship to the tradition of literary utopias.
But I didn’t write any fiction to speak of, which was supposed to be at the top of my summer to-do list.
Nor did I read as much as I’d intended: I started (and made limited progress) in the three books I announced I was reading (Montaigne’s Essays, Amber Benson’s Death’s Daughter, and McIntyre’s Post-Truth), but not much more.
Ah, well: it was summer, after all. No one except me said that it needed to be productive, and perhaps I really needed the rest. And anyway, my procrastination never ends up being fatal; the next couple of weeks will be busier than they otherwise needed to be, but I’ll survive.
As long as I can make the transition into the demands of the semester….