And So the Week Begins

Well, for the first Monday in ages I am not going to be lazy and to do the RBoC-style post. I think this is a good sign, though I couldn't quite tell you why. Anyway, so begins the final couple of weeks of my semester, which promise to be wicked busy. Before I talk about what's upcoming, though, I feel like I need to do a bit of an update about what's been going on with me. (This is as much for my benefit as for anybody else's so if it's boring, skip ahead down.

Weekend in Review:

Ok, so I did no "work" this weekend, if by "work" you mean grading (which I left in the trunk of my car all weekend long), prep, etc. That said, I think I'm willing to venture that I did work on my social life, which is really where my focus is right now, and I think where it should be. Saturday night was fantastic (which reminds me that I've got to email Coffee Guy about that), but also so was Friday Night, a night of beauty rituals and talking on the phone, and so was yesterday, a day of catching up with correspondence, catching up with the Man-Kitty, etc. I suppose what I'm saying is that after this weekend I actually feel like a human being, and really, I've not felt that since the book contract came along, and really since deciding to go on the market before that, if I'm honest. Oh, I should mention that I also finally got my copy of the signed contract back, which is awesome.

So this brings me up to the present time:

It's the second to last week of the regular semester, and things are chugging along. I've been swamped with advising appointments and that trend will continue in the next two weeks, and then there are all of the end-of-semester ceremonies and things that I'll need to attend, finals I'll need to write, etc. In other words, it promises to be a busy and stressful time (stressful more because of absorbing my students' stress than anything actually stressful in my own life). When the semester is over, my mom or maybe my mom and stepdad (depending) are coming to visit (the weekend of graduation because my mom wants to see me in graduation as faculty. I tried to explain to her that she will be bored to tears, but she does not care. Love my mom), I may go back to Hometown for a visit, and my friend A. is coming here for Memorial Day weekend. In between all the visiting, I need to do a thorough spring cleaning and weeding out of crap, and I also need to read a novel on which I apparently will speak at a conference in July. Which reminds me that I need to make my travel arrangements for that conference this week. Then June will be the month of writing conference papers and attending one conference, July is another conference and the UK trip, and then it's time to get ready to go back to school, and I'll probably have a bunch of crap to do with my book (if all goes well).

Looking ahead to the farther-out future:
I'm not entirely sure what to say in this section, other than that I'm out of the funk I'd been in about the state of my life. I'm feeling really good about how the job search this year went, after feeling sorry for myself about "failing" for a while, and I feel like good things are on the horizon career-wise, though I'm not entirely certain why I feel as sure of that as I do. And I'm not entirely certain whether those good things on the horizon mean staying here or going on the market again (hopefully successfully, if I choose to do it), but I feel like the reason I'm feeling positive in this regard has to do with the fact that I'm feeling more focused about what I want professionally in terms of what I want personally. Coming out of that, I'm also feeling a hell of a lot more positive about my personal life, even though, really, not all that much has changed. I think it's good that I'm doing the dating thing, but another thing that's been going on in the background is that I also have a lot of other friendships developing in interesting ways right now. The only way I can think of to put it is that for the first time in a long time my heart feels open, even if that is such a cheesy way of putting it that I almost can't bear to write it. I don't entirely know why I'm at this point with personal-life stuff, but I think it's a good thing. I'm actually optimistic about what the future holds in the coming months - again, no particular reason WHY that is, but it is, nonetheless.

So yes, that's where I am on this Monday. Now I need to get in the shower and get myself ready for the day ahead.