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Things were quiet here for a while because my academic job search had heated up, which meant there a lot I wanted to say, and not a lot I dared to say. As with many other searches I’ve done, this time I got so close … just not close enough.  Apparently, I look really good on paper, over the phone, and then someone else looks better in person. It is frustrating, and I won’t lie this last one hurt. Even with this last one, however, by the time I’d received the official rejection I had pretty much come to the conclusion that the fit maybe wasn’t quite right. I might not send personal note cards to everyone thanking them for the visit, but I am sincere in my final email where I wish them all the best with their new hire.

2014, although not a leap year, has been the year of the Grabow Anniversary – The Extended Version. We started celebrating a week in advance and then I think it was just hard to stop. Actually, it was more like we each had our own Anniversary weekend. Last weekend was the DH’s and this weekend was mine. It worked out this way mainly because the DH had last weekend off, and this weekend I had a Symposium to attend. (I know, super romantic, right.)

Warning, this post will be both picture/content heavy because while I want to share with you some of the fun that the DH and I have had this past week, I need to do that within the context of a not very fun part of our story.

As often as I fall off the wagon, it might not even look like an effort, but … believe me, I do try my best NOT to walk around talking about how busy/hectic my life is. A couple of years ago, I noticed that my almost rote response to the question, “How are you?” was “Tired.” Worse, I began to notice how ubiquitous the response was. Everyone is tired all the time it seems. I began to wonder if being tired was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consequently, I set a goal for myself … no more saying “I’m tired” especially when I am tired.

And, it worked.

Not like you might imagine, I am not an endless font of energy. Often, I am still tired, but I can work through that tiredness better when I don’t spend all my time talking about. (I think you can guess where this is going.) Having mostly, “mostly” conquered the “I’m tired.” It’s time to set to work on “I’m so busy/stressed/etc.” (Yes, Ousier, I know the Cush would not approve of the etc.) Because it is wrapped up in the work we do and we spend so much time at work, it is much harder to remove this complaint/discussion from my conversation. In fact, the stress and pressure got to me and it was IMPOSSIBLE not to talk about how busy I was this last week. Oh, and next week is not looking much better, but one thing is off my heaping plate, so I think I will at least be able to breathe a little easier. (But enough of the busy talk already!)

My last post is so hopeful, so excited, so full of promise of posts to come.I remember thinking: If nothing else, this class will at least generate some posts. I suppose it would, and will, generate posts when I get to attend another class.  Yes, we were supposed to meet every other Wednesday, but since that first meeting there have been at least two weather delays, and an out of town conference for me.  I’m really looking forward to attending class again this week. Since I missed the last session, I almost feel like we will need to do introductions all over again.

About that conference … It was pretty great! As a board member for the organization I had quite a few meetings to attend, but it was wonderful to see old friends and colleagues, and to make new acquaintances. The keynote speaker, Dr. Vershawn Ashanti Young, was amazing, and I’m still processing and learning from his presentation. Our homework from his presentation was to watch Dr. Joni Jones speech about 6 Rules for Allies. Take 13 minutes from your day and watch it now. I’m figuring out how to incorporate this into various staff meetings now.

After the conference I got very ill, some sort of stomach thing that kept me out of work on Monday, which was not great because then we lost Wednesday – Friday to snow days. (I refuse to name winter storms.) Every year in NC we have a snow day or two, many of them unnecessary concessions to the weather hype. Every few years, however, there is a real snow event, one in which there is both an actual accumulation of snow, and the usual layer of ice. This was one of those years.  Lots of snow on the ground, then ice, then snow, then melt, which leads to more ice.  Most of it has cleared out by now, but as I trudged around to the grocery store and coffee shop the last couple of days, I found myself missing the mid-west. It is crazy, but I always feel energized by a good snow. It’s probably just because they are so infrequent around here. I’m sure the first time I actually had to deal with a full winter’s worth of snow again I would not feel so enamored of it all. For the last couple of days, however, I was able to feel that warm, fuzzy, nostalgia for a day of bright and glorious winter sun shining off a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

Part of the hope, excitement, and promise of those early New Year’s posts is that I felt like this would be a year of changes.  Also, I thought I knew what those changes were likely to be. Turns out I might have been counting chickens before the eggs hatched.  I still expect there to be some significant changes in my life this year; now, however, I’ve learned to keep those expectations a little more vague. None of which is really meant to be vague with you, dear reader. I just really don’t know what will happen. I just know that last year contained some pretty big closures – graduating, turning 40, etc, which means that there are spaces to fill in my life and we all know how the universe hates a vacuum.

Apparently Visibility and Vulnerability are words for this year because on Wednesday this week I attended my first of many Performance Leadership (PL) classes. PL is a professional development class the university runs for mid-level managers — typically staff, which means it is a class full of just about everybody from dining services, business operations, engineering and agriculture extension programs and me. We meet every other Wednesday between now and June, and I am ridiculously excited about this class. At the end of day one I told our facilitator that I was sitting there thinking, “How do I get this job?” She said that as I presented she was thinking I would be good at it. I have no career change in mind just yet, but it is nice to see something else I think I would enjoy.

Half of it is just being in a class environment again, even if it is this kind of training class.  It would be impossible for you to over-estimate how hard it was for me doing my dissertation alone and not in a classroom environment. (Yes, part of the point of dissertation writing is learning to work on your own, but for me … it sucked. I like to talk through ideas.) I was so excited for this class that I made a 3-ring binder to keep my materials, got a new notebook and special pens. Then, I got to class and at every seat was a 3-ring binder. I felt more than a little silly and Lisa Simpson-esque. By the end of the day my table mates were giving me a hard time … “Of course you‘ve done the pre-reading” kind of stuff. In their defense, by that time I’d also volunteered to go first for an activity. Basically, I brought the teasing on myself – and it really was good-natured.

Seriously though, as much as I love the classroom environment (meeting new people, learning about them, sharing ideas), just being in this class is a step outside comfortable for me.  While I have often found myself in leadership roles, it has never been something I embraced (or cultivated) about myself. I was raised in an environment where I was constantly reminded not to “get above” myself. Since I also have an ingrained respect for leaders labeling myself as one by participating in this class triggers all the insecurities that go with “getting above myself.”

Unsurprisingly, taking this course feels a little like reaching above my station, but then pretty much everything I have ever done has felt like that. As long as I can remember my mother has called me “Champagne,” and talked about how I have champagne-taste on a beer budget. She’s even gone so far as to make the overt comparison that I am champagne and she is beer.  So, I guess I come by this disconnected, over-reaching feeling honestly.  It shouldn’t surprise me that — despite the fact that my parents have both been managers/leaders of a sort — head housekeeper, lead mechanic, bar manager, shop foreman, — sitting in a management class learning about leadership feels a little strange.

Now, having stepped out of that comfort zone and admitted that I am leading people — and that I want to develop that skill — every part of this class that will push me is just that much farther away from safety/comfort. In fact, one  of the first things we have to do is giving me hives just thinking about it. Sometime in the next week or two I have to send an email to my bosses, peers, and employees, and anyone else I can think of asking them to complete a review of me. Their review is completely confidential. The facilitators of the program gather the responses and compile them into a report that I will go over with my leadership coach. Sure, I understand how this information is necessary and will help me, but I am quite afraid to hear what other people think of me.

Vulnerable sounds like just about the right word for how I will be feeling all semester.

First let me state, the WordPress app is not on my happy list today.  As I sat at Panera this morning drinking my coffee, I wrote a nice long post that disappeared into the ether as soon as I hit publish.  Really, it’s not even in my drafts anymore.  Thinking about it, though, you – Dear Reader – are perhaps okay with this disappearance. While not a horrible post, I’m not sure how exciting it was.  I didn’t even have any good dog pictures at the bottom to reward you for slogging through it all. Don’t get your hopes up, this post won’t be too exciting either, but I’m hoping it will at least be useful.

Choosing Visibility and Vulnerability as my words for this year wasn’t exactly a random choice.  I have known since the middle of last semester that this year I would be participating in a Performance Leadership class this semester.  The class meets every other Wednesday between now and June, and our first meeting was this week. This class is already pushing at me and my boundaries, and being really useful. Our first group project was part art/part confessional (in a good way).

Our first class activity was designed to get introduce us to each other. Generally, I am not one for these kind of ice-breaker/introductory activities, but I thought this one finally felt useful.

So great, in fact that I actually modified it for my beginning of the semester undergraduate writing center staff meeting.

The challenge for me (and the staff) this semester is making sure that the new people easily integrate into the center staff. Most of the time I do just hire 2-3 people at a time, but last semester was a little freakish.  There was almost a complete turn-over in the staff. I had to hire 10 people. It was great because they bonded during their training class, but has the potential to be not-so-great for the new people this semester.  To help ameliorate this process I decided to adapt this activity from the Performance Leadership class into our training. I did this new version again with them.

First they had to draw a badge like this:

One this badge they had to put: Three Values, Three Hobbies, and Three Strengths. The tricky part is that no words are allowed, only pictures. Once all the pictures have been drawn each person stands up in front of the group and tells the story of their badge.  Here’s mine (Remember the DH is the artist in this family.):

Yes, it is terrible.  I’m pretty sure my 2 1/2year old niece can draw better than I can. I don’t have it with me or I would show you my actual badge from the PL class. It’s even *better*.  In addition to not being able to draw, I apparently have no sense of space and proportion either. But, here’s my story. My values are hospitality (the person at the door waving people in), justice/fairness, diversity/family (all the people are the same, not a good representation of diversity, but there were limited markers.) My hobbies include walking/playing with the dogs — yes, those are supposed to be dogs. Watching TV, which is represented by the gladiator in the red suit. Also, I think you can see the crocheting yarn & hook.  My strengths, I think, are listening — you try to draw an ear. Being friendly … okay so normally I do smiles a little better, and the light bulb is to represent helping other people figure our their ideas.

The fun part of this activity is that a lot of people might list the same values/strengths, but they all represent them and talk about them differently. For each person we talked about how their values and strengths could work well for them in the writing center. I had fun and it felt like everyone else did as well. I suppose I will only figure out over the course of the semester how well it helped the new consultants fit in with the existing staff, but I think it was worth while after all.

In an event worthy of a national holiday, today I left the house and met new people. Dr. Cheese is in the ‘boro for the holidays to see his family and came east today to see friends, so I tagged a long in order to spend some time with him. There was so much good food, and a ton of kids. Fun times! Since I already have two social engagements for this weekend: book club Friday night and coffee with the Anthropologist on Saturday, I think I can safely declare my hermit phase over. For someone who was known as a ‘social butterfly’ in high school, my lack of social life here in the Bull City has been trying at times.

While I am not really a resolution person, I have found over the past couple of years that it is helpful to have a slogan for the year. In the past I’ve focused on things like confidence, listening. Basically, I just pick a word to use a benchmark for my decisions and actions. Typically, this is something I do mostly at work, but this year I’ve chosen two interconnected words that I think will have an impact in every part of my life. This is the year of Visibility and Vulnerability. I don’t know exactly what it all means yet, but I know it will be a challenge to make myself open up this year.

Not much of a post tonight, but at least I started out the year with writing!

Well, I made it through all the October deadlines. Of course, there is a whole new crop of November deadlines to face. At least in November the writing community becomes a little more visible with all the [fill-in-the-blank]WriMos going on. Yes, I did in fact join the Aciwrimo (academic writing month). I put my name in the spreadsheet and everything. I needed a writing kick-in the butt, plus some accountability, so it seemed like perfect timing. Also, the Cajun Princess and I have to write a book chapter this month, which is very good news that makes me nervous. The two things I discovered during the dissertation process is that I like accountability and I like to talk about my writing, especially when I’m making progress. While I’m fairly certain that you, dear reader, probably wish I’d skipped that discovery, talking about my writing helps me to work through blocks and to stay motivated when I’m on a streak. I am sure you can see why all this WriMo stuff appeals to me.

Despite my late freshman English’s teacher’s best efforts to turn us all into positive thinking goal setters, I’ve never been much of a goal setter, and even less of a goal keeper. I’m hard wired to let myself off a little too easily and to adapt and just go with the flow instead of sticking to a set path, so I let life take me where it will. All in all I like that about myself. My adaptability has certainly been my strength at nearly every job I’ve had because I’m used to figuring out how to make something work. One of the good/hard things for me about AciWriMo was figuring out how to set a goal for myself. Writing goals are malleable and nebulous, would I:

Write everyday, or just 5 days a week?
Write for a certain amount of time? How would I count that time?
Write a certain amount of words per day, per week, per month?
What types of writing would count? (Does a blog post count for “Academic” writing month?)
Finishing a certain project?

You get the picture. Certainly the book chapter is my focus this month, but that is far from my only writing task. There are still conference CFP’s, article reviews, job letters and essays (Different post, but yeah one school assigned a 2 page essay?!), and definitely at least five things I’ve forgotten to list here. Since I have so many different projects on my plate right now, I decided to set a monthly word count goal. Keep in mind that the AciWriMo organizers encourage setting a goal that is just a little bit crazy in order to push yourself a little to meet it, and naturally they encouraged sharing that goal publically.
My writing goal for November is 12,000 words.
That might not sound like a lot, but it averages out to about 400 words a day. Looking back at my dissertation spreadsheet, I realized that during good writing streaks I averaged about 300 words a day, so I thought an extra 100 words was a good stretch. I will try to keep my writing about my writing to a minimum, but I think there will definitely be a few posts about what is/is not working for me. However, there are also some fun posts coming up too. I have some pictures to share, and some thoughts about the current crop of strong girls (Katniss & Tris) in YA fiction.

Also, blog posts definitely count! 😉
I finally got a good picture of what it is like when I sit at my writing desk.