January 06th, 2019

I don't really do resolutions. I do make plans, though, and I do a lot of reflection on the previous year. That's what I've spent the first few days of 2019 doing.

This morning, I dreamt that I was still at Auburn, but it was also USM and also UCA. As is typical of my college campus dreams, I couldn't find where the stairs started and it took me forever to get to the department office, where I was going to check my mailbox for the first time in a long time. By the time I got to the department, though, the door was locked. 

In the past, I've made it to the mailbox to find piles of things, a whole mail carrier bin full of books, notes, and other items left there by phantom students and colleagues. When I've made it to the mailbox in other dreams, I often find things like the coffee mug I had forever from some thrift shop visit. That mug is long gone, of course, replaced by a much newer thrift shop purchase. Of course, the one in the dream is the one that I used when I still taught on ground.

In the most recent version, I started popping my head in people's open office doors. I met up with an old undergrad and master's mentor from UCA who listened as I gave my plans for a couple of big projects  (one being my dissertation). He didn't seem to really hear me, just nodded and I moved on. Eventually, I found my way down to Scott's office and I woke up once I got there.

When I woke up, I knew what the dream meant (not hard to figure that one out), but I still took a few moments to think about what might have happened if I never left Auburn, specifically. Things would certainly be different, and I can't say there's any tiny piece of me that thinks I should have stayed. 

The same is true of leaving my last teaching job. Yesterday, we had lunch with Allison, whose fiancé is leaving teaching.  She wondered if he could find the right job if it would put everything right for him, or if he is simply too burnt out. For me, there's no question that it was time for me to quit teaching and move on to something else.  Even if I am still figuring out what constitutes the "something else."

Here's what that something else consisted of in 2018:

• I completely revised my fourth novel Elegant Freefall.  When I say completely, I am referring to changing major plot points and rewriting large pieces. The original draft that was just at 60K words was rewritten and close to 80K in final form. And, I met the deadlines for release with a cover that I still love.
• I had an essay in Winter 2018's issue of Physician Family, as well as a book review. I also had a book review in the Fall issue.  I lend a hand where needed and Donna Rovito started listing me as the blog co-editor at some point in the magazine, and I'm part of a fantastic group of admins on the PF Community on Facebook. Book reviews this year were of Love in the Time of Medical School by Sarah Epstein,  Healer's Heart by Pam Camosy, and Memoirs of a Surgeon's Wife by Megan Sharma.
• In the spring, Lara McElderry had me on her podcast, Married to Doctors. She's such a great interviewer and being on the show was a blast.
• I became the pool girl this year, rehabbing the pool after the pump repair, getting it clear, maintaining it all season. We hope to fill it in before it is hot enough to use in 2019, but I felt pretty good that I was able to care for it in 2018 and not have a pool service person in our backyard. Part of what I loved was being absolutely sure things were at the right levels, rather than just assuming the twice a month visits were keeping things balanced.
  
• This year, I planned ahead and ordered the supplies for Christmas gifts in plenty of time to get the projects completed, laundered, and wrapped a good week or so before I left for Rodgers' Farm. 
• I wrote a piece about walking with Reneé that might someday get picked up. If not, I'll eventually share it here. All that matters is that when she read it her feedback was "I love it." 
  
• The sort of follow up but before story to Elegant Freefall was my NanoWriMo project this year. I got about as far as I usually do, so that's a positive for me. My current process for novels seems to be to get 20K or so into the project and then having to stash it away for awhile and let the brain figure things out.
• One of Dr. Barron's students contacted me about my old article from The Yeats Elliot Review, and I was able to help her out with a scanned copy of the article. As far as I know YER is not currently in production, and with the costs of academic sources these days, this set me off pondering about how more folks need to be open to Open Access and projects like Creative Commons.
  
• Finally, I applied to and was granted admission to the National Coalition of Independent Scholars. 

So, not a bad year at all.  My plans are to continue to work with Physician Family, to continue to write and be involved with indie publishing, as well as to begin to pay more attention to my scholarly side. I suspect that some of my old websites will be coming down (or at the very least not upgraded or updated at all) and I'll start to focus more on some nonfiction projects.  Definite goals include:

• Finish the novel that's about 1/3rd drafted now.
• Work on more essays and short stories, perhaps for a collection.
  
• Begin to revise old non-fiction/academic stuff and granting access to it. This includes revising the dissertation in some way.
  
• Get started in some real way on Octave Thanet's critical biography or whatever it turns out to be.​