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What Jane Has Been Up To:
Highlights of Jan.-Mar., 2010
Click here for all blog links
Follow Jane on Twitter!
Requiem for a friend (full article)
2010 Blog: January through March, April through Sept., Sept. through December
2009 Blog: January through April, May through Dec
Mar. 19, 2010
Being the void
Decided to get the foot checked out. Just in case. Saw the x-rays yesterday, including this little piece of bone that pulled off the lateral malleolus (new word for the day: refers to the little bump of bone on the outside of my right ankle). Kind of explains the PAIN!! Yikes.
There’s still some swelling and I have to wear this stupid compression boot, but my main concern is my upcoming vacation! We leave for Quito and the Galapagos five weeks from today. My homeopath and acupuncturist assures me it will be much healed by then. (I’ve got my whole alternative-medicine pit crew on this!)
Not doing much right now. I’ve been on the couch with my legs up, mostly answering email or reading, trying to work up the motivation to create some new handouts for an upcoming job.
And that sense of limbo continues. I’m still waiting for confirmation on about a half dozen jobs right now. I hate being in this holding pattern, but this is where I am right now, my leg in this boot thing being what? A reminder? A metaphor? A pressure valve for something that could have been worse? (I’m stretching here.) Or just a dumb inconvenience?
I have stuff I can do sitting down but somehow this whole thing has just killed any ambitions I’ve had. How weird!
Mar. 16, 2010
Working the void
Let’s see... for the past six weeks or so, I’ve found myself using expressions like “coming up for air” and “catching my breath” an awful lot. There have been many times during which I’ve felt like I was moving in slow motion, if I was moving at all.
Actually, this is a nice and badly-needed change of pace for me. I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life running. Going slowly feels unnatural, if enjoyable at times, while at other times, I feel like what I’m doing is tedious, mechanical, and boring—necessary though it may well be.
Taking a couple extra days to visit my cousin in South Carolina after the Savannah job was healing and restful. Lunch with friends I haven’t seen in a while or taking time to read for pleasure or watch a movie during the day has been restorative.
But I’ve also spent days at my desk going through papers and receipts and tax stuff and files. Last week I found an invitation to a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah that I never answered. It was for September 2008! So at times I’ve felt crazy and out of control, but I’m also finally getting around to some stuff I’ve been trying to get around to for years, from tracking down assets and financial information to cleaning out files and reorganizing tons of electronic and material stuff!!
I continue to get book-related tasks. As “finished” as I thought I was, I’d forgotten about checking the index (which needs to be sent back in the next 24 hours) or coming up with a dedication (which I want to include but totally spaced out). I believe I’ll be getting one more email attachment to check, the final layout before we go to print. Not so much fine-checking as much as just looking at overall layout, but still...
Work: Inquiries coming in, scattered and slowly, several looking pretty definite, one recently confirmed. Another place in my life where things feel bogged down or stuck at times, but I’ve got enough on the books for now and my sense is that things are starting to open up a bit.
I’m also starting to realize that I may not need to be working quite as hard or as much as I have been throughout my career, and that fact seems to present all sorts of possibilities! It’s early yet, and the picture is still a bit fuzzy (in transition?), so stay tuned.
In the meantime, it feels very important to me to be getting rid of the clutter in my life, as I have been these past few weeks, rearranging spaces and furniture and storage, going through piles and boxes that have accumulated, putting things away, and tossing, recycling, or donating anything—electronics, books, dog stuff, clothing, household, crafts stuff, or anything else that just doesn’t fit in my life, my work, or my available storage at this moment.
I’m OK. Feeling very transitional some days, very much in limbo on others. And as if to make the point, two days ago, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend came into town to pick up a new puppy they had flown in from the west coast. Jerry and I were walking across the parking lot of the cargo place and when I heard the puppy cry from her crate, turned my head and twisted my ankle stepping into a hole in the pavement. Went down hard, skinned my knee and both palms, and wrenched my ankle and wrist.
The puppy is totally adorable—click here for a very short early attempt at using my iPhone’s video app to see Jerry bonding with this sweet, little thing. I’m finding, somewhat to my surprise, to be satisfied getting my critter fix from other people’s pets, at least for now.
I’ve been pretty much laid up since. Went in for x-rays today. Though it doesn’t feel like anything beyond a couple bad sprains, we’ve got the Galapagos coming up next month and I don’t want to be limited to the kind or amount of walking or hiking we were planning to do, so I thought I’d check. I should hear something in the next day or two and will update accordingly if need be.
Daylight Savings time has me off as well. I just realized that it’s after midnight, so I’m gonna sign off on this long ramble. (Lots of words to say not much happening right now! Hahaha...)
Feb. 6, 2010
Another chapter closes
This has really been quite the month. In the past two and a half weeks, I finished a grueling writing project that had occupied so much of my life, time and energy for the past two years. (I get to look over one last time before it goes to print.) In addition, the loss of our dear friend Shadow (below), ended nearly thirty years of dog ownership (at least for the time being). And yesterday, after eleven years of working with the Bureau of Education and Research, I wrapped up my last seminar for them in Chicago.
Like a lot of other people, I got caught up in the weather delays that’s hit the mid-Atlantic area so hard. I did make it out of Chicago, but only as far as Atlanta. Rebooked my flight for today (I’m on the plane now as I type this) and a hotel while there were still some rooms left. Got in late but slept like a log, which I desperately needed.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve used the word “exhausted” in the past few months, and I think as time goes on a bit, I’ll have a better sense of just how far beyond the physical this adjective can go.
Of course I still have my business and the private jobs I’ve been booking as an independent contractactor for the past 26 years, but at the moment, the sands are shifting and I’m not sure exactly what I’ve got under my feet.
I’ve never had a great relationship (or much patience) with what I call “the void,” though I retain a great respect for it, and for the potential it holds. I think I’m just too tired to get excited (or frightened) about not knowing where I’m going, whether the demand for whatever gifts I have to offer will hold up, or what in the world the Universe wants of me now.
I’m not complaining. Really. I think I’ve got enough work on the books for the next few months and in the meantime, I need a bit of a break and some time to recover and recharge. I’ve been looking forward to cleaning and reorganizing my office, my closets, my files, my stuff. Stepping back and taking a look at my work and my life.
Where I’d like to be heading? I’ve been thinking about this and I absolutely would love to continue doing the trainings and presentations for educators and parents (and anyone, for that matter, who lives or works with kids). I don’t know that I need as much work as I’ve wanted in the past, but I like the idea of some good jobs, interesting jobs, perhaps more international work.
So I’m putting that out there, and in the meantime, just hanging out in the void (or maybe it’s just a transition), taking care of commitments I currently have, and leaving the door open, with an open invitation to something good. Better. Next.
Jan. 21, 2010
Requiem for a friend
We had to say goodbye to an old friend two days ago. I started writing about it here and just kept going, clearly processing what was a painful (if absolutely appropriate) decision. I decided to create a separate page for the photos and this special entry about a very special friend. To see more, click here or on the photo.
Happy (or at least Timely) Endings
I mentioned in my last entry that I’ve spent the past two months also dealing with editorial demands for the new book, Becoming a Win-Win Teacher. This part of the process involved not only reviewing edits and answering questions regarding the material I’d written during the past year but also updating information on the hundreds of resources and endnotes and—something I didn’t know I’d need when I started this project—writing for permission to use the majority of the stand-alone quotes I have introducing each chapter.
This is a tedious process, finding and tracking down the copyright holder, requesting permission (and explaining what it’s for), following up as needed, and making and forwarding copies of responses. Then it turns out that a bunch of quotes I thought were OK actually needed permission and I didn’t find out about any of this until hours before it was due—in an email I received in the airport in Atlanta as I’m about to pick up my car to drive the hundred miles to my hotel in Columbus.
Let’s skip over the details of my stressed-out response or the time I spent over the weekend splitting my time between the dog and the computer and get to the good part which is, at least according to our last correspondence, that all the necessary permissions are in and the manuscript has cleared legal for typesetting.
I’m home for another week and grateful for the break in traveling, not just to collect myself emotionally, but to go through the piles, pack up the stuff that’s officially done, and move on with my life, whatever that looks like or means.
My next trip out will be my last for BER (Bureau of Education and Research). I’ve had a great run with them, starting in 1999, I believe, and now it’s just feeling like I need a break, especially from the five-cities-in-five-days routine. I know that there are many people who thrive on the repetition, but I’ve never managed to really grasp the rhythm of doing the same presentation and then having to travel to another city and set up to do it again, especially if it meant flying in between, and often getting in late. I always thought I would, but it’s gotten harder and harder each year.
So I’ve got five days all over Illinois, starting and ending in different parts of Chicago, and then another chapter closes.
I’m not in a big hurry to start in on another big project, and in fact, hope to squeeze in some time off or time to play (including any work I leisurely do on work-related ideas I might pursue). Maybe no deadlines for a while.
I’m inviting fun, creative, interesting, and lucrative stuff into my life and creating the vacuum to allow this to happen. A little scary right now, though I’m curious to see what this space may attract.
Jan. 14, 2010
Leveled off at 34,000 feet
Heading toward Atlanta where I pick up a rental car and drive a couple of hours to my hotel in Columbus, GA. This is my second job of the year so far, with a quick trip to an elementary school in Anniston, AL to kick off the semester right after New Year’s.
I’m starting to feel as if more than this airplane is leveling off. After close to two intense years of working on Becoming a Win-Win Teacher, the book is now into the next stage of production.
From copy editor to proofreader
I’ve spent the past two months passing chapters back and forth with the copy editor, watching nearly all of my commas and hyphens disappear, occasionally arguing for the apparent misuse of words like “hopefully” and “additionally,” and thanking God (and Corwin, and the editor herself) for the more significant errors she caught and corrected.
This in itself has been a pretty intense process and I found myself dropping whatever else I was trying to do (mostly catch up on everything I’ve been ignoring while I was writing this book) to read and respond to questions, changes, suggestions, and revisions.
The only part that felt kind of excruciatingly tedious involved questions about references I used. At the time I was working on the book and collecting materials and interviews and survey responses, I was unaware that I would be asked for the paragraph number of an online article or for the date I retrieved a fact or item online.
Even my dissertation committee was satisfied with the amount of information I included in my endnotes and bibliography—the last time, by the way, that I used APA style for formatting (which I was unaware that the publisher wanted to use for this particular book as my others stuck with Chicago style) and long before the Internet posed some of the challenges it currently does. (Hey, where’d that URL go? It was here YESTERDAY!)
So I’m real glad to be done with that phase. There are still stages of the editorial process to which I will be called for input, feedback, and answers, but for now, the big guns are put away—along with my files, copies of the articles I used, copies of contributors’ input, copies of permission forms, and everything I’ve got on disk.
In the meantime, here’s a preview of the cover (above) and a link to the page in the bookstore describing the book.
A long day ahead
We’re starting our descent into Atlanta. I still have the traveler’s checklist ahead: Pick up luggage, get the rental car, get the address and map into my iPhone, and head about 100 miles down the road to my hotel so I can get ready for my keynote and two sessions at the Muscogee County Parent University tomorrow morning.
Something to look forward to
I just found out about another MacMania “Geek Cruise,” number 11 to be exact and leaving on Feb. 4, 2011 from Buenos Aires, around the horn to Santiago Chile, with various stops along the way. Still waiting for details about an excursion to Antarctica, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, click here to see the itinerary and map of where we’re going.
From the hotel
It’s several hours later and tired as I am, it’s hard to convince my body that it’s not 9:15 pm (which it is back home) so I can fall asleep right now, which I need to do.
2010 Blog: January through March, April through Sept., Sept. through December
2009 Blog: January through April, May through Dec
Other “Highlights” pages: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. For an index to all blogs, photos, and other personal information, click here.
Jane’s current Blog.
About Jane home page (bio, intro, other professional information).
Direct links to free stuff on this site:
articles and excerpts • handouts • materials in Spanish and French • videos and podcasts • links to other sites and resources • ideas, tips, and experiences of other educators
My Calendar
Click here (or on the image to the left) to see my schedule. Click here for a map with links to dates that I will be in your area.
