Not Teaching: Week 0

I am taking a year off of teaching. School ended on Thursday with Commencement. In a sense, I now have over 52 weeks to figure out what’s happening next. That hasn’t sunk in yet. The compliments for my ability to read names from Thursday is still sinking in; one student also gave me a very nice set of chopsticks.

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Here’s one of my main worries going forwards. After 5 years of personifying math and 40 weeks of fiction writing, my blog stats are ABYSMAL. (Personified math might reach 70 views on average for a post, for the fiction it’s more like 10.) The lack of an audience gets to me. Except when I’m busy teaching, there’s no time to dwell on it.

Now that I have all this time, will it lead to being even more depressed about my lack of ability to entertain people? Will I even have the motivation to continue, since (true or not) it feels like there’s no one out there saying, “I would miss the story if it vanished!”. Or will I somehow be able to use the time to find an audience? Well, there is a still bunch of stuff on the “To Do” list below, which needs handling first.

Item counts run Sunday (June 26) to Saturday (July 2).

Step Count: About 60,150.
Much better. Walking around on Canada Day helped. Also being over 7,000 steps every day except for last Sunday. Not sure where this will go in the next month.

Desk at Work on Tuesday.
(Forgot to take a pic Thursday.)

At this point, the “Teaching Related Items” occurred during the regular school day (aside from finishing exams) thanks to the extra exam day in June. But I stayed late Wednesday to clean up more of my desk, so maybe there’s balance.

Teaching Related Items (from Sun to Sat):
 -Finished grading the last set of exams (Sunday)
 -Three class sets of report card comments
 -Three class sets of report card learning strategies

Desk at Home: Also tidied up

I cleaned up the desk area. The clock on top is now functional. I put up a new wall scroll... it’s a contrast to the one on the left, in that the new pose looks painful, and I shouldn’t draw that way.

Writing/Art Related Items (from Sun to Sat):
 -Finished drawing/inking a math comic by Monday; scripted the next
 -Updated my Twitter Profile graphic (and Facebook to match)
 -Final edits then queued up next “T&T” post (3.02)
 -Wrote most of the next “Behind the Scenes Commentary” for T&T
 -This post. Written mostly in the living room

Other items (not teaching or writing) for the past week:
 -Housework (mowed lawn, yay)
 -Dropped by the “Garden Party” for the grads
 -Math/Music department barbecue get-together
 -Canada Day with relatives (plus bonus football match)
 -Read some of the comics found while tidying, incl. “Free Comic Book Day” & “Back To The Future”. In fact I discovered I bought some duplicate BTTF (2 & 3) at different times. Oops.

MUST DO items in the coming week:
 -Finish drawing/inking a math comic by Monday
 -Queue up next “Time & Tied” posts by Friday
 -Sign up for a summer yoga or fitness class
 -Doctor’s Appointment Tuesday

You claim I can relax now?

WOULD BE NICE items:
 -Catch up with #OttSlowChat on Twitter
 -Recreate a buffer for my math comic
 -Post about Cubic Formula oddities
 -Create video for Cubic Formula song
 -Organize all the paper clutter from school (*New)
 -Organize all the electronic clutter from school (*New)
 -Weed through/organize personal email (*New)
 

Picture I took on July 1/16

-Post recap about OAME (from May)
 -Post recap about Math PD (from Feb)
 -See about getting a roofer for reshingling
 -Catch up with web serials I’ve enjoyed
 -Write a TANDQ article on Decision Fatigue
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement (*New)
 -Post recap about CAN-CON (from Oct)
 -Do some editing on my T&T story
 -Actually market some of my creative stuff
 -Catch up on “Sailor Moon Crystal” (no spoilers!)
 -Catch up on “Bones” (no spoilers!)
 -Get back onto tumblr
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk

And that’s where I’m at, at the end of the 2015-16 school year and the start of July. Come back next week to see what got done?

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