I've decided that more than likely after I graduate, depending on what I do next, I'm probably going to shut this blog down. I'd like to take some of the stories here and elaborate upon them for my next book, which would be a memoir of graduate school (of sorts, anyway). As some of you know, I already have one book which I sold for a short while on Amazon's Kindle service, but removed because the file formatting was corrupted badly in the transfer from my manuscript to the Kindle format. That book, in case you didn't know, was a collected and edited version of the 1.0 version of this blog (which is why it's 2.0 now, in case you didn't notice that) about my time as a grocery store worker -- the genesis of this blog's existence in the first place. The manuscript of that book is about 500 pages, and looks beautiful in PDF, but still needs to be edited once or twice more to get it "right."
Of course, I'll also be collecting/writing more poetry in the meanwhile as well, in order to put together another volume or two of that.
This doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing online, of course; I'll probably find another outlet for my day-to-day life eventually, it just probably won't be here. But as I graduate soon and will have a lot of free time on my hands between then and post-graduate employment, a large amount of that time will be focused on refining and finishing a lot of the writing that I've meant to do for a long time, but has been sidetracked by work and school. Getting someone to publish any/all of it is another story altogether, but I'd at least like to have a body of work to draw from.
I haven't come to this decision lightly; while whether or not I'll continue to write here after graduation depends on a number of large factors, including whether I'll get to work somewhere which will allow this blog to continue as-is under its same themes, or whether I end up moving to Omaha or anywhere else in the foreseeable future. Right now, as you know, everything is up in the air; every day, someone asks me "so what are you doing after graduation?" and my answer is always "not a fucking clue." Because, really, that's the truth. I haven't a clue where I'll be or what I'll be doing a year from now -- hell, I couldn't even tell you where I'll be or what I'll be doing six months from now. All I can say is that unless something big pops up, more than likely I'll be here in Kansas throughout the end of the year, doing something. But even that's not guaranteed, only probable based on my finances and situation right now. For now, really all I'm doing is paying the bills and surviving, doing my day-to-day tasks involving my students and, when I can, I try to get enough sleep and decompression.
My decompression took another hit this afternoon as, once more, the drain in the basement overflowed for no goddamned reason. I ran a load of laundry -- I've ran no less than ten loads of laundry over the course of the past several weeks with no problems, actually -- and today when I washed three small towels from the cat room and the blanket that covers the couch in the living room, it overflowed. This is the only water I've ran in the house all day long, aside from flushing the toilet once or twice, and it wasn't a washer load even as large as many of the others I've ran over the course of the past two or three weeks. Also, since the ice storm on Tuesday, we've had no rain or other precipitation all week, so I don't know why it would back up. Regardless, this wastes a shitload more of my time this weekend, as I will now be forced to run at least another load or two of laundry to wash the towels I've dried the carpet with, which means I have to watch the washer/drain for the entire cycle. If it starts to overflow for the towels, I have to stop the washer over and over to let it recede before continuing to let it run and drain. I can't just let the soaked towels sit in the washer -- they're the only towels I have, and letting them sit there would make them mildew like crazy very quickly. This takes an incredible amount of time, and I have no idea why it's overflowing in the first place. Believe me, it's incredibly fucking frustrating. Obviously there's a lot of groundwater in the system, as evidenced by the fact that my grass has suddenly gone from brown and yellow (which it has been for the past two years due to the drought) back to vibrant green again. It doesn't matter; the drain thing is still a huge pain in the ass. If it were a simple clog, it wouldn't work at all, or it would be draining slowly all the time. There's no such thing as a clog that packs up shop and moves out only to move back in later. There's too much groundwater in the drain field somewhere, and nothing can be done about that, really except for to let it all drain out and dry up. What I'm worried about is what will happen if there comes a week or two where we get an inch or more of rain every day -- will it back up into the house without me running any water at all?
So there's that. Luckily it wasn't too bad today; six or seven bath towels placed strategically were able to soak up all of the overflow, and I've got the fan and dehumidifier on downstairs to get the rest of it and dry it out. I'll give it a few hours before I try to wash the towels, not just to see if they can soak up all they can but to let the water levels fall and drain as much as possible. Again, huge pain in the ass, folks, but one that is (mostly) manageable. Luckily, summer is coming up, and I do laundry like, twice a month in the summer because I no longer have to dress in layers and fill my hamper to overflowing every four days.
In other news, I graded around twenty papers last night, the first seven of which were rewrites and took considerably longer to go through. I have about thirty-five left -- most of my first class and all of my second -- and they're very good so far, for the most part. I should be able to finish them tonight once Daisy goes to work. It'll take some time, but as I told my friend Ryan last night when I had wrapped up my grading for the night, it's all I have left. Comps are over, thesis is done and the copies are at the library, and all I'm doing is taking care of student stuff for this last month of the semester. It's 9PM now; with any luck (and some great papers to breeze through) I will hopefully be done by 3AM. That's six hours of grading, and less time than I spent on the twenty or so I graded yesterday/last night. I'm pretty sure I can do it.
I don't really have plans for tomorrow; I would imagine that if I don't finish grading tonight, I will be doing that. I need to do a bunch of random little errands soon as well, such as go to the Dollar Tree and the discount grocery store, get more stamps, order another box of checks, get gas in the car, etc. If I'm energetic enough tomorrow, perhaps I'll take care of some of those little things.
No comments:
Post a Comment