The writing process

is not exactly pretty when it comes to my efforts. Its more like a rough draft followed by innumerable rewrites and edits. And my progress is made further with paper and pencil than with simple keyboard and screen display. Call me "Old School", but slow and steady finished the race, right? Well, that's what I tell myself in order to keep on going.

Evening's fuel

I still have plenty of work in front of me before I call it quits for the night. Yet, I am doing a happy dance because it is December and that means I get to enjoy a seasonal favorite - a cup of Comfort and Joy Tea. I have been sticking to my no sweetener rule successfully since May, but I might just cave with this tea. I think the sugar helps enhance the flavored holiday spices. Or I just might be craving candy and looking for a sugar rush to help get the paperwork done.

This is the season.....

"To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven"
Ecclesiastes 3:1

It's likely you've heard the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Byrds recorded in the 1960s if you are not directly familiar with the Bible verse itself. For me, its a verse that reminds me of the time I lived and worked in North Carolina at St. James UMC. Eight years ago tomorrow, I began my position as Minister of Adult Discipleship there. I am incredibly thankful to God for that 3 year season of my life and I am grateful for the chance to go back occasionally and visit those special people that touched my life and opened my heart and mind to new and creative possibilities in my life and ministry. However, it wasn't a 'fun' season of my life. I was homesick in ways that I never experienced in Kentucky during the previous four years while I was at seminary. I often wondered what God was doing to have me live there and experience the culture of Down East Carolina all by myself. I did sense it was a 'season' though. Ecclesiastes 3:1 was ever present when I packed my boxes and life and moved into a little townhome. Longtime friends, Nancy and Larry gave me this little wall hanging as a present and I kept it up year round in my kitchen of the little townhome I occupied while I lived there.
Since moving away, I keep the wall hanging with my autumn decorations and I've been reflecting on its significance and all it represents to me since I pulled it out of its box this weekend. There's often much I leave unsaid in my daily posts. That's one reason they are daily posts I suppose! I knew I was an easy candidate to become a 'lapsed blogger' so I resolved to keep it short and simple and use a photograph to help tell the story. The blog has become something I didn't expect and I am not sorry I began it last February. Reflective blog entries like this one are few and far between and mostly when I write about friends, family and special events or meaningful mementos like this one - and even though you might not believe it - there is a great deal of 'backstory' I edit out.
The blog helps me in my writing and that is a good thing since I am pretty much launching the beginnings of writing the proposal for my doctoral dissertation. The nascent ideas have been birthed and the research and readings have nurtured my thoughts, prayers and energies into forming a thesis statement that my adviser approved and encouraged me to pursue last week on my campus visit to Virginia. I am grateful to my family members who unwaveringly support this crazy lifestyle of a mid-life grad student and the friends who unquestionably offer me the use of their homes for overnight stays or for study space or unselfishly give me time to chat and talk when we catch up by phone as I drive hundreds of miles for meetings. I am awed by a congregation that has helped support me in my educational endeavors just because I am a candidate for ordained ministry who comes out of the Greenville District in Eastern North Carolina! Believe me, I wish this season of perpetual waiting for graduation and ordination were over. But I really don't know to what 'great thing' or ministry opportunities lie beyond these goals that God is yet preparing me for. I just know the task before me is writing this dissertation, in which education for discipleship is the key component (notice any themes connected to my larger life here? It's a shame I have to have credible viable published research here or I could write the dissertation before the month is out!).
I am looking forward to the time beyond, with a vocation that allows me to live in my own place. I wonder if I will hang this banner next year here at The Homestead or somewhere else and realize I can't even guess. What I do know, is that for this season of my life, it is fabulous that Mom and Dad are willing to share a space for me here at The Homestead. I am glad to get hugs and overnights with my niece and nephew and spend time with my brother and sister-in-law just hanging out occasionally and not just at family events and or at the holidays. It is a good season of my life and I am glad it does offer me a little fun on the side as well.

Call Numbers

I don't blog much about my thesis/dissertation and I can't decide if that is a good or a bad thing. Really it just is. Regardless, today I spent the day making a list of call numbers of books and texts that I want to check out of the school's library while I make a visit to campus this week. I've secured some texts through my alumni privileges here at local university and seminary libraries but these are texts I want for longer borrowing times which comes with my current student status. Also as a current doctoral student I can check out more books than most normal people ever even want to check out of the library. Yes, individuals at the upper end of graduate studies and beyond have personal neurosis that are intricately weird and defy explanation. Maybe that is a reason why I don't blog very much about my dissertation work.

The mobile drawer in my nomadic office

I have a new study space I will begin to occupy on Tuesday. My friend Cathy is letting me have a generous section of her home office for me to come use as a satellite office during the upcoming school year. Today I dropped by with some office supplies; pens, pencils, markers, highlighters, post it notes, paper clips, index cards and the like. While I was unpacking, I realized the box I've used to cart around my pads of paper and stacks of index cards has been on a 9 year journey with me. I have no recollection of what my small group pals Alicia and Kristen sent me to begin my last year of seminary on August 29, 2001 from S. Houston, Texas (they graduated the previous spring and sent me a care package) - but the box has functioned as a 'mobile drawer' in my nomadic office. It's traveled with me from Kentucky to New Jersey to North Carolina back to New Jersey then to Virginia and now back to New Jersey. I wonder if the shoes that originally occupied the box ever traveled the number of miles as their container - if they did, I'm betting the box has held up better is more functional for me than the feet that wore the shoes.

This will have to do.....

I intended to take a different picture today. There was a church in downtown Flemington that often has really, really, really cheesy church signs.What they had out yesterday when I drove by wasn't even cheesy, it was almost dumb - something about life being a constant choice between carrots and chocolate. I thought it might have had at least an iota of theological significance if I went back and read it correctly. Trouble was, the sign was changed by this afternoon and I was so mad I didn't bother taking a picture the averagely cheesy saying it displayed on its marquee. So, plan B brings you a hastily shot still life of the centerpiece I created for my Environmental Science class this evening. It might be cheesy of me to bring centerpieces to class, but I like to provide different visuals that go with the evening's topic since I don't get to do bulletin boards. Let's see if you can guess what kind of natural resources we discussed this evening.

SeeSaw Week

I consider this week - the last days of August and the first days of September - to be a seesaw week. It's a moment that waits on the threshold marking time like no other week of the year. The week before Labor Day is the time of anticipating the school year ahead but still wanting to hold onto more summer vacation. I know several friends in other states have been back to school for a few weeks now, but New Jersey schools traditionally start just after Labor Day and since every college and seminary I've attended does as well, the last waning days of August have always had a bittersweet quality in my eyes. I look forward to cooler days and nights ahead (we are back in the 90s here in Jersey - ugh) but still want just a little more of the summer leisure. There is a genuine excitement about seeing friends, colleagues, and students again, but a desire to delay the inevitable schedule and rigor that comes with the school year.
And even though I've been teaching, tutoring, and reading on my research for my dissertation proposal all summer long, I still feel the same angst that I've always associated with August. I am not entering the traditional classroom in the next few days, but I am looking forward to the opportunities to delve back into my studies with renewed vigor, and yet I remain a little wistful that I didn't eek out more of summer's sweetness. I hang in the liminal or 'in-between-place' of wanting to get out of the rut I've made for myself during the hot humid days and finding a groove of motivation and productivity. I anticipate good things for September 2010 with some travel for both school and church. Frustratingly, August 2010 has not been the most stellar month insome respects (namely training to run the 5K) so I am looking for the upswing that comes with the seesaw moment, hoping to push past where I've been to see higher and farther than I have recently.

Art on the Wall

I have no idea what these reliefs are copied from

but each week they intrigue me hanging on the walls

of the conference room in which I teach.

f(x) = this!

My summer tutoring gig is backed by the fact that I once spent 10 years in public school teaching chemistry and physics. That means I can interpret coordinate plane graphs, find the slope of a line, as well as calculate the relation of linear equalities and inequalities. Thanks to a statistics course I took to count as a research language for my PhD, I can even do some standard deviation problems. Having the skills does not necessarily mean I enjoy doing the math - but I can't complain about the pretty penny summer tutoring offers me.

Oh, and lest you think I am being vulgar, the title of this entry simply means the function of x is this!

Feels like a Friday!

It's almost just like I pictured and anticipated it yesterday! I had a busy day running around the district, handing in books, grade sheets, and had sessions with two separate students. At about 3:30 I turned in my time sheet to the Director of Student Services, and I was done, done, done with the 2009-10 school year!
I drove back to The Homestead, fixed myself a cool adult beverage to enjoy on the porch, grabbed my camera, book, and to-do list and sat down with my feet resting up on my Pilates ball. It isn't like I have absolutely nothing to do - I need to read for a Bible study I am attending this evening, get this blog entry done, and organize the to-do list with things about going to libraries, retrieving books to read for my dissertation, projects I hope to get done, and then go back inside and deal with some emails about summer tutoring and adjunct teaching I will be doing after the 4th of July.
But for right now, these couple of hours, I am in the sacred moment of excitement that comes with both completion and anticipation. I do the happy dance that celebrates the high school graduation of two extraordinary young women I had the pleasure to work with the last several months. I revel in the knowledge that the last 10 months of my involvement in public education has come to a satisfying and temporary close for the summer hiatus. (It's been a hard year and a long one for those involved in public education here in New Jersey - but that is a story for another blog entry by someone else.) And I begin to make plans for the summer months hoping that the change of pace will restore my energy packs even as I set about goals I wish to accomplish.
Since kindergarten, I've only had three years where my life wasn't ruled by a school calendar. I think that qualifies me to reliably testify that regardless of the side of the desk one occupies, there is just nothing that feels like the last day of school. It is simply bliss.

One more get-up

In 24 hours, I don't know exactly what I will be doing, but right now, I imagine myself sitting on the porch and enjoying doing nothing. Tomorrow is the last day of school for Princeton Regional School District and I am looking forward to the change of pace that comes with the end of the school year and summertime. Actually, I will actually be doing some instruction for them this summer as well - but it won't be till after the 4th of July - and the hours will be greatly reduced which might be sad for my paycheck, but good for the research and reading that I have to do towards the dissertation I am trying to write.
The title of today's blog is courtesy my former colleague, Clare, who used to count down school days by the times we had to "get up and get going" to go to school. She believed that once you got up and got moving the day was downhill from there - which most people would believe is positive thinking - and it is - but then one reason so many of us like to have Clare as our friend is because she could manage to put a positive, perky spin on anything - just like her hero Pollyanna!

My trusty laptop

I haven't blogged much on my research and writing process except for the random passing comment recently. I am fast approaching a deadline at the end of the month (Friday) and pushing through to the end of this leg of the journey to hopefully continue onwards and upwards. Despite the fact that I was without students to tutor today or other responsibilities that vied for my attention and therefore left free to pursue necessary writing I was easily distracted. Without meaning to go there, I found myself off task constantly. I turned off my email so I wouldn't be tempted respond to a few items that came in, but found myself checking facebook and googling random items - like whenever I completed typing a coherent sentence fragment. By lunchtime I was far behind the pace I set for myself and knew it was time for drastic measures. So I went "old school" and grabbed my notes, a pad of paper (yellow b/c it coordinates with the topic in which I am currently immersed), a pencil, and my "other" laptop - the one that has no internet connection wireless or dial-up - and got some serious writing done in a room that had no computer to lure me back to the dark side. Happily, ideas formed coherent thoughts and complete sentences flowed from my pencil to the paper. Soon I had whole paragraphs and eventually I had pages of writing that helped me complete the draft I hoped for all along. During one of my stretching breaks near 5PM I took a picture of my little set-up and waited to upload it till now. Typing the notes into the computer took some measurable time this evening, but I was able to do some light revisions during the process. Sometimes it takes a change of pace or venue to get me back into the writing groove that often wants to elude me. Today, it was just a matter of getting back to basics and doing it "old school".