Still Afloat

Not much writing of late. Really, it's been a pretty normal, relatively boring little stretch. The most amusing thing? I went to see a musical. Not just that, I went to see a small-town musical production. Oklahoma - it's more than a state. I was actually really, really amused by the whole thing. I don't think that it was supposed to be as funny as I thought it was, though. But that's alright.

Overall, the summer's gone alright. I taught my first marketing course during Session I. It went reasonably well, and the students seemed to enjoy it, so that's a little notch on the belt. We resubmitted two journal articles, one of which should be accepted pretty quickly, and another which will probably get another round of revisions. In any case, it's good to have two more pieces turned around. But of course, it doesn't stop. By the end of the summer, there will probably be 2 more journal submissions out the door, as well as a conference submission. And we're supposed to get some data back that we've been waiting on for a couple years, so that means that the fall will have at least one paper. Eventually, that conference submission should become a journal submission, as well. So that probably means this fall, too. So, in total, we're looking at 2 articles under 2nd review, 2 articles under 1st review, and 2 articles ready to go out the door. Which makes for a nice little progression.

Now, the downside. I'm teaching this fall, so I won't have quite as much time as I'd like. But that should be pretty manageable. What I'm not liking is that my dissertation is nowhere near where it needs to be. I need to defend my proposal by the end of the fall semester, otherwise I'm getting yelled at by my advisor, my department head, and everyone else. I really need to get churning on the dissertation this summer so that I can have a reasonable expectation to defend in the fall. If I can pull that off, then I'm running experiments in the spring, and hitting the job market with a defended proposal, some data, and good looking portfolio. The problem is, if I don't pull it off, I'm a donkey.

Work stuff aside, I'm needing to get some rest mentally and get aggressive physically. Really, more than anything else, I think that my future success depends on building healthy physical habits. As I look back on the last 15 years of my life, when I'm physically good, everything else flows easily. When I'm not, everything's an uphill climb. I haven't slept well the last couple weeks, so I need to get that straightened out. And very related to that, I haven't lifted or played ball in a couple weeks, either. My knees were slowly getting better, so I was able to play basketball and not be in serious pain the next couple days, so things were promising. But being sluggish sort of puts a damper on things. In any case, I think that I can actually start doing some of the old agility drills, and try to get into shape. I used to have an attitude of being willing to outwork people (well, physically, anyway). I'm hoping to recapture that. Let's see if I can make it happen.

-Chairman