I wear far fewer hats than I generally wear, but I still have on quite a few. I’m a dad and under that are the subheaders: Track Coach, Football Coach. Neither subheaders are full time and are instead squeezed into the days where I have my kids and the days I don’t have them but there is a track meet somewhere out in the ether.
I am wearing the teacher hat. I should say professor, but I remain separate from any real sense of hierarchy there. I’m about the students and the teaching, so teacher it is. That piece takes up the most time, because grading sucks and is plentiful. That part of the job takes up so much of my time that I have been limited in how much new material I can produce. I long for a semester where I just build cool classes for students. In fact, I want to make a scaleable shell that easily and quickly allows me to put in new and current information/events in a modular fashion. I want to do that, but the when is a heavy question, because of another hat I wear.
I am a writer. I have reached the point where I’m putting down 1000 words a day as a bare minimum. I recently completed a dirty draft of a novella in 27 days. I call it dirty because it is little more than the bare bones work of the draft that needs the care and attention of a second run. I’ve already started that work and plan to complete that in the next 30 days. Then the final 30 is polish and print. Hopefully I can get it to my editor in a realistic time frame and then its out for the world to see.
Writer is the second most enjoyable role in my life. The first is being a partner to the future Mrs. Talislegger (proposal pending). I’ve been slacking in this one in many ways by letting the others get in the way and by being uncertain in my actions. That has to change. Happiness starts at home.