Oh man, am I looking forward to April! The semester ends this week, which means in April I will be free from classes, from marking, from extra reading. It means I can actually spend most of my days doing research! I am ridiculously excited about this, and plan on spending several good days in libraries, reading to my heart’s (and brain’s) content, faffing about doing some free-writing, producing another chapter, and getting PROPER sleep while doing it all! Yes!

Other fabulous reasons that I’m excited for April include that that my weekly country dance time will be full-on social dancing instead of classes. It’s also Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo’s sister project, which I am going to partake in very casually. I have a goal, though, and I’m hoping to fulfill it. But the emphasis is on casual. I need a month of chillness, and will not guilt myself if I don’t finish.

Also, near the end of April / beginning of May, some of my bellydance sisters are getting together for what we’re calling a mini-hafla: a close group of folks and uber-supportive ultra-chill environment where people can have a wee boogie, try out new solos, or give their first try at an improv or choreo.

April also means that I’m not too far from heading home for summer. It won’t be a proper holiday, as I need to do research, reading, and writing while I’m home. Plus, I plan on picking up my dance sword (SQUEE!!) and practicing on my parents’ lawn. And making my mum my yoga-buddy, as she’s recently discovered yoga and quite likes it!

However, what does April really mean? It means reprioritizing. I have far too much going on in my life, and though some responsibilities will be over (forever—thank goodness!), there’s ones waiting for me in September, when the new academic year begins. Certain things I simply CAN’T give up, like my academics (duh), my teaching (duh times 2), other academic duties (they need doing and I need the experience), and bellydance (one of the few things that’s keeping me sane—and anyway, I’m fully addicted at this point). Other things won’t be given up because they’re not time-sucks. For example, knitting/crochet/drawing all fill up empty bits of time instead of taking it over, as long as I don’t commit to any large projects with deadlines—and at this point, I refuse to. I’ll finish my mum’s nativity, and after that it’s slow going only. But there’s other things that I’m committed to that are time-sucks and that I’m just not feeling that passionate about, and haven’t been feeling it for a while. So, I’ll be sorting through life-bits in April—putting the better and different parts of things on “shuffle”, as it were—and figuring out where importance truly lies.

Summer’s for reprioritizing. In summer, we shall see. By autumn, we shall know.

Tags: academic,bellydance,folk dance,life,NaNoWriMo,Script Frenzy
Categories: Academia, Arts
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…as much as that sounds like fun. Rather, I’ve just been ULTRA MEGA UBER BUSY (EXTREME!!!), and thus have not had much time to think on the arts OR academia. For those curious, the latter is keeping me the busiest, but the former has, in fact, been getting some attention despite the academic madness in my life.

So this is just a quick note. As it’s never too early to start thinking about NaNoWriMo, which I will of course be blogging about, I have been thinking on a naming scheme for secondary and tertiary characters. I’m trying to decide on alphabetical (Amos nodded at Beatrice, who blushed and looked away. But Carter could see her rosy cheeks clearly, and new he’d have to tell Dana all about it in the evening…) or most-recent-name from the Spam filter (I’d write a sample, but I thought of this right after I cleared out my Spam). Any thoughts or comments?

In other news, does anyone know how to do footnotes in WordPress?

Tags: NaNoWriMo,writing
Categories: creative writing, uncategorized
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