Hi all –
An update from sabbatical land ..
It’s been a productive sabbatical so far – 4 new works made for the “Sweet home …” show at Zephyr Gallery, much work on the Standardized Test for Congress, then a new 3D printed and digital projection work for the IUS faculty show (also showing my Standardized Test there), now starting a new work for a show that Ben Ahlvers curated me into at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, KS.
When I began my sabbatical, one of my (many) goals was to establish a daily or weekly routine that could allow me to maintain more contact with my research and creative activity as I moved back into teaching and my regular school activities. As those that have been in a tenure track teaching position can attest to, it’s not easy balancing all of the commitments one has at school with your research and other life commitments. To be honest, I’ve really struggled with that during the last few years and have consequently been a little out of touch with some of the ideas in my work lately.
Enter sabbatical. One of the really amazing things about sabbatical is that right now I can have the mind-space to establish that routine and figure out how to make new work in my new life. Things are different now. I have way more things on my plate, more responsibilities and commitments, and I think I may not have put enough emphasis on establishing a new routine for a new life. It’s as if I thought that the same routine would work for a much different way of living. Grad school days are WAY over (thankfully), but I can’t expect a routine that worked then, to work now. Or even a routine that worked when I taught at Baylor (when I had way less on my plate) to work now. So, new goal: find a new routine that works in my life as it is right now. Must be productive and proactive, but also balanced and reflective.
In my new bullet journal, I started a list called “Find routine”. One of the things on that list is doing a daily 20 minutes of distraction free (relatively for me) writing about some topic. This is the first day of that. I wanted to start doing this at the beginning of my sabbatical, but better to do it now than never, so here we go. That was 18 minutes .. now 2 minutes for proofreading. 🙂
Things are on the up.
Brian