Busy busy busy

My intent with this blog is to post daily during the work week.  I've already missed yesterday, so intent has already lost out to reality.  Hopefully that happens infrequently at best.  And hopefully hope will not lose out to reality as quickly as intent did. 

So what makes my life so busy?  What makes anyone's life busy?  First and foremost for me is the inability to compartmentalize time.  This is a common feature of every person who is at least partially responsible for the care of young children.  The little buggers have boundary issues!  My one-year-old has the audacity to come up and hug my legs at the most innoportune times.  I'll be happily typing away on a project and she'll barge into the office, hug my leg, then throw her arms up in the air and give her standard "uh uh" when she wants to be held.  The nerve!  She knows beyond any doubt that I'm incapable of turning her down. 

The older kids are intrusive in less endearing ways.  Usually it's an escalating argument that is moments away from prematurely ending the aforementioned one-year-old's nap.  If not that, it's inevitably either a request for food or entertainment.  The food is rarely finished, but that's no indicator that their stomachs are full.  The request for more food is typically made before the already proffered food is stale, cold, or otherwise appreciably altered from the state in which it was first given.  How Sarah gets anything done at all is beyond me.

So what is it that I personally need to get done?  That usually comes down to school, therapy paperwork, teaching, or "the book".  The first three intermingle to the point that they are frequently indistinguishable.  But to offer satisfaction of any unlikely curiosity into my largely mundane lifestyle.  I'll elaborate somewhat.  This is what's new, or in the case of therapy paperwork, old.

School: I am currently working on my 'quals', short for 'qualification exam'. For the uninitiated, this technically means I am writing an 80-page paper (minus another twenty pages of references) that will officially "qualify" me as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree. Nontechnically, this means grad school is currently a soul-sucking hell that leaves my mind overly suspicious that it has been the victim of repeated academic date rapes - by a perp who's really good with roofies. I frequently wander the psych building halls feeling confused, vaguely violated and in need of a shower.


Teaching: I'm teaching the 'writing intensive' section of Abnormal Psychology this fall semester. Very little of what I've seen from teaching previous 'writing intensive' classes has made me think that basic literacy is a pre-req for college admission. I grade a lot of stuff that was perhaps produced intensively - but writing is not the proper word for the end result. Luckily I really enjoy teaching. Hopefully it will all balance out, because I certainly do not enjoy grading garbage.

Therapy paperwork:  I hate paperwork with a passion.  Progress notes, intake reports, communication logs, release of information forms, etc.  I hate paperwork!  And I don't even have to worry about billing, since my clients pay the clinic.  (Incidentally, I do too.  Not only do I not get paid to provide therapy for the masses, but I pay tuition to the school in order to be supervised as a therapist.)

The Book:  It's already become my worst kept secret that I've started writing a novel.  I might as well make it a non-secret.  I'm finishing the first chapter tonight hopefully.  The next few are already written.  I didn't want to tell anyone outside of my wife before I was sure that I was actually going to write it.  Well, now I'm sure. 

So that's the basics.  Any one of these things could potentially interfere with blogging.  But the most likely candidates are kids and the book.  Mostly because those are the two candidates that I most enjoy spending time on. 

Oh yeah, we won our indoor soccer game last night.  My toenail did not earn another stripe.