Actual Footage Of Me Trying To Keep Up With the Crazy - Not Doing a Good Job

Up at 6 a.m. and immediately getting into emails when I receive two that name two reports are due last night by midnight. I tried.

I failed.

I got extensions.

I am feeling the fact that I no longer have an administrative assistant and I can't keep up. I love writing grants and am more thrilled when I get them. These grants, however, require data collection and submissions, which means I need the cooperation of the University, as well as support staff to make it all happen. Of course, this year the University went to a new accounting system, Workday, and we're still trying to get people and companies paid for July and August work. It's been insane.

I want to do my part and be able to get my reports done on time and professionally, but I also teach, do professional development in K-12 schools, and am planning for National conferences where I'm bringing 9 teacher leaders with me.

Don't get me started on deadlines for publication.

I remember when doing my doctorate, my cohorts in crime used to say, "We're spinning the plates as fast as we can while roller skating on ice and having rocks thrown at our head."

That's where I am this Friday morning. It will get done, but I am feeling like someone needs to make a meme of a man being buried under such rocks.

I get salvation, I suppose, because so many of my National Writing Project colleagues are doing the same - we're not only employees of the University, but we're responsible to the K-12 schools surrounding our institutions that includes their administrators, their bureaucracies, their youth communities, and their families. Those worlds don't necessarily jive well with he University world (even though both worlds are expecting more and more from their workers with less and less provided to them in support).

It will definitely be a laptop kind of weekend. Thankful for a 5K run tomorrow morning, though.

Otherwise, it's the image above. Non-stop from sunrise to sundown (and then some).