Technical and emotional difficulties

Hey folks. I am sorry for not having updated in a bit, but first I was on vacation (it rocked--more posts about that soon), and then my laptop broke. Seriously--it's in critical condition. A repair guy picked it up today and said they should get back to me with some diagnostic info by Friday afternoon or Monday. The worst part is that I spent a large part of my vacation finishing my syllabi and other documents for next semester and didn't save them to my USB drive yet. (Stupid, I know).

And to make matters worse, just now I double-checked my book order for my ENG 101 classes--after I was told that the "standard department books" had been ordered for my class and that I could find all the relevant information on the department's website. So I plan two ENTIRE syllabi around THOSE books and now see that they've ordered a different book. I need to get to the bottom of that ASAP, but there isn't much I can do about it at 7:00 p.m. except sit on the verge of a breakdown. I mean, the semester starts soon and I thought I was done with these damn things. Ugh.

Plus, now that this vacation is over, I am finally feeling like I am here in my new home for real and to stay. I know that might sound crazy since I've been here since July 13, but all that time, this vacation was in the future and because I was going with a Greensboro friend and meeting up with another Greensboro friend while there, and because I was looking forward to it, I hadn't really felt totally "here" in West Virginia yet.

I am not sure if that makes sense, so I'll try to explain. Since the move, because I was waiting for this trip, I still felt connected to my Greensboro home and friends, who were only 3.5 hours away when I lived in Richmond so never really all that far. Plus, I had Shannon and Mike in Richmond, so I always had a couple of friendly faces there. Don't get me wrong--being here is great for so many reasons: a cool new job, fun new courses to teach, people to meet, but it's also very hard (especially for me) to start all over again in a new place.

But on the bright side of things, you can look for upcoming posts on the Cape Cod trip and on my new office here at Shepherd, into which I am finally settling (there's a reason for the delay--one both funny and gross).

So to recap: vacation=awesome, computer=broken, syllabi=possibly lost and possibly very wrong anyway, blog=full of potential potential posts, me=sad, frustrated, and a bit lonely. Moving and growing up is hard.

The Dangers of Revealing Yourself to be a Blogger

Vogel: “Blogging is Heidi’s new pastime. That and depression.” With friends like this…blah, blah, blah.

Here we go...

I've been thinking about this blogging thing for a long time now. So why start? Well, here's a simple reason: my friends Heather and Burt started a blog for their baby (due any day now), and in order to post a comment, I had to sign up for my own blog.

But the other reason is entirely self-serving: I think I am at a place of transition in my life. Big changes and all that. And it feels right to document it (for me more than anyone else--believe me, I know I am not all that interesting to others) in order to better understand it all--in order to be a better person. Yes, the writing teacher in me really does believe that good reading and careful writing can make you a better person. So here we go. I want to start kind of small, though, with a bit of "Where I've Been" and "Where I'm Going."

Where I came from:
Rocky Point, NY (birth to age 17, 1977-1995)
Roanoke College (undergrad, 1995-1999)
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (MA and PhD and a lectureship, 1999-2006)
The University of Richmond (a one-year visiting position, 2006-2007)

Where I am going:
Shepherd University (a tenure-track position in the Department of English and Modern Languages)