This blog will keep track of my efforts and progress (and side tracks and meanderings) towards finding my post-doctoral berth. It's hard to know what to do and where to go. So I spend a lot of time NOT doing anything and not going anywhere.
Let me clarify. I am busy. It's just that I am not making myself busy MAKING something happen. I am trying, hard, to sit with my accomplishments and to sit with who I have become in this life, and allowing the next step to present itself.
Case in point. I applied for a job with a local school district. This job felt like it was made for me. Instructional Coach, working with teachers to help them identify areas for improvement and then help them do so through coaching, teaching model lessons, teaching workshops, etc. Definitely up my alley! I got a letter of rejection. I also applied for a job at the university in an office that focuses on diversity and inclusion, working to implement changes campus-wide to better support student success. Again, I thought this was meant for me, and would use all the skills I have gained. I had a phone interview, in which I crashed an burned in blazing glory. I have never done so poorly in an interview! Why? Perhaps because I wasn't supposed to get that job. Sigh.
I have gone back to my plan to do odd jobs here and there, work on articles from my research in Idaho, and plan to apply for post-doc research fellowships for next year. There's one in Eugene Or that I am especially interested in, if they offer it again next year. And the Odd Jobs are keeping me busier and busier.
Writing classes for OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute for folks 50 years and up). Talk about FUN.
Writing classes for RWP (Redwood Writing Project)--for teachers and helping with the summer academy and other young writer projects. Also assisting with RWP projects, research, etc.
Assisting professor from Idaho on research for a book he is writing.
Several former Blue Heron students have asked if I can tutor them this summer in writing and assistive software.
When I 'm not working my odd jobs, I am horsing around or taking Gloria to the beach or hiking the hills in search of berries--black, straw, thimble, salmon, huckle.... I have the whole summer before me to search out the sweet, fragrant fruit.
Life is good.
