Too much graphic design work today means that I am incapable of stringing a coherent introduction together. (It took me three attempts to write that sentence.)

​Here's what's been going on for me.

WORK

• I have spent more hours than I care to count designing and updating the program for our University's research week. Luckily, I got to use the template I made for last year's event. Unfortunately, I am still waiting on numerous session details to roll in. I have to tweak the entire program every time I add new information. I will be very happy when I am done with this project.
• I sat on the review panel for the library's faculty tenure portfolios. Luckily, all the committee members were on the same page and it was easy. I work with a bunch of really great people.
• We've got two open positions and I am on the hiring committee for one of them. We finished reviewing the applications and decided on who we want to interview.  We want the interviewees to present to the library staff, so we finalized our plans for that.
• I present at Computers in Libraries tomorrow. I polished off my slides and uploaded them to the platform. In the meantime, I am semi paying attention to the first two days of sessions while I get my regular work done.
• There is one session left in our spring webinar series! (I'm already hard at work figuring things out for the next academic year.)
• I submitted a chapter proposal for The Practical Leadership Cookbook. I want to discuss how improving internal communications can reduce traditional library silos to improve collaboration and workflow efficiencies. 

PERSONAL

• My in-laws were in town this past weekend and it was a great visit. The weather cooperated enough that we got to see some of the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. We also joined the kite festival for a bit. Our kiddo colored and flew her own kite! She was far more interested when it flew low and she could run through the tail strings.
• We got to have a date night while the grandparents were in town and OMG I missed those! Going to start following up on some of the babysitter names I've collected from various l local list-servs.

​Earlier this week, some colleagues and I were brainstorming ideas for webinars we want to host. I manage this part of our work and, to keep things feasible, I set a limit of six sessions per semester. The sessions themselves are only an hour, but the content creation, marketing, and event management logistics eat up a lot of time. Plus, we have to do all the other aspects of our job.

During our brainstorming, we kept coming up with far more things than we could feasibly do in an academic year. (Some of them weren't even webinars.) I don't know how it is in other jobs, but I've found that librarians (myself included) have this awful tendency to want to do all the things all at once. Instead of saving some projects for later, we try desperately to DO IT ALL NOW because we think it's essential. That results in a lot of overwork and burn out.

In this particular instance, I told my colleagues that I was banking all of the ideas for future webinars and recorded videos. That helped rein things in. The problem, however, is that this desire to do all the things never seems to go away. Every time we work on something, we find more that we want to do.

My work Trello board is so full it's absurd. At this point, I just dump every idea I have onto themed boards, then I move the three(ish) projects I can actually do in a given time period over to my Priority board. To assuage my desire to DO ALL THE THINGS, I add some more ideas to my On Deck board. It's not a perfect system, but it's the only way I've been able to wrangle my desire to do all the things at once.

How do you manage idea overload?

Our kiddo's daycare is closed today. Luckily, my in-laws decided to time their visit up to see us to help us out. While kiddo enjoys some grandparent time, I'm getting a full day of undisturbed work in at the office. I am thankful that the timing of this worked out.

Here's what else was good in my week.
​

• Planning what I want to do for my holiday from parenting hotel night next month.
• A DIY project turned out a lot easier than planned.
• Somehow I managed to dodge all the rain when we had a gross weather day.
• The lamb saag from Naanwise.
• Getting to see our kiddo walk on the rope line they use to take trips outside.
• The cherry blossoms in our neighborhood are in full bloom.
• Discovering the Apple Photos can help me identify plants.
• Getting to leave the windows open for a few days.
• Getting our new fridge organized in a way that is pleasing to my type-A style.
• Baking a new banana bread recipe.
• Squeezing in cleaning on a weeknight.
• Reading about all the amazing things my colleagues are doing at work.

While it is raining and gray today, we've had glorious weather to start the week. Plus! The cherry blossoms hit peak bloom. Our campus has some trees but I would rather be jaunting about the Tidal Basin, frolicking amongst the blooms. I am so ready for winter to be fully over.

Here's what has my attention at the moment.

WORK

• Today, I wrapped up my transcription work for our research project. Later this week, we meet to discuss next steps. We're looking at how faculty design research assignments for their classes. The survey and interviews were informative. Now we need to figure out A) what we do with the information we have and B) what goes our on list of further things to investigate. My colleague share this XKCD cartoon and it's exactly right.
• Submitted my tenure review portfolio for 2021-2022. Huzzah! According to my tracking, it took just over 8 solid hours of work to write my narrative, gather my evidence, and format/upload everything into our system. I wish I could say I was done, but I am on the review panel for our unit. That work is happening right now. My colleagues are doing some awesome things.
• I'm chairing a committee of our faculty senate focused on research and development. I'm using my power for good to work on a project that will lead to a faculty research index. I've spent some time developing a submission form and I just received feedback from the committee on it.
• Making my slides for the Computers in Libraries conference next week. I always get so nit-picky about how things look. The first draft is done. Now I need to tweak, finalize my resource list, and add my notes. Should probably practice my presentation too...
• I submitted a proposal to speak at this year's Internet Librarian conference. I want to talk about providing remote customer service.
• Our University is trying to do a better job of creating a central webinar/event calendar. We met as a cross-functional group to discuss plans for 2022-2023. I just finalized the list of webinars coming out of our unit and will be submitting the details soon. I got to have fun writing snappy titles which I always enjoy.
• Wrote out an editorial calendar for the blog posts I want to write between now and August.
• The University Research Week is coming up and, for the second year in a row, I'm designing the program. Luckily, I can use last year's as the template, but it's still a lot of working inputting the information and tweaking it to make it look good. I'm just happy I'm on the planning team and get more time to work with it than I did last year.

PERSONAL

• I booked the first of my two hotel nights off of parenting for the year. I am already making mental plans about what I want to do with my time off. None of it will be remotely productive and I CAN'T WAIT.
• I designed and sent out my condo's green committee newsletter. This month focused on spring cleaning.
• Speaking of being green, our building's adopt-a-block clean up was this past weekend. I took the kiddo with me. She was confused by the grabber tool at first, but really got into things as we worked. Her eyes find the small trash better than mine do.
• Our big home frustration of the week came when our new fridge (that we ordered in December) arrived. We paid for full installation and haul away. While the delivery team did haul away, they just left the new unit in our living room. (Much anger was experienced.) Luckily, our go to handyman was on site and he helped the husband get the unit in place while I bought lots of ice to keep our stuff cold.  Once the fridge and freezer came down to temp, I did my usual organization to get everything where it would work for us. I also used this as a chance to take stock of what we own. We need to eat a few things...

I finally got to inbox zero in my personal email. That meant I took about two hours to read through all of the Wowbrary emails I've received from DCPL this year. I saved them for last because I just love learning about what new books I have access too. While I added several titles to my TBR list, it was not as many as I expected.

I had a brilliant idea of what to write for this week's intro... but then I had to jump into a work meeting and I forgot to write it down. Now, I'm stumped. The idea has flittered away and no amount of trying to get it back is working.

I hate it when I lose a thought or task I need to work on. I'll walk back to the spot in a room where I had it to see if I can jog my memory. I'll reopen the browser tab that was on the screen when the to-do popped into my brain. I'll retrace my day to try to jostle the moment back into recognition. 

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The most successful attempts to get ideas back occur when I literally speak out loud what I was doing when I had the thought. I've even repeated gestures and movements to try to get myself back to the moment. Nothing worked this week. That'll teach me to send more emails to myself as reminders. (Although the last email reminder I sent myself just said "pen blocks" and I have no idea what that means.)

What do you do when you're trying to get a lost idea back?

I just submitted a proposal to speak at a library conference out in California. I have not stepped foot on an airplane since 2018. I am excited by the prospect that I might get to travel again. As much as I love my city and travelling on the east coast by car, I am feeling the need to roam more widely. 

Here's what else was good in my week:

• ​Watching the gusto with which our toddler eats the blueberry muffins I make her.
• Enjoying a Guinness on St. Patrick's Day.
• Playing the Jeopardy quiz on our Alexa.
• Savoring a glass of vermentino wine. This was a varietal I discovered for the first time while travelling in Italy. I love the wine itself, but I also enjoy the memories that come with it.
• Criticizing episodes of House Hunters with the husband.
• Walking around outside without a coat. Welcome back, spring!
• Finally hitting personal inbox zero for the first time in over four months.
• Adding a bunch of new books to my TBR list.
• Dancing around to music from the 90s.
• Helping our kiddo make her bracket picks by having her choose her favorite mascots.
• Submitted my faculty tenure portfolio for the year!

The pandemic is, once again, keeping the Computers in Libraries conference online this year. I will be speaking on March 31 at 2PM about the importance of internal communications. Sign up here for live and/or recorded options.

Libraries often spend money and time marketing and communicating to their users and patrons. How much time do you spend communicating internally? Kowalski shares the benefits of internal communications in breaking down traditional silos to foster collaboration and create a more cohesive team. She discusses activities that support all forms of work: in-person, online, and hybrid. She demonstrates the value of communicating in all directions, be it to a team of reports or to management and administration.

I am overjoyed to be getting more sunlight these days. Not so overjoyed at the reduction in sleep, but I'm trying to see how the bright side. (pun intended)

Here's what has my attention at the moment.

WORK

• My faculty portfolio is due on Friday. I am clocking in at hour seven of working on my narrative and finding all my attachments. At this point, I just have editing, organizing, and uploading left. I will be very happy to finish this task. (Then I get to serve on the review committee of my colleagues portfolios, but that is a worry for another week.)
• One of the consortial committees I'm on is working on developing an OER creation/adaption/adoption program. We're doing research on existing programs and trying to outline what we want our eventual program to look like. It's a lot of detailed work but I think it's going to result in some amazing stuff.
• My colleagues and I have a few more interview transcripts to wrangle for our project on faculty research assignment design. Once that's done, we can begin our analysis. We already know that we're going to have more questions we want to explore after this. Guess it's a good thing I work in academia.
• I am working on my presentation for Computers in Libraries at the end of the month. I have a pretty solid outline. Now I just need to put together slides and compile my resources.
• Last Friday I presented a session in our faculty webinar series on the ACRL Framework. We've got two sessions left. They've been engaging which is great, but that is a lot more emotionally exhausting than just a basic presentation. Still good though!
• I created and sent our monthly library newsletter. These are a lot of fun because I get to develop new content, share stuff that already exists, and dive in to pictures from our archives.

PERSONAL

• We got around to hanging the new mirror I bought for our living room. It looks really good. Now it has me rethinking the TV stand/media center situation.
• Did some baking this week - made our kiddo's favorite blueberry muffins and a loaf of soda bread from a bag mix. Now I have a bunch of extra buttermilk. I'll probably make rolls but I'm going to dive into my recipe archive first.
• Filled out my March Madness Bracket AND helped the kiddo fill out hers. What I do is make a slideshow that shows the two mascots of the teams next to one another. She then picks her favorite. She's got a play-in 16 seed team (who already lost) as the champion because their mascot was an actual doggie and not someone in a cartoon outfit.

Awhile back, I listened to an NPR Life Kit podcast that said laziness is a sign that you need to slow down. As much as I love learning about life hacks, productivity trends, and organizational things, I've never bought into the whole hustle culture. I don't feel like I need to optimize every minute of my day.

The only reason I want to me more efficient with my time is so that I have more time to "be lazy." I fiercely guard my evenings and weekends. I try to cram all my work and life management into specific hours of the day so that I can focus on what I want the rest of time. That's not so I can do a side hustle or more work, it's so I can sit on the couch and binge watch TV while browsing the internet. 

To many, that's being lazy. To me, it's allowing myself time to breath. 

I am an ambivert. I love talking to people, seeing friends, and, honestly, performing in front of a crowd. But, when it comes to recovery, I want to be at home, in my jammies, not​ doing things. Our couch has a distinct depression where I sit every night. I can easily see how others would call that being lazy. Fine by me. My laziness lets me power up for tackling whatever it is I need to do the next day. 

How are you "lazy"?