After last Friday's Supreme Court decision, I find myself struggling to get through the day. It's really hard to motivate myself when I know that this country does not see me as a full citizen. Why should I keep going if I don't matter?  

But I'm taking each day one at a time. My emotions are still high but I'm trying to focus on the things I can do right now.

Here's what has my focus.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: Did another pass of coding. This time, I worked on where emotions and emotional description arose in the transcript. It's impossible to remove emotions from the research process. On this pass, I looked at where the interviewee specially discussed or expressed emotions either with regards to themselves or their students.
• Presentations and Publications: I gave my organizational webinar on internal communications. It went well and ended with some great conversation and questions. Now, for a break.
• LibGuides: No movement here. 
• Instruction: I thought about starting to clean up my instruction folder but it's a daunting task. I'm pushing this one off for a bit. I did review our revamped request form. It's long but SO MUCH better than our old method.
• Administration: I did a deep clean of my email. I deleted a ton of stuff and added tasks to my Trello workspace. Renamed a few more folders and files in my OneDrive. This is a slow but steady project.
  

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: [thisclose] to finishing the conversion of my last account. Just waiting on the company to finish something on their end.
• Email Newsletter: I'm wrangling my last scheduled cross-promotion. I also added The Sample as an automatic cross-promotion through Substack. Interestingly, I had someone I cross-promoted with a while ago reach out to discuss how I decided to offer paid subscriptions. It was a nice conversation.
  
• Home Projects: Started poking the husband to schedule a professional house cleaning for my birthday. It's the bestest present ever.
  
• Hobbies: I wanted to send out some feminist postcards to my friends, but I just couldn't work up the energy. Maybe this weekend.
  

Utmost project in my life right now is the logistical acrobatics to get our toddler vaccinated. While DC said where vaccines would be and how many shots of each would be available, they didn't say anything else. Between Twitter searches and the daycare/mom communication network, we think we have it figured out. Fingers crossed our kiddo has her first shot today.

Here's what else is going on.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: No movement here. I hope to do some coding later this week.
• Presentations: I tweaked my slides on internal communications for my audience tomorrow. Then I'm going to take a break from presenting for a few months. That said, already working on all the paperwork to fly out to my conference in October.
• LibGuides: Had a meeting today to get feedback about our Black Studies guide that was super helpful. Will start working with that and the Latinx feedback soon.
• Instruction: We are spit-balling activity ideas and working on a shared drive of material. I keep staring at my list of content I want to create for our Library 101 asynchronous program, but I can't seem to get the urge to actually start writing.
• Administration: Still picking away at the file renaming and organization in OneDrive.

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: Submitted the first round of paperwork to change over one account.
• Email Newsletter: I'm deep in cross-promotions now. I just finished two and have another one lined up. I'm also automating sharing my newsletter on Twitter.
• Home Projects: The husband and his dad installed our new bathroom faucet. It's really nice. I'm contemplating ordering some new dining room chairs. I would love some clear ghost chairs, but the husband is not a fan. I sat in some I really liked at a friends house by they were white. If I can find similar in another color, I may get them.
• Hobbies: Nothing here. I think I'm going to try to get back into sending out postcards this week.

The AC in our office decided to take a vacation today. It currently feels like 96 outside. My colleague let me yoink her tower fan since she is working from home today. Thankfully, that makes my cubicle a tolerable temperature. I find it difficult to do deep work when I'm too warm. Also, I took tomorrow and Friday off to add to the long weekend. Ergo, nothing but admin and clean up today.

Here's what I've been working on lately.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: Finished my first secondary coding pass. I am hopeful that the rest of the passes are as smooth as this one was. This is getting bumped up to the top of my list because we agreed to have our personal coding done by the end of July.
• Presentations: Still haven't tweaked my slides for my internal presentation next week. I'm not worried because it should only take me about an hour.
• LibGuides: I am getting feedback from some of our faculty on two of the new topic guides I made. I will incorporate the material they recommended soon. I also promoted our guides in the subscription newsletter I sent out today.
• Instruction: We held our first ever faculty retreat to discuss our library instruction program. While the afternoon was kind of all over the place, it did give us a lot of ideas for what we want the program to look like and how to move forward. We actually made sure to end by discussing tangible things we can start working on now. This proved to be a timely event because the head of our Gen Ed program discussed ways we can better incorporate our teaching into their program.
• Administration: Still picking away at the file renaming and organization in OneDrive.

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: Still on my to do list, but no movement.
• Email Newsletter: Decided to change this bullet point to just talking about my newsletter instead of only the paid section. I did some cross-promotion and that got me over 50 new followers. I am also more actively promoting my work on my Twitter account. Next up, I plan on integrating more of this content into my LinkedIn.
• Home Projects: I gave myself tomorrow and Friday off. I am going to give our home a deep clean. That includes things like dusting baseboards and finally using  magic eraser to clear off the scuffs on our walls. 
• Hobbies: I'm trying to be more deliberate about taking time for hobbies I enjoy. Last week, I purposefully logged off my computer early (two nights in a row!) and put together a gorgeous owl puzzle a friend passed my way. I like accountability so I think if I add this as a thing to discuss I may find more time for my hobbies.
  

Today, our reference team was supposed to hold an afternoon retreat to talk about our library instruction program. Unfortunately, two of our 5 person team our out  because they are sick or had a COVID exposure. We postponed our event. I was really looking forward to this afternoon. It was going to be the first time we were all together since the pandemic started. Plus, I was excited to have us brain dump everything we want to do. Brain dumps are so cathartic and productive.

Here's what has my attention:

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I rejiggered my code book. I think it makes a lot more sense and was able to remove some unnecessary codes. I also started my follow-up coding passes where I will only focus on one umbrella code. It's so much easier when you only have to pay attention to one thing. Today, I finished reading Listening to People. The final chapter on writing was a good warning for what is to come.
• Presentations: I need to start prepping for my internal presentation, but I haven't yet. I always procrastinate the things that should only take an hour.
• Faculty Research Index: No new submissions which I expected. It's the summer and most faculty are ignoring their emails. I'm going to start planning how to promote this in the fall. 
• LibGuides: I have a small list of LibGuides I want to make before classes resume in the fall. I recently tackled Latinx Studies. Next up, I think I am going to work on Black Studies. That's going to be an odd one to do since we're an HBCU, but I definitely want to make it a priority.
• Administrative: Making headway on my OneDrive file clean-up. I've got to rename everything and I'm deleting less than I thought, so this is going to be awhile. It's a good project for me to work on while I'm at the reference desk or listening to webinars.

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: I added some to do items to this month's task list in my bullet journal. That's it. By the end of the month, I want to have our guardianship document outlined.
• Paid Newsletter: This is off the ground and running. My first post went out and I've already written and scheduled my second. I'm doing some cross-promotion with some other newsletters and have received a bunch of new subscribers. Still plan on putting the paywall in place on September 1.
• Home Projects: We brought in a professional to see if the water damage below is coming from our unit. In his opinion, it was not. He also met with the resident below to assess if he could see where it was coming from. So far, the location of the water intrusion remains a mystery. While I'm glad it's not us, I feel awful for our neighbor. In other news, my in-laws are coming in to town next weekend. My husband is taking advantage of his dad being here. They're going to replace a faucet fixture we hate with something new. Husband found a fixture and I gave my thumbs up on it. That's probably the extent of my work on this project.

I'm finding that the productivity fatigue caused by the spring semester is still with me. In order to make any progress, I'm falling back on my tried and true technique of working on one focused project a day. Essentially, once the admin, email, and daily tasks are done, I only work on one thing. It's slower, but it gets me back on track. It helps that the reference desk has been quite quiet this summer.

Here's what has my attention:

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I finished my first pass of coding transcripts. It took forever and, at times, was a slog. Qualitative data coding is no joke. It's also my first time doing this sort of work. I find the newness is creating a hurdle because I hate not being good at things. That said, I pushed through and the first pass is done. I am spending this week taking a break from coding and rejiggering my code book. I assessed my umbrella codes, reviewed my existed codes and removed ones I no longer need, and I made a list of possible child codes that will appear in my second go around. I will start my next passes for coding next week. My brain just needs a break from this. Relatedly, I am reading a book, Listening to People, which is all about qualitative research. The coding chapter was not great, but it did remind me that I am in good company when it feels like I am in the weeds.
• Presentations: I have an internal presentation next month. I will be updating my session on internal communications to speak to people on my campus. Then, it's time to start framing out my webinar on improving photography.
  
• Faculty Research Index: I added another entry and made an announcement about it in our newsletters. I think I'll share it on our social media next.
  
• Administrative: I'm plowing through my file reorganization. I've finished my work in Google Drive and am now working on my OneDrive. I've decided to do the weeding and file renaming at the same time. Plus, this is a good project that lets me listen to podcasts. 
  

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: No movement here. A home project came up and this was sent to the back burner.
• Paid Newsletter: I am very excited about this. I finished my graphics, send my intro post, and drafted my first "real" post in this new series. (Goes out tomorrow!) Someone even came on as a paid subscriber! 
  
• Home Projects: We live in an older condo building. The unit below us has water damage at the top of the wall in their bathroom.  The only problem is, there is no clear leak source anywhere in our unit. It's possible it's coming from even further above. The neighbor below is being wonderful and we are all working together to figure out if the damage in her unit is coming from our unit. If it is, we're going to get it fixed. 

One of my colleagues correctly said that it's really hard to care about anything related to work right now. She's right. Between current events and the sheer exhaustion from the spring semester, my ability to focus on deep work is limited.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I have a transcript and a half left to code. Well, my first pass of coding. Then I am going to review my codebook and rejigger things to make sure it's doing what I want and need it to do. I am oddly excited to etch-a-sketch things and start over in that area. I will finish my transcript coding by Friday. Next week, I will devote to the codebook. Then I will start my next passes of coding. It's going to be a loooong summer of analysis.
• Presentations: I presented my session on our Library 101 platform yesterday, Thursday I group present on EDI and OER. Then, it's time to work on my internal presentation about communications for June. 
• Faculty Research Index: I added another entry. I'm also working on plans for the next marketing binge to try to get more faculty to complete our submission form.
  
• Administrative: Over the summer, I try to tackle some basic admin work to set myself up well for the Fall. So far, I've created a newsletter tracker, cleaned out my Google Drive. Now I'm working on my OneDrive. Next up, making my Zotero less of a disaster zone.
  

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: Still sitting on converting my last account. Also still sitting on my guardian document.
• Paid Newsletter: I created the graphics; updated headers, footers, and welcome emails; and scheduled the initial announcement post. I also turned on paid subscriptions.
  

I found that these posts are getting to be a bit of a chore to write. I will still post weekly about what I'm working on, but the content will be a touch different. Instead of individual activities, I will discuss just the major projects and how they are going. We'll see how this goes for a bit.

WORK

• Research Assignment Design: I'm working on my first pass of transcript coding. It is tedious and frustrating. I started to keep a research journal to help me keep track of my work and to let me brain dump ideas. I've decided to do a first pass of coding that just grabs whatever is interesting. The more I do, the easier it gets. I will then review my codebook to clean it up and better categorize my codes. Then I will do individual passes of each transcript focusing on just one umbrella code at a time. It's going to be a long summer.
  
• Presentations: This has been a banner year for me presenting at conferences and webinars. Next week, I give two sessions at our consortial conference. Those slide decks and notes are done. In June, I am converting my internal communications presentation from Computers in Libraries for an audience here on campus. In August, I'll give a webinar on photography skills for libraries. And I just found out that my proposal to speak at Internet Librarian in October about remote customer service was accepted. 
  
• Faculty Research Index: I have posted the first round of submissions. I am working on marketing to both collect more submissions and promote the Index. 
  

PERSONAL

• Estate Planning: I need to convert one last personal account to the Trust. I now have the information to do that, I just need to get on it. I also am in the planning stages of creating a guardian document for our kiddo. I've researched what should go in it and have listed an outline of what we want to include.
• Paid Newsletter: I spent a lot of time strategic planning. I now have a long to do list and idea bank for content. Last week, I also finished setting up the financial side of things. Now I will do some graphic design and the repeat content for the headers and footers in Substack.
  

The Husband is away on his first work trip since the pandemic started. He sent photos from his travels for me to share with the kiddo. It's really weird to see wingtip images again. I am looking forward to getting back as close to normal as we can, but they really need to come through with vaccine approval for the under 6 set. I am following that news very closely.

Here's what else has my attention:

WORK

• I posted the first submissions to our new Faculty Research Index. This is going to need a LOT more data before it's even close to done, but it feels good to get those first submissions posted.
• I finished converting all our guides to the new website template. Huzzah! I also created a new landing page to make things easier to find. Up next, converting those last pages to the template and developing some admin material on the backend.
• I finished cleaning up my Canva account. It's so nice and organized. Now I need to keep it that way.
• Working on my two presentations for our local consortium's conference. One is looking at how OER can promote DEI and the other looks at Library 101, our asynchronous library instruction platform.
• Project planned for the summer. I listed out what I wanted to do in the coming months and set priorities. Now I've got a few Trello cards and a printed list posted right above my main computer screen. I'm probably tackling too much, but I'll make as much progress as I can.
• One of my main projects this summer is the data analysis for our research project. We are individually coding our interviews with faculty. It is going to take for-ever. I already have far too many codes, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

PERSONAL

• Surviving a few days of solo parenting. So far, so good. The Husband told the kiddo to be extra nice to me. So far, she's cooperating. Two more nights to go...
• Got more details of how to convert my last accounts to our new Trust. Now I just need to do it.
• I decided to go ahead with second weekly newsletter post. I'm doing more strategic planning, writing some prep material, and working on graphics. 
• We had a donation pick-up at our building earlier this week. I weeded my closet and our kiddo's toys. Felt good to clean out some old stuff.

With everything that is going on in world, it has been really hard to get work done the past few days. To quote a colleague, we've truly hit "whatevs" mode.

Here's what has captured my attention in the past week.

WORK

• I finally (!) finished converting all of our research guides to the new website template. I even managed to make a new landing page for said guides. 
• I sent out the staff newsletter for May. It's a good thing I gave it a second edit. Half the meeting dates I originally wrote about were changed or cancelled.
• Prepped all my content for finals week! I also scheduled most of it to auto-post. 
• I started cleaning out my Canva account. While I do have a pro account, the amount of stuff in it has gotten unwieldly. I am downloading a lot of material to upload to my work drive which will make it more readily shareable to my colleagues. That also means I can delete it from Canva. Anything that is left is getting organized into folders.
• We've entered that marketing phase for the faculty research index. I pushed out the first data collection email and made the Index live online. Once I get some more material, I will start inputting it. I've added a reminder to my calendar to do this every other week.
• Working on my outlines and slides for two upcoming presentations at WRLC's Annual Conference.
• I actually don't mind online conferences. I get to avoid the overly ACed ballrooms and inevitable conference crud. I do, however, miss the chance to fully engage. It's really hard for me to block off time on my calendar to just watch sessions. Right now, I am slowly catching up on all the Computers in Libraries sessions I was unable to attend live.

PERSONAL

• I've been hemming and hawing about going partially paid on my newsletter. I got an idea in my brain about how to do it. Instead of losing it, I got it all on paper and started strategic planning. I'm excited about the possibility this offers for me to write more, but I'm still itchy about going to a subscription model.
• I set up my bullet journal for May.

The spring semester at my University is about to wrap up. Things are ending a bit later this year, so I have a shorter interim period in which to plan what I want to tackle over the summer.

Normally, since things are slower, I try to add a few more complex projects to my list. I don't think I'm going to do that this summer. I've got carry over things from this year (and last summer to be honest) that I want off my list. Instead of doing new things, I'm declaring this the summer of clearing out as many Trello cards as possible.

Here's what else has my attention.

WORK

• The main work thing happening in my work life right now is the Conference on Academic Library Management. I presented yesterday and CALM has sessions every day this week. It's, hands down, one of the best online conferences I've experienced. The presenters have been open and vulnerable, but the blue sky talk is limited. It's mostly actionable learning and ideas. I love that!
• I'm prepping lots of content to go out on our social media during finals week. This is one of my favorite assignments each semester.
• Still converting LibGuides to the new template. So close to finishing!

PERSONAL

• I'm finally getting around to converting some accounts over to the living trust we set up. One problem I'm running into is just who to contact at some of the institutions. Contact emails should not be so damn hard to find!
• Decided it was time to go on one of my unsubscribing binges. I cleared out all my newsletters, social media follows, RSS feeds, and other things that have not posted content in the last six months. Now, I'm thoroughly assessing everything else as it lands in front me. This happens about twice a year, but I'm mentally prepared to stop adding things to my plate now.