The Now: May 4, 2022

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.

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