The Now: September 6, 2023

This is the busiest week of my work life. Part of this is my own making. I said yes to a few things I probably should have said no to. The rest of September is busy but not like this week. I will be very glad to get to COB on Friday. Then, I am going to treat myself with a bottle of beer from my favorite brewery.

Here are just the top three things I'm focusing on:

1. Promotion Portfolio: Instead of going on a long rant, let me just say that the process of applying for promotion at our University is not designed for library faculty, requires a ton of unnecessary busy work, and uses antiquated means of submission. (Flash drives?!?!) As much as I'm frustrated at the tedious nature of this, I am also proud of everything I accomplished in the past few years. I've got 17 pages of narrative listing all of my outreach, reference, instruction, and research/presentation work. And I've only been focusing on the major items! I don't have time to include everything. So... hate the process, love the outcome.
2. Presentations/Webinars: In the month of September I have given or will give seven conference presentations or teaching webinars. All of them need decks and notes. A few require training sessions on the production platforms. My dreams now look like PowerPoint.
3. Content Prompt: My new newsletter launched on September 1 and I think it's off to a great start. While much of the content I can batch make, I do need to conduct daily reviews for some of the trending material. It only takes 30 minutes or so each night and I've been having fun with it.

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