I can’t believe it's been almost a year since I've posted to my
blog. I remember when I first started Mahogany Mom; I had a vision of
blogging bi-weekly (or realistically, monthly) and someday turning my blog
posts into book with a dual purpose - - raising scholarship money (as all
proceeds would do towards a scholarship fund) and creating a platform for moms,
dads, parents, mentors, etc. of all shades to engage in a discourse that
empowers and motivates us to take it back to the old school where the village
in deed did its part to raise our children and support families.
Well a dream deferred but for good reasons. This past year was spent
in the academic abyss of tenure submissions and scholarly publishing. For
those of you who share my beloved profession, you know exactly where I've been
for the last 10 - 11 months. Writing and reading journals, calculating
and thematizing data for content analysis (I hate quantitative data collection
but was forced to embrace the numbers this time around), crying after a myriad
of rejection letters and struggling through revisions only to prevail in the
end...the very end, or so it seemed.
After submitting my tenure portfolio
earlier this year and waiting almost three months for a decision, I received
that ever-important 'confidential' envelop with the embossed school crest!
To God be the glory for enabling me to navigate over 800 pages of
documentation and I'm so very thankful for having an old as hell IBM Thinkpad
laptop which is the only device in my tech-savvy home which has PDF merging
software that works.
In between teaching, managing my busy
household, pageant mentoring, girl scouts and sports and a few Applebee's
nights with the fabulous MOT Moms, I managed to write two training workbooks
for a community college and an athletic department, I published articles in
three journal and joined the ranks of many of my colleagues by publishing my
first research textbook "Empirical
Communication Research: Letting the Data Speak for Themselves".
I really had no time to write, although
there were moments in which I truly needed to purge, I stayed focused on the
career journey for most of the year.
That’s often one of the biggest challenges for moms; finding that
balance between career/self and others.
This year, I didn’t dive head in and take over science projects, I didn’t
make last minute shadowboxes or storyboards or write essays for homework assignments
that were forgotten. I relinquished the ironing of school clothes for the older
boys to them (and yep, there were days when they went to school looking
as wrinkled as an old piece of aluminum foil, but they were clean), and I threw
a pizza in the oven a few times and didn’t care if there wasn’t a vegetable in
site. I couldn’t and refused to try and
do it all. My brain literally hurt and
to make the journey even more challenging…yep you guessed it, my flash drive
with EVERYTHING crashed. After
downloading a bunch of retrieval programs (which I think have infested my
computer) I prevailed.
I taught all summer, which is something
I rarely do and we spent our weekends at the beach instead of our usual big
family vacation. As each day of summer
faded; as the sun gently set over the rolling hills of the 11th hole
behind our house, I can honestly say this was one of the best years of my
life.
By the time August arrived, I was anxious
to start a new academic year, but I also wanted to get back to my word
therapy. There’s never a true break for those who have a vision, but this
year, I can step away from the scholarly world and return to a part of my life
that I truly enjoy.
I appreciate those in my life who offer
unwavering support, those who offered patience and kindness and even those
folks who were realists and reminded me to incorporate a bit of fun. I hope
that you will rejoin me on this journey because this Mahogany Mom still has a
lot to share!
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