Time collapsing... but a start on the year

Yesterday, I finally nailed down the readings for the Nature in Lit, thank God. The students will probably bitch about how much there is--especially how many discussion board entries they have to do--but the readings aren't generally long. There are a few that probably need more time than I'm devoting to them, but the nice thing about the online course is that we can more easily circle back to readings if we want to, revisit points that were made. There may not be as much synthesis as I could arrange, but ... well, I'm doing what I can for a first time out of the gate.

So, today I spent some time actually typing up the assignment schedule, getting the syllabus sorted, making sure I have a few handouts (and am OK with how they're constructed, though of course they all could and should be more concise). I haven't got the essay assignments nailed down yet--and, more to the point, I haven't constructed the online parts, which I really do need to start focusing on. Tomorrow will be a truncated day, as I have to go to physical therapy in the middle of the afternoon, dammit (I may call to see if I can reschedule), and then as of Wednesday, I'm back on campus working on adjunct scheduling. If I look down the pike, I see day after day when I will have very little time to work on my own class prep and lots of time that I'll have to devote to other things, some fun (leaving work early on Wednesday to meet a friend in the City to celebrate her birthday), some not so (see above on adjunct scheduling). So, yes, panic begins to arise.

But I have the basics in place, which is good. Part of me wants to keep going tonight--I haven't collapsed with exhaustion yet, and it's the first day in ages when I've gotten to this point in the evening and have had any energy at all--but I know that I need to be careful about husbanding what energy I have so it builds instead of being continually depleted.

And of course I'm worrying about the pearls that are very likely slipping through the floorboards as I write. I'm trying to keep notes of what I want to be sure I do (and make sure I don't lose the notes). But mostly, I want to celebrate the fact that progress has been made. That's not a bad way at all to start a new year.