I have been a delinquent blogger all summer long, but I don’t think my time of academic musings has come to an end. Come fall, venting and exasperation are likely to resume with renewed vigor.

It’s been a busy and eventful summer. The main news is that my (pretty insane) grant-writing efforts from this winter paid off, because I have received recommendation of funding for multiple grants. I get to keep my group members happy and funded for the next few years, and I get to bring on a couple more students. Realizing I’d be going from rags to riches has been surreal. I wish there were peers IRL with whom I could honestly discuss just how relieved and elated and incredulous I am at the news. I have to keep my cool with my colleagues because showing just how fucking happy I am makes me look like an amateur, or worse — someone who could have conceivably become one of the untouchables, a penniless piece of academic deadwood at a research university.

But the funding is real, and it’s more than a relief. For once, there’s actually joy and excitement at the end of a stressful grant-writing period.

In other news, we’ve moved labs, which has been its own ordeal. I ended up paying, from my personal funds, a moving company to come haul some of the heavier pieces of office furniture. I just couldn’t handle being given the runaround by those within the college who were supposed to help. It was a problem I could solve by throwing a little money at it, so I did.

There is also the Saga of Three Overpriced Office Chairs, but that epic, frustrating, and ultimately tragic (for my nerves and discretionary funding) tale will have to wait for another occasion.

I’ve had some instructional duties this summer, which have kept me extra busy, but now I have cool videos for a course, which is pretty neat. The department is ramping up its summer offerings, so while summer teaching is not going to be a regular thing for any one faculty member, people will be expected to occasionally step up and do it as we go forward.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to complete the sequel to Academaze. That will have to wait for some time when I have more bandwidth to go through the blog archives. I have, however, put down 50k words of a novel and written+published a bunch of flash fiction (might’ve even leveled up a little in terms of my craft). Overall, I’ve been working but not killing myself, reading a lot, writing some, and just trying to feel  human again.

How’s your summer been, academic blogosphere?