Happy 2023 to all blog readers! May 2023 bring you good health and contentment, and, if you’re in academia, also untold grant riches, high-profile publications, and a teaching schedule that makes you miss the most pointless meetings.

This has been my 2022:

Professional:

• Wrote 7,834 grants. Several were funded and lean times were avoided
• Taught twice as many courses as I usually do, to great fame and success, but mostly great exhaustion. Also great joy due to interacting with undergrads, and, yes, great teaching evaluations
• Moved labs. Paid movers out of pocket because department was not helpful and I refused to have graduate students throw  out their backs by moving heavy furniture
• Started several new research projects. Interviewed a bunch of new students, some of whom will hopefully come here and on whom I plan to spend the aforementioned grant money
• Did some nice science. Papers forthcoming

Personal:

• Eldest graduated college and started grad school! It feels like it happened ages ago, but it was only this May
• Smurf started middle school
• I read like a literary speed demon (finished roughly 150 books this year, about 120 on Kindle)
• Wrote and published some short fiction (ten acceptances, to be precise, out of 88 submissions, which is about the same as last year, but not as many as I did in the years past). I was busy with teaching and writing ALL TEH GRANTZ and, honestly, a bit bummed out about all the funding precariousness. Also, it’s been five years of writing short fiction, so it’s a little less enticing than it used to be. I am itching for a different challenge, not in lieu, but in addition to short fiction—
• Which is why I’ve started and am about to finish the first draft of a novel

In the coming year, I plan to:

• Write ALL TEH PAPERZ
• Finish the novel, edit, have it beta-read (already scheduled), edit more, and then start the painful job of trying to get it traditionally published (both through agents and through direct submissions to publishers that allow it). If the novel were to get picked up for publication, I would consider 2023 a smashing success
• I should put out Academaze II. I’ve got a great cover already commissioned and finished. I could and should probably do that in the spring, low-key, and save the summer to start drafting a second novel
• I’ve been thinking about putting out a short-fiction collection. I have a unifying theme and certainly plenty of stories to choose from. Collections don’t sell very well, so I am a little ho-hum about doing it. Maybe between novels

How’s your year been, blogosphere? Highlights from 2022? Plans for 2023?