A New Term

And so the school year has begun.

It started on a day on which I have no classes or responsibilities (so far) whatsoever, so I spent the morning making Peter a cake for the Day Before His Birthday Day. It could've turned out better to say the least, but I brought it in, we both had a celebratory piece, and it was completely annihilated within three hours of exposure to EEPsters. The cake-carrier has been rinsed, the counter has been wiped, and in this kitchen at least, it was like the thing never existed. That's all the tacit approval I could ask for.

The big news as of today is that I have officially been offered a job at CSULA's Center for Effective Teaching and Learning! Now I wait for the Career Department bureaucracy to do what it does, and hopefully, sometime next week, I will be a paid employee of Cal State Los Angeles. It certainly feels good to have gone through the motions–an application, a resumé submission, a "non-cognitive skills" test, and two interviews–and emerge victorious. While I'm waiting for the paperwork to clear, I'm going through some Moodle tutorials and continuing to familiarize myself with HTML. It's really opening up a whole new world of tools I can use outside the job as well, which is always great.

To finish up with my wee update, I am approaching 40,000 words on my Six Weeks in Kenya Manuscript, which is very exciting indeed. At this rate, it looks like I am on track for my self-imposed first draft due date, so keep your eyes open!

Also (a little treat) my dabbling on Pinterest has revealed a super interesting Scandinavian design and photography blog that I can't get enough of. Take a look.

Summer Ending, a.k.a. Go Time

Greetings from the dying throws of summer in southern California, which means heat beyond any reasonable weather patterns approaching autumn. Though I shouldn't complain, considering how cool it was today. Let's hope it stays this way!

The summer has been quiet and busy, which was perfect, considering the past year. It has given me time to regroup, figure out where I'm heading next, and take steps forward as opposed to sideways and in loop-de-loops as people my age are wont to do. All this has not been a cake walk, thus the busy-ness, and here's what is up as of today's post:

• After deliberation on pursuing law instead of academia starting around this time last year (see this blog's first post), I have decided that, for the time-being anyhow, I will devote myself to the area of expertise that plucks my heartstrings so they sing instead of the area towards which I feel an obligation. My decision (though in no way ultimate, for life is long and full of interesting twists and turns) resulted in part from the one year anniversary of my trip to Kenya coming and going as I sat in an Atwater Village Starbucks–an event that filled me existential longing for a time past that I had never experienced before, the counsel of EEP Director Dr. Richard Maddox to whom I will always owe a great debt of gratitude, and a fairly simple meditation on what I love. While I love helping people, there are many ways I can do that while still pursuing my own passions for uncovering the mysteries of humanities past. So: Anthropology. Score.
• After an unsuccessful cluster of job applications (I got one group interview that I was so nervous about I showed up looking like a nun with a white dress shirt and a grey below-the-knee skirt) I landed a freelance writing job with friends of the family and producers of GO PUBLIC: A Day in the Life of an American School District. I wrote the content for their community discussion guide, which should be released soon as part of the educational and community DVD packages. I worked long and hard and received my first paycheck for working on a great project.
• I continue to work on my book about my time in Kenya, and hope to have a complete first draft by mid-to-late October. If all goes as planned, all of my supporters who pre-bought the book to finance my journey will have their own special copy by the time Christmas roles around. After that I plan on developing a draft and a package to deliver to publishers. Who knows what will happen after that?
• I started an Etsy business, and I'm in the process of developing it into a working shop!
• I have been invited for a follow-up interview for an on-campus job that I feel is a great fit, and I am teaching myself some elementary web design to prep myself for it, which got me excited about this blog again and is also really useful, because web sites! 

So that was a lot of words! But that is more or less what is happening with me at the moment. I have a great deal more to say, but I will leave it for another post.