I miss writing

I guess it's no surprise to me that I miss having an excuse to write. After all, when spending a long while as a student, and when successfully completing Mission Dissertation, there was a whole lot of satisfaction out of the writing process. As I recall from the few years after I finished my master's degree where I hardly did any decent writing at all, I grew to miss that side of my brain. So at this point when I've not yet lost it (at least I don't think I've lost it just yet!), I probably should do something to continue onward with my writing.

In my present job as a researcher, I'm required to conduct small studies and write up the results, but honestly the writing is minimal and hardly read by anyone. In fact, I am in a position working with busy administrators that if my writing is too verbose or too, um, "good", then I risk that my colleagues won't even read the work I've done. They need results of research mined down to very small, easy-to-digest, bites so they can make decisions. I'm happy to provide them with this, but honestly it doesn't do much for me as a writer or a scholar.

Finally, the only way for a researcher really to gain credit for the work she or he does is to share up formally-written results and get them published. The only problem is that in my present job there isn't a whole lot of room in my schedule to close my door and do some good solid writing without some sort of interruption. Since I am not a faculty member, I'm technically not supposed to go away to a coffee shop and work on my own during the day. That would be nice and all, but it's not really been an option.

So I'm going to try and carve out small bits of time during the work week, perhaps Friday mornings, to be better about writing formal summaries of research I've conducted for my administrative colleagues and see if I can get things published. It won't be an easy balance, but then again neither was the balance of working full-time and completing a dissertation on the side. We'll see how this goes. Earlier I mentioned I may explore a faculty position, but as things seem to be falling out right now, I think I'll continue to cultivate my career for another year or so doing what I do as an administrative researcher. I will teach a class or two on the side, and I'll try to write and publish what I can. The nice thing is, if I don't get something written or published then it really only affects my sanity and not my actual job. That's probably going to be a better fit for the way I see my future career merging with my very busy home life.

Who knows, perhaps I'll keep exercising my writing chops a bit more by writing more in this blog?