whentomorrowgetshere

I wanted to make this goal something about answering emails in a timely fashion – something I’ve been terrible at, especially since my email account got flooded by work rather than personal emails. Now I don’t even answer the personal emails because I don’t like my email account so much (although I like my work – weird). However, I realise that I currently have 92 unread messages in my inbox. Granted, most are from mailing lists and I know they aren’t relevant to me, but my goodness, I really need to read, archive and/or delete them! So, I will get my unread messages down to ZERO. Then I can tackle responses.

I have a friend who wants to do this with me! Yay! Next step: decide if I can take a week off in September, when he is willing to go, or if the trip has to happen at a later date.

This is something that really scares me! I don’t know why at all. Mentors have told me for years that I should submit one paper or another for publication. I know the worst that will happen is that a paper is rejected. Then you consider the comments, and decide if you want to rework it and/or submit it to another journal. Is ego a part of my fear? I’m not sure. I suppose it is on some level, but even more than that, I think my fear is because I constantly feel like I’m “not quite there.” I know I do good research, and I know I’m a good writer… but I see everything I produce so much as works in progress that I have trouble stopping. Saying it’s good enough. It’s ready for submission.

I have one paper that I am going to submit for publication in an edited book. The deadline is the beginning of October, but I need to make some changes to it first. Having a deadline will help for that—though it will be very competitive, and I don’t actually expect to get selected for the book. But if that happens, I can just send it to a journal, right?

I need to get on this for a lot of reasons. In part, this is about career development. But I think internally, it’s more about conquering an intimidating task, one that could be postponed for a long time yet. But I won’t let that happen! I will submit that paper in October, and I will strive to produce a paper (or rework a conference paper) for submission to a journal by the spring term.