1. It is time, my friends, for my very favorite sporting event. Not the thing in Russia: the very best sporting event. It used to be called the Ravelympics, but then the IOC got all cease-y and desist-y about that. Now it is technically called the Ravellenic Games, I think, but you and I know that it is still really the Ravelympics. There's a festival of knitting for the summer games, too, but do you want a big pile of wool in your lap in the middle of August? Maybe you do if you live in New Zealand.
2. I do not live in New Zealand. I live in the Midwest, and it is really cold. Brrr. Bring the wool, baby!
3. During TEFKAR (The Event Formerly Known As Ravelympics) I am planning to finish half of my UFOs (unfinished objects, for all y'all non-knitters, though you probably skipped town in the first sentence, and maybe went searching for the unsub setting in Feedly, because DANG I am talking a lot about knitting so far in 2014).This is ambitious, but not insane. Or at least not very insane. Due for smiting: one baby sweater, one grown-up sweater (as of this morning, it was just a swatch), one wackadoodle shawl/wrap/lacy trilobite thing, and a pair of potholders that just need to have some ends woven in.
4. I think my job might interfere with these plans, potentially. Or at least the adult sweater part of these plans. There are always more stitches in an adult sweater than I seem to remember from the last time I made an adult sweater.
5. All week I have been thinking about writing a work-related post and then feeling like a dork about the whole thing. So I will just tuck it into this post as a quick take. Here's the deal: my college has meetings for first-year professors about every six weeks. We come together, there's a topic and a little panel, and the idea is that we can talk about what we need to do to get tenure.
6. Last week the topic was networking, and the last question was "What are barriers to effective networking for you?" The question hung there in the silence for a moment, and then I answered it. The #1 barrier to effective networking for me is that there's a mental hurdle involved. Every time you reach out to establish contact, you're putting yourself and your ideas out there. And sure, some people say, "That's a great idea and I would love to work with you."
Lots of people don't. And I'm not, like, wishing that the hospital administrators would be my best friends and have coffee with me every Tuesday, but I still feel some reluctance about sending them my protocol and asking them to help me with recruitment because what if they hate it and say no? I don't let this keep me from doing it, but I have to acknowledge that this creates a mental barrier for me and I need to keep pushing past it.
7. So I said this and the room was silent-- nobody else, not one person, said, "Yeah, the rejection thing is a drag" or "Getting started means there's a lot of that." I have been trying not to let the awkward feeling get me down, because surely I'm not the only one even if I was the only one who spoke up. But still: awkward moment.
7.5 But also a helpful moment. This week, in planning what I was going to do when, I said, "Okay, self, it's not realistic to send out the whole batch of protocols in one day. Mental load, and all that. Break it up. It's okay."
More quick takes at Jen's.
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