Regular Posting?

I was ready to resume my regular posting schedule a couple of weeks ago.

The upheaval at my daughter’s school…lemme tell you. The kids had nearly three weeks off between Christmas and New Year’s, known as winter break. Parents received an utterly ambiguous email, strongly discouraging [but not actually officially declining] in-person classroom instruction THE DAY BEFORE RETURNING FROM WINTER BREAK as Texas hit Stage 5 of the COVID crisis. Stage 5 was not a blindside, it was known to be the case during winter break.

Many parents (like myself) kept their kids at home because they interpreted the email as requiring 100% online instruction for an undetermined amount of time. Other parents turned up to school understanding in-person was still an option but several teachers were absent from their classrooms. Some parents had no idea who they were turning their kids over to or what services were available. Again, parents received non-declarative “instruction” one day prior returning to school after a three-week break.

Pissed. Exhausted. Confused.

Our current times require a delicate balancing act between health-safety, education, and work. Without information, parents cannot plan. My school district sends out survey after survey asking parents what they want. What parents want is for the district to make firm decisions; parents need to be able to plan their child’s educational needs and supporting care as for many, parents are not able to stay home full-time. Incomes still need to be earned. Surrounding school districts had a return-to-school plan in firm effect. Why Austin must remain so insistently different, I do not know. It’s not progressive when it’s nonsense. By all means keep it weird, just not this kind of weird.

[FYI – The City of Austin sports the motto: Keep Austin Weird]

Now that the confusion has been resolved my daughter is, thankfully, back in-person and I can work in relative peace once more. I love my school. I truly do. My taking umbrage to the situation regards the lack of clarity when it was needed most. Parents receive frequent emails regarding online and in-person schedule changes, teacher and staff change notifications…as a parent you roll with it because what else can you do? But man, come on. This was badly reminiscent of last fall when school was delayed for several weeks despite having the summer to devise an effective rollout plan. I don’t blame the teachers. I don’t blame campus administration. They’re just as much subject to the school district’s decisions as parents are, in fact, more so, as the principals and teachers are stuck trying to interpret these so-called “decisions.”

I make videos full-time on YouTube and when my child was home, it was difficult to film as I had to work around her school schedule. For instance, in one week I had made 24 videos in two days (including editing and uploading) and I gorged on donuts the next day as a sort of compensation. I didn’t feel too bad about it either as I (oops) dipped under my 165 lbs. Heard of anxious eaters? I do the opposite.

My work on YouTube is non-negotiable, this is how I earn income. Video production is not something I can just “put off” and do later.

Resuming my regular posting schedule at the start of the year on WordPress was impossible, in truth it remains questionable.

I believe the best approach is to plan not to plan – very contrary to my nature – and resign myself to posting erratically. So not my gig, man. But it is a compromise, of sorts.

I just started scratching out a new short story titled, Her Run, and I want to meet the spring submission deadline. Perhaps that is ludicrous of me, possibly delusional. However, this isn’t busy work for the sake of it. I have goals and I want to meet them. If those goals mean something to me, I will make time for them. That’s it. It’s down to me to make the time. I refuse to allow f*cking COVID to take another year’s worth of my time.

I suppose the takeaway from that is, I am writing (here and there, respectively). For a long while, I wasn’t. It’s nice to work my way around a page again. 🥰

What else…

~ Guys, WTF is up with the spam rise on WordPress? Many comments in the spam folder are looking less like spam and more personalized. I’m also getting direct emails that are clearly template but meant to look like they’re written by a real person.

~ What’s up with bloggers suddenly getting a couple thousand followers in a week or two? If people can buy “traffic” or followers – fine, that’s a personal decision of the blog owner. I just don’t know how it’s possible otherwise. WP caps how many connections you can make within a given period of time. Granted, I’m not a full-time blogger so I’m not terribly aggressive about my follow count, I just find it curious. There have been several new blogs I started following and boom, over a thousand followers in a week or two and the content more or less remains the same??? Anyone have insight on this?

And that’s my combination update and random thoughts. Back to chorin’ (I just stared watching Letterkenny on Hulu. Letterkenny is a Canadian comedy and I find it inexplicably charming). Today is for groceries and cleaning up the house, you know…chorin’. I’ll be venturing to Total Wine sometime today. Time to stock up on the red so not all bad chorin’.

#maskedup #handsanitizer #wine

Christina

[Excuse typos and blah, blah, blah. I’m knocking this one out before getting my day going.]