This is the first day of my sabbatical blog. I have 297 days starting November 1. Now, first, my sabbatical doesn't technically start until December. But overlap is not bad. 297.
What is sabbatical? As an academic, we apply for sabbatical every 6 years, and in the 7th year, we get a semester off from teaching to focus on writing. My time will be divided by the following: a new projects on the narratives of quilts; the entrepreneurial aspects of the Quilting Army Krewe (our new LLC), including the writing of the Just Wanna Series and the continuation of the podcast Just Wanna Quilt, and hopefully a little bit of work on a project about "time". I'm also hoping to quilt every night.
We've just come back from Houston. I'm tired. I'm excited. We sold our books. Thrilling. We're helping people to register their trademarks. That's huge and important. I'm worrying about keeping momentum going. How do we reach others that would benefit from the book? Weird to have anxiety about not helping. I think I'm going to start a special series on trademarks for the podcast. Not sure yet. But we can start to talk about trademarks more. We really focus on copyright.
We are also becoming a vendor for Grace company. They asked if we wanted to. We believe in the products -- long arm systems at affordable prices. They suggest it would help us fund the project, which is a wonderful idea. So, more on that soon.
I was awarded the Greenbaum Fellowship at the Newcomb Institute. I get an office and admin support for through June 2020. I'm working on the project: Writing Oneself in Fiber. I hope it is an exploration of women writing narratives, and the meaning of our quilting and other craft activities. I'm excited. We will see how it develops.
And the books. Still finishing up Just Wanna Create. It's an advanced and significant book on copyright. I'm hoping to finish it by Thanksgiving, and have it out to people -- who have pre-ordered it by December 1. We'll have a few more - the Patent book, the Branding book, and maybe others. Our goal is to have them complete by March 2020.
What else? The house is a wreck. Working on that tonight. And... I'm back to quilting everynight. We are running the Inventory Project -- using your stash to make things. Willow Olson is running that. I am going to dive in starting tonight. I think I'm going to make a tumbler block with all my reds.
I'll keep you posted.
And so, I try again to blog. (I hate blogging). But this time I think it might be different? I'm going to keep track of my 297 days of glorious sabbatical. What we do on the Just Wanna Quilt project, if that's ok.
So, maybe a sabbatical blog will be ok? It's not fancy. It's too wordy. It's not sexy. It's too personal, and not enough business-y. And maybe this will be the only post. Blogs are weird. They feel way too personal and that no one is listening. But here I will record what I'm learning over the next 297 precious and hard-earned days.