Chapter 2--No Pages!!

Try as I might, I have no new pages to show for Chapter Two today. I'm incredibly disappointed. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I thought that it would be fun and exciting work to get back to 19th century rhetorics. And it may have been--had I not found a million other things to do today. I was very distracted by the idea of my future employment today. I've been talking to friends and family a lot about life after the dissertation, and I think these recent conversations sent me looking at the job postings that are out so far in my field. It's been difficult trying to explain to folks that I can't just apply for a job whenever--I can't upload a resume and a one paragraph cover letter to Monster.com and call it a day. There is this small window of a hiring season that I have to work with, job ads for things that I don't do in my field that I have to weed through. But after looking around the web today, I realized that there are some deadlines for positions in other fields that I'm interested in that are quite a bit earlier than the normal dates in my field. I have some huge decisions to make about going on the market, and unfortunately, I need to hurry this decision-making process.

Today was also one of those days where I just didn't want to be in the house on a computer. Now there was really no reason to be outside--the heat index was a MUGGY 100 degrees. Not really what I would call good outdoors weather. You work up a sweat walking from the front door to the car. I did make a valiant effort--took the laptop out to my favorite corporate bookstore spot and everything. But for the first time in the years I've been going there, there were a good three million people in the bookstore. Not a seat/bench/couch free in the house. I think either everybody had the same idea or there are a lot of broken air conditioners in the area because of the recent storms. I don't know, but I'd honestly never seen this many people there. So from there the day just went downhill--I ran around town for most of it--writing nothing. I started to work this evening, made some additions to Chapter One, but of course it started thundering and lightning again and the power starts flickering. Good reason to shut things down.

So I'm still up; I could write now. I've outlined the areas that I want to cover in the first section--but that's about as much as I'll probably do tonight. Another honest stab at it tomorrow.