H talks and talks and talks to himself.  His self-chatter is a constant stream of:

“I’m going to the restaurant,” said James.

or

Look at my pistons go!

or

“I’m off to the destination,” said Thomas.

James and Thomas are, of course, trains from the famous Thomas The Tank Engine series that H has been obsessed with since he was about 20 months old.  H’s soliloquies sound like books—you can practically hear the quotation marks around each individual train’s speaking turn.

On this snowy February Sunday, we’ve been listening to a lot of H’s solo chatter.  Today was our catch-up day for all of the chores that get put off during the week, which means we don’t have a lot of down time to spend entertaining our little guy.  Luckily, he’s been in a good mood, and has been entertaining himself pretty well, telling stories about his trains and all of their exciting adventures (many of which involve going to restaurants to drink chocolate milk).

I spent 2 hours yesterday grading exams, and I have already spent at least 1.5-2 hours on class prep today, with a couple more hours ahead of me after H goes to bed.  Quitting this job is absolutely the best thing I could do for our family.  I will feel so much better once I have some more balance in my life, and the alleged “free” time I have on my weekend is not consumed with work that really should get done during the week.

Next weekend we’re going to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, for our annual President’s Day family weekend getaway.  Holden will get to see his cousins and grandparents, and our good friends A & S will be joining the family for the first time.  It’s going to be FUN, and I plan on doing no work during the entire weekend (it helps that there’s no class on the following Monday!)

Let’s see—what else have we been up to?  Well, we had to purchase a roof rake for the first time ever.  Yes, a rake that pulls snow off your roof.  We have so much snow right now that folks are being warned about the risk of roof collapse.  At least 4 barns have collapsed in VT this winter (sadly, a couple of cows perished in one of these accidents).  Houses are at risk for this too, but the risk is not as bad.  We really do have quite a bit of snow:

There’s really nowhere else to put the snow at this point.  I think I shoveled 10 hours last week.  Really.  Rob also spent hours shoveling.  We took turns, so neither of us would get too terribly sore.

The good part about all this snow is that we’ve had really amazing sledding conditions.  H has finally gone down part of the mountain SOLO!  Here he is, capsizing a couple of times, but having great fun nonetheless:

H and I also are indulging in a fun yoga class that meets once each week on Saturdays. He really loves seeing the other kids. We’ll be taking the class through mid-March, and then before you know it, my job will be wrapped up, and it will be warm, and we’ll be able to walk to the park, have picnics, and plant our garden. Speaking of gardening, when I asked H the other day what he would want to plant in the garden he replied, “Carrots! It will make Buca very happy!” Buca is our 9-year old rabbit. So carrots we will plant.

I’m feeling pretty positive about my career change, although I haven’t had much time to devote to preparing for it. I’ve been in the process of printing off a couple of e-books on usability, plus finding out about professional organizations in the field. I now have a contact in the field (thank you, Deborah!), so that definitely helps me feel like I can navigate through everything without getting totally lost. I’m looking forward to having more time to really dig in.

Other than that…..house projects and more house projects. We’re replacing our windows in June. I found a local guy who will do it for a slightly more reasonable price than some of the larger companies. I’d rather have a local person getting the work, anyway. Our windows are single pane and (in H’s room, especially), the windows are covered with mold because they are leaking water. The windows are original to the house, so they really do need to be replaced. We’ve also been having issues with the hot water in the tub….as in, it’s not that hot. The problem has been progressing over the past couple of months, and now there is NO hot water in the tub. We’ve been bathing H at neighbor’s and friend’s houses. We had a plumber come out last week, and the problem is our boiler. I got the whole sales pitch about how we really need an efficient gas furnace, etc., but the $8300 price tag is too much to swallow the same year that we do the windows. So, I pressed the nice plumbing/heating guy further, until we finally settled on the option to repair the coil in our boiler. Hopefully that will happen soon, so that we can cease our tour of all of our friend’s bathtubs. I’ve also been trying to finish the neverending painting project. I started painting our living room and hallway in August, and I am *still* in the midst of that particular project. I do a little here and there, in between deadlines and grading frenzies. I’ll get it all done eventually, right?

Rob is currently reading to Holden about poop, and we are winding down for the night. I am tired, and I have to lay down with H to get him to go to sleep. This will make me sleepier. Then I will have to get up to work. I cannot wait until my job is over.

During this morning’s drive to “school”, while H. and I are having our usual light-hearted chat, I hear him chime in and say:

“I’m very important.”

Yes, bud. Yes you are.

Monday is my “13-hours-away-from-home” day.  I leave in the morning, see the chiropractor (have I mentioned how amazing he is at adjusting my sinuses?), arrive at work, attempt to do work, get interrupted 25 times, get stood up by a student and end up missing my only opportunity for lunch, teach from 5:30-8:15PM, come home, cuddle with H, veg.  The only advantage to my crazy Monday schedule is that Rob gets some special time with Holden where they bake chocolate chip cookies and watch Thomas the Train videos until I come home.  It’s very sweet, really.

I got too busy today and didn’t have a chance to tell my boss that I am withdrawing my application for the position.  I will do it tomorrow.  I don’t look forward to it, because she’ll be disappointed, and I don’t want to disappoint her.  I also don’t want her to think that I don’t appreciate the tremendous opportunity that it’s been.  But I also don’t think that satisfying other people’s wishes is the best reason for me to stay there.  Having an awesome boss and co-workers is fantastic, but it’s not everything.

I do have ideas about the next step.  It’s going to be a long, risky process, but if I can pull it off, I will be impressed.  I am going to start my own business. It’s such a weird thing to write, say, or think, because it seems so antithetical to my academic persona.  Based around my research and analytical skills, and what I know about cognition, I am going to start a business where I conduct research on usability—essentially, I will examine factors that allow for the most efficient design of web sites.  The most closely related field to this is human factors psychology, which has as its foundation, much of the same training that I already have.  The difference is some of the research techniques (eyetracking, surveys, etc.) are ones that I would have to acquire.  But having gone through 4 years of graduate school, 4 years of a postdoctoral fellowship, and teaching countless coursework that is all way outside of my area of expertise, I am convinced that this is just another thing I can teach myself.  I have no desire to go back to school, and I know that this is something I can do without further formal credentialing or licensure.  Right now I am reading everything I can about usability—what I am finding is that the holes in my knowledge are primarily in the areas of graphic design and programming for the web.  If I can get myself at least a rudimentary understanding of these areas, I can fill in the gaps by consulting with those around me who know better (ahem, Rob).  I have some leads on community-based organizations that provide mentoring and training for future business owners, and assist with all aspects of business planning.  It seems daunting to take an idea and essentially turn nothing into something….but because I’ve seen some people do it (and quite successfully), I feel more confident that I can do it too.

I am starting the research for this transition now, but it will be slow-going because my overwhelming academic job will get in the way.  Classes are done at the end of April, so I really don’t have that long to go, until I am free to be a researcher again.  The irony is that I never would have stumbled upon the idea to do this, if I hadn’t taught Cognitive Psychology.  Boy, teaching that class has given me a lot of ideas about how I can leave teaching:)

I will be a researcher, in Vermont, and I don’t care if anyone thinks this is a fucking crazy idea.  It *is* a fucking crazy idea.  And I am doing it anyway.

Thanks for the input on my poll from last week.  I have made a decision about my job.  I have decided to withdraw my application for the position.  I will finish up my current contract, which ends in June.  After that, I am free to do whatever I want.

This decision has not come easily.  I have gone back and forth, many, many, times.  I have talked to many friends about this.  And ultimately, intuition has prevailed over logic.  Logically speaking, I should have come to the conclusion to keep my job.  We’re in a rough economy, and I should be grateful for the job I have.  I should also keep my job until I have another one lined up.  Etc. Etc.  Blah Blah Blah.

The reason I am not doing any of these sound and reasonable things is because:

1)  I feel like I am going to throw up every day before I teach.  This feeling has not gotten better in the 5 years that I have been teaching.

2) I found out from the Dean that the college will not support my development of a research program.  I could deal with the nausea associated with #1 above if I had the opportunity to do something I truly love, but there’s no sense in putting up with the teaching/nausea situation if I can’t do the research.

3) I have WAY too many conversations with parents of COLLEGE STUDENTS.  This should not happen. I also get lots of e-mails from entitled, snarky, and otherwise dim students, who detail at great length all of the ways that I am unfair and am ruining their lives.  I am not even remotely joking about this.

4) If you’ve ever taught before, you know that the prep is CONSTANT.  I work evenings, weekends, all day long during the week.  I feel like I never see Holden.  The first day of classes this semester, I was away from the house for 13 hours.  I just can’t do this anymore.  I worked constantly in grad school, and also worked quite a bit as a postdoc.  With a young, very active child, I can’t keep up with everything.  Holden doesn’t see enough of me, I don’t see enough of him, my house is a disaster area pretty much constantly, the house needs major renovation (and there is no time to do it), and I never have time for myself.  Ever.

So there it is.  My completely self-centered reason for withdrawing my job application is that I want my life to be easier.  It feels like a copout, but damn, it feels like the right thing to do.

Because I am curious what others think, I am starting a poll.  I would like to know whether:

1)  I should renew my teaching contract for next academic year (if not, this would mean I could be finished with my job in June).

2)  I should interview for my job next month and see whether the students get less crazy and the work load gets any easier to manage.  This would mean signing another 1-year contract for the 2011-2012 school year, if I get the job.

3)  I should interview for my job next month and renew my contract for the 2011-2012 school year, if I get job, while surreptitiously training myself for another job under the guise of introducing students to new, career-relevant material in my courses.  Once I have sufficiently trained myself (via teaching my students about this new area), I quit my academic job, and start my own consulting business.

4) Other