What I Did on my Summer Vacation

GDJ via Pixabay

 With one week of fall semester classes behind me, and a routine beginning to take shape (I always forget how long that actually takes), it's time to declare my summer officially over. I always end the summer with a bunch of things I wanted to do, but didn't get to, which means I typically forget what I did accomplish. So, a couple of weeks ago, I started my list. 

It almost makes up for the fact that dust continues to collect on my unfinished projects. 

All in good time, I guess. Meanwhile, here are some things I'm proud to have accomplished during my time "off."

• Taught a summer course online.
• Reduced my home inbox by 6000 emails. I'd love to say that brings it to Inbox Zero but...no. Still at it :-)
• READ. Novels, non-fiction, magazines, audiobooks.Aaahhhh.
• Wrote and submitted a non-fiction book proposal. 
• Wrote a few chapters of my novel.
• Got a little revising in and learned that I will work for food.
• Improved my office. The counter still needs some work, but I sorted, purged and streamlined all the files.
• Made significant progress in our overstuffed basement. Some of that was due to sending a medium-sized piece of furniture home with my daughter, but there was a lot of de-cluttering and organizing involved, too. 
• Continued my weight loss journey, hitting the 40 lbs. lost milestone.
• Spent a week at the beach, and looking forward to a reprise.
• Finally finished my 1000 piece Grey's Anatomy jigsaw puzzle. So many blue scrubs and white coats!
• Made a few trips to see our daughter who has entered the real world and is nesting in her new apartment.
• Revamped the final assignment for one class and streamlined/reconfigured assignments for the other two, as well as revising syllabi and re-shaping the flabby bits of some of my courses.
• Indulged my love of learning and merged it with my love of writing to take three webinars and a three-day online workshop.
• Engaged in regular writing sprints of an hour or more on an average of about five times a week. 
• Improved my French with Duolingo and something I'm calling my "Aujourd'hui Journal."  
• Did a play reading and few evenings out with my theatre friends, and engaged in some catch-up calls with old friends, as well as a few low-key social activities like lunches. 
• Started setting boundaries with respect to work hours -- always more easily said than done.
• Did an online summer book celebration with Celebrate Lit.
• Wrote a bunch of blog posts and tweets.

  

  geralt via Pixabay

  
  
• Created and posted daily quotes for my L2Hess & Friends page.

I'm sure I've forgotten something but, I have to admit, revisiting all of these things for this post was definitely a mood-booster, even as my to-do list remains undone. 

Or, maybe because of that. I'm not entirely sure. 

How about you? What are you proud to have accomplished?