I took a personal day from work today, because I’ve let a few important tasks build up on me that were really only going to get accomplished if I had the house to myself.  One of them was to get my “First Narrative Report” completed for the grant I got over the summer.  Basically, the subject is How did you spend our money, and how has it affected your teaching, only tell us in words, we’ll worry about the budget spreadsheet later.

You may see the problem.  I’m, uh, not teaching this year.  I had two options with this document.  Well, three, really, but “lie through my teeth” was not really going to be something that was going to happen.  I could either cleverly hide the fact that I wasn’t in the classroom, mostly through ambiguous and/or slightly misleading yet technically accurate phrasing and some strategic omissions, or I could be honest about it.

Here’s the thing: as part of the conditions for my grant– as part of the application, in fact– I had to include a statement that I “intended” to teach in Indiana during the 2014-15 school year.  And it is a fact that I did.  I spent the entire summer job-hunting, in fact, and never once applied for a non-teaching position.  Even with the position I ended up in, I had originally intended and interviewed for a fifth grade math and science position.  The current job was my boss’s idea, and he brought up the idea of me taking it before I even knew it existed.  And I’m still working with kids at least a little bit every now and again (well, ok, I plan on a writing club sometime next semester) and the job has a one-year expiration date on it anyway.

I owned up.  I have a deep paranoia that they’re going to try and get on me to give the grant back; I have a number of strategies in mind (namely, the fact that I was being honest when I applied and I’m telling the exact and literal truth about how I got this job) if they do, but it’s a fight I’d prefer not to have.  Thing is, if you Google my real name, you’re gonna find me at my current position.  I’m starting off on the wrong foot if I try to obfuscate what I’m actually doing, because I’m an internet search away from getting caught.  The fact that I might not get caught probably shouldn’t affect the massively improved rhetorical position that I’m in if I just cut the knot at the beginning.

Ugh.  We’ll see what happens.

The other thing I was supposed to be working on today was finalizing the draft of Skylights so that it can actually be available on its release date.  That would probably be nice, right?  But I spent so long screwing around with the statement that I never got around to working on it today.  I’m going back and forth to Indianapolis tomorrow and I’m not the driver, so I’m hoping I can fiddle on the trip, and even if I don’t, I’m a monster when I’m under a deadline, so it’ll get done– I’d just prefer to be farther ahead than I am right now.  Beating a 400-page manuscript into shape for Smashwords is annoying, guys, to say nothing of making sure it’s internally consistent and, y’know, good.

Gonna be a busy weekend.