Bill asks, essentially, what a sailing coach does in the winter. I've found myself on campus a lot more than I expected, for meetings and to set up my new office. I've been meeting with students to talk about spring break and about their goals for next season. Other meeting type things: I'm talking to a trainer about a good, simple weight training program for the team and a fit test to give at the beginning of each season as an incentive and a way of tracking progress. I've been contacting and responding to prospective students who are in the application process. I was in Rhode Island and Boston for meetings of the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association, figuring out the intricate web of regatta schedules for this spring and next fall. I'm trying to create a fundraising plan so that over the winter we can contact parents and alums to raise money for buildings to house and maintain the boats (currently they're outside in the ice and snow over the winter, which is far from ideal). That involves looking at deed restrictions and town zoning and getting an estimate on the specifications for the kind of building that would be the best. Anyway, there's a fair amount of these kind of things to tend to -- none of them surprising, but in the aggregate a lot more than I had really imagined. But most of it is flexible, so I don't need to be there every day.
On the days I don't go to campus I write, and go to the gym or run outside. I do errands or tend to stuff for boards that I'm on; I respond to some of my emails. I've been doing some editing and responding to a friend's manuscript, which has been very interesting. In theory I read books, but I usually feel a little guilty just sitting down in the middle of the day reading. I meet friends for lunch or coffee and have been catching up on the deficit of contact with my friends when I got swept up in the coaching season.
This balance of time alone and with people, of time on fun and work and exercise, is pretty good. I'd like to be more disciplined about my own writing. I write lots, but I need not just to write, but also to revise, polish, and submit, and I'm not really doing that. I think I have a mental block about that, and I need to get over it. Or maybe I'm just lazy, I don't know. I like being on campus and available to the sailors I coach and the other coaches. Building a sense of community up there takes time. So what I'm learning is that some days being there isn't as productive as I've planned, because people drop by and want to talk. And that's good, not bad. That's the kind of coach I want to be -- integrated into the community and very accessible to my sailors and the administration. But I can see how that time can stretch out, and I want to be careful to preserve room in my life for my own creative projects. I should probably get a part time job, because money is tight, but I'm going to hang on for a while longer and see if I can make this work.
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