2016: Where did the work go?

There are reasons aplenty to hate this wretched year, but I’m just going to focus on the professional side for me. 2016 was a year I felt like I just couldn’t get stuff done.

On paper, it was not a horrible year. On paper, the book Freshwater Crayfish was released, which I co-edited and had a couple of chapters in. But in reality, the physical copy of that book was released in August 2015.

I also had one other book chapter, in Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, back in February. But the production on that book had dragged on for so long (I first blogged that it was coming out late in 2014) that it certainly didn’t feel like it was something new.

My frustrations were compounded because I had submitted a couple of papers early in the year; one early January, in fact. But for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, the editorial process for both of them dragged out longer than usual and they won’t see the light of day until 2017.

(At least, I hope they will appear in 2017. One journal that has accepted one of my articles still has items in its pre-print queue today, 30 December 2016, that are dated 30 December 2015. A whole year as a “forthcoming” article? That sucks.)

The number of blog posts was down here on NeuroDojo, but holding reasonably steady on Marmorkrebs and Better Posters. I have a lot of blog posts that I started but wasn’t able to finish.

I did teach a lot this year. I just got through the heaviest teaching load in a semester I’ve had in a very long time (and am so pleased nobody yelled at me, which I was convinced was about to happen any day). I did two graduate classes that were new to me for the first time ever. I taught a grad course in summer. And I taught the #SciFund poster class for the second time.

For me, professionally, 2016 feels like “the one that got away.”