On the way home last night I mentioned to Suz that WUTS had 37 live weekly shows on the schedule for this semester, more than any previous semester since we moved back here in 2009. I modestly added “Maybe I have accomplished something over there.” She laughed and pointed out that I have actually accomplished quite a lot over the past three years, both at WUTS and elsewhere in the Sewanee community.
And ya know what? She’s right. As I look over the bundle of work I’ve done here during our Seminary years, it’s a fairly impressive pile of stuff, if I do say so myself. Better equipment, more transmitter power, audio quality and internet streaming for WUTS are just part of it. Then there’s the new websites I developed: for WUTS, Otey Parish and the Episcopal Preaching Foundation, live video streaming for big University events, helping build advanced A/V systems for classrooms, conference rooms and sacred spaces, and assisting professors and administrators with a myriad of technical issues.
All of which could have been done by someone else, or a combination of people, but they were all done by me. So forgive me if I take a little victory lap.
But School of Theology graduation is now less than three months away, and I must accept the strong likelihood that we will be leaving, sooner rather than later, this place that we love so dearly, where she and I first met three decades ago. That means someone else is going to be responsible for the Otey Notes newsletter. Someone else will run the audio equipment in All Saints chapel. Someone else will be Media Services’ “point man” for the Ralston Listening Library. Someone else will need to be the in-home tech support person for about a half-dozen retired priests and other senior citizens of Sewanee.
Because when we leave, I really don’t intend to carry any of my existing Sewanee work with me. There’s too many other projects I want to pursue, but simply have not had the time to, especially over the past 18 months. Somehow, over the next 90 days, I have to wrap all this stuff, with a nice, neat bow, so as to not leave people who depend on my services in a lurch.
The winding-down starts now.