Time is rushing past; how are we starting week 4? That's both a rhetorical question and a real one: how are you, this week, at this point in the session and the season?
I'll save my personal response for the comments, but you can guess some of it from what I'm using for the prompt this week: Julia Cameron on the "creative U-turn."
"Recovering from artist's block, like recovering from any major illness or injury, requires a commitment to health. At some point, we must make an active choice to relinquish the joys and privileges accorded to the emotional invalid. A productive artist is quite often a happy person. This can be very threatening as a self-concept to those who are used to getting their needs met by being unhappy. . . . We get more sympathy as crippled artists than as functional ones. . . . We are now on the road, and the road is scary. We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps. . . .
"In dealing with our creative U-turns, we must first of all extend ourselves some sympathy. . . . Typically, when we take a creative U-turn, we are doubly shamed: first by our fear and second by our reaction to it. Again, let me say it helps to remember that all careers have them."
Some of her exercises for recovery: name one of the U-turns you have taken. Then another. Then the worst one. Forgive yourself. Notice your resistance. Choose one, and list the steps you might take to mend it. Admit that you need help. Choose a totem, "something you immediately feel a protective fondness toward. Give your totem a place of honor and then honor it by not beating up on your artist child."
Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, pp. 154-61.
Some of us are working on creative projects, and others on scholarly ones, but there have been threads in comments about blocks, resentments, and getting in our own way. I hope these ideas may help to work through whatever bumps in the road you're noticing. If these things don't seem relevant right now, maybe consider a period in the past when you dealt with something like this; think about how you got through it, and appreciate your recovery.
Goals for the coming week:
Daisy
Pack office, arrange trucking
Write reference/award letters for three people
Finish figures for old paper
Try again with new paper
Pack up rest of office
Copy edits for almost published paper
Help with edits for accepted with minor revisions paper
Meetings and emails about research money transfers
Dame Eleanor Hull
- 4 days work on conference paper
- 4 days work on fall grad class
- get new phone, new driver's license, new transponder
- 4 days weeding or other garden tasks
- finish Great Closet Cleaning
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Finish up the loose ends of the training, moving into the revision phase of training.
Get through a meeting-rich week.
Finish the “listen to me sing my own praises” report.
Read a few chapters on women translators.
heu mihi
1. Finish my part of the proofs of next journal issue
2. Finish reading academic book & book for pleasure
3. Content edits of revised article (for journal)
4. Work on revisions of intro to edited collection
5. Work through ch. 1 and sketch out where it's going/second part of chapter
Humming42
1 stay current on writing classes
2 submit an overdue book review
3 sort out bookmarks for Tiny Project
4 continue working on media literacy class
5 a new one: drink more water
JaneB
1) work no more than 10 hours
2) make some lists for smaller things that fit under the areas of personal replenishment, reducing next year's pressures and fun/creative stuff.
3) replenishment: back to basics - keep it up! Eating plenty of fruit and veg, drinking enough water, a small exercise habit (10 minutes a day of deliberate exercise), a small chore habit (5 minutes of picking up or one of the recurring chores like a load of laundry each day), journal daily
4) pressure reduction: if I have room in the 10 hours, review my honours module and decide what can stay from this year's iteration and what I can easily and quickly refresh. STICK to one online meeting a day... social stuff is meant to be good for a person, but I find it extra exhausting at the moment, plus talking to people face to face makes it extra hard to say no!
5) fun/creative: write a letter to a friend/read for half an hour at least 3 days/do at least two crochet stripes on the "desert colours" blanket project/play D&D or write another job board game/play with watercolours a couple of times.
Karen
-Final set of marking completed
-Get sem 2 unit overview populated, generate syllabi and contact tutors
-Intentionally write on own stuff each day
-Contact internal and external people on grant application, get on site and start populating form
-Do the winter festival things on weekend
It's not exactly a U-turn I'm facing, but I feel considerable reluctance to deal with a lot of the tasks on my list. Many of them are small. Most will contribute to my well-being. Some will even get me money. But I just don't want to do them. This past week, I had pretty much One Job, finishing the conference paper that I'll give in a few days, and it was nice to be able to focus on that one thing. Lots of little things, or tasks that fall into a lot of different categories, are much harder for me to face. The "doubly shamed" part of Cameron's observation is very accurate. I need to accept that, however "dumb" it may seem, I have these feelings about the tasks, and think about what I can do to help myself do them, instead of giving myself grief for not doing them.
ReplyDeleteThis has been worse because of some minor injuries. I don't deal well with pain.
How I did:
- 4 days work on conference paper YES (and then some: I should have just said "finish it")
- 4 days work on fall grad class TWO (I think)
- get new phone, new driver's license, new transponder NO, NO, YES (DMV canceled my appointment for the license; I'm now putting off dealing with that till after the conference)
- 4 days weeding or other garden tasks YES
- finish Great Closet Cleaning NO (but some small bits done, so progress continues)
New goals:
- go to conference and have a good time
- make travel preparations
- recover from conference/travel
Sorry to hear about the small injuries - they can be so niggly, and it feels petty to complain, yet it's like a raspberry pip in the teeth - trivial but also miserable!
DeleteMe being me, I immediately start to over-think what a U-turn might be - it's easy to assume it must be something substantial like "I'm abandoning my novel and switching to write a screenplay" or "I'm not able to make a full living from my painting without overwork, so I'm returning to being an employee three days a week". It's really helpful to see you interpret this in relation to all the smaller choices and failures we face every week and every day - facing them too with kindness is really challenging but also unblocking. Much of life would be a great deal easier if we were just the brains on sticks academia seems to fetishize...
Ha! Yes, if I could just deal with all those little things completely rationally, they would go much better. But there are an awful lot of feelings associated with them, especially guilt about not having done them yet: very much not helpful, but certainly a factor.
DeleteHmmmm… Currently all my issues are external so I will think back to regular life… For me the most successful recovery from blocks and setback and resistance always happens when there is a small success (or a big one) that helps me out of the rut. That is sometimes a small thing, like nice edits on something from a coauthor, or something bigger like a fun conference, good talk given, or an acceptance for a submission. Sometimes more prosaically it ends up being a deadline that forces me to do something and then that turns into a small victory that ends up being the needed kick in the pants…
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals:
Pack office, arrange trucking DONE
Write reference/award letters for three people DONE
Finish figures for old paper NOPE
Try again with new paper NOPE
Pack up rest of office DONE
Copy edits for almost published paper OTHER PEOPLE DID THEM
Help with edits for accepted with minor revisions paper TURNS OUT I AM NOT NEEDED, YAY!
Meetings and emails about research money transfers DONE
Got lots of things done this week, most significantly clearing out my office, and packing my entire sample collection. I culled it ruthlessly, only the important archival samples are coming along. That is still going to be at least two pallets, but that is fine. I’m sore and tired from hauling around buckets of rocks and literally throwing them over an embankment… This week is going to be odd, lots of meetings in first half, and then a trip to new place for planning and attending a few in-person events. It will be fun but three days away is not great for all the other things that have to be done!
This week’s goals:
Start house packing in earnest
Arrange moving company
DO literally anything on old paper
Send off last batch of samples for analysis
Grad student proposal edits
Visit new place for planning
Congratulations on getting your office and samples packed! It sounds quite therapeutic to throw rocks over an embankment, much more satisfying than putting stacks of paper in the recycling!
DeleteLots of useful done there!
DeleteYour story about the embankment reminds me of a very funny fieldwork incident on an undergrad trip a few years ago... we were in the Mediterranean, and students were looking at collections of shells (LITERAL beach studies) from the modern beaches and also from eroding deposits from former beaches which today are above sea level. A group got SUPER excited about their collection and their interpretations - they'd found lots of unexpected tropical material, and for some reason they chose to work quite a lot on it before talking to the staff expert on the topic....
who had to point up the hill to the carpark we'd used, which belonged to an oceanographic research institute... they'd not followed instructions about where to sample because this place looked better, which it did because it was the equivalent of the other side of your embankment...
oh that's hilarious! I can just imagine the crestfallen faces of the students, poor things.
DeleteMight as well first carry on with the prompt response. Reading the text made me think of large changes - I've been an academic for all of my post PhD life, and it's getting steadily less good for me and feeling less long term sustainable year by year. And we all know how tricky it can be - thinking about alternative kinds of work I might be fitted for, which would fit with the things I need at least now (in terms of income, but also I don't want a commute and would prefer mostly WFH, and would rather not have to try & relocate myself as well as deal with a career change... plus I suit academe - my fundamental "what I was born to do" is "learn things and tell other people about them" - I've done it since I was a tiny child, it's something friends and family complain about in more or less tolerant, amused ways, and the combination of research and mentoring/facilitating of the academic's role just delivers and works to most of my strengths. I may not be in the perfect field, I know I'm not in the best job or working for the best employer, but I haven't seen alternatives that look like they'd meet those same needs. Plus sunk costs fallacy!
ReplyDeleteIt also had me thinking about the emotional weight of tasks. As you probably know, I've been on sick leave for a couple of months, BUT after the first three weeks I let my own guilt and the externally imposed guilt (not necessarily intentional - but phrases like "it will be letting the students down" and "it's too much of a burden to ask other colleagues to take on" and "I have no idea who else could do this" and just a general tone of "everyone else is struggling too" which presses aaaalllll my buttons) push me into doing some grading - and so I have been failing both at properly being on sick leave AND at marking to deadlines/doing my full share of the work at a heavy time of year, which is a whole pile of emotional nonsense I've been arguing with. I think it was probably the right decision given what I'm actually dealing with including my own circumstances and personality - but that doesn't make it easy to deal with the emotional baggage!
Things to think about. And I guess the third is that the whole foggy-brain no concentration no interest mental and physical stuff I'm off with IS a form of block - I'm not sure what word goes BEFORE block, but it is akin to an artist's block in some ways. So that is worth mulling over.
I've done two things in the last couple of weeks to get help with working through those things - restarted counselling, and taken the first concrete step towards being referred for assessment for potential neurodiversity, to find out if I have a named disability. Which I have been trying to get around to for about three years now. A small thing, but... I did it.
I decided not to try to edit the "artist" part of the quotation, but I think there are a lot of pieces of ourselves that can get blocked---artist, scholar, (self)-nurturer, thinker---plug in whatever works for you. It sounds like endurance is one of your strengths, which makes it hard to stop enduring and change something, even if that is just to rest.
DeleteRight, goals.
DeleteLAST WEEK:
1) work no more than 10 hours NO - I got referred to Occ Health, who can't see me until mid July, and looking back at how many hours I've done whilst officially being off, I decided to try to start an informal phased return - I was starting to worry about a long period of sick leave affecting FUTURE entitlement to sick leave, especially when I wasn't really on leave. I aimed for 15 hours and did about 17.
2) make some lists for smaller things that fit under the areas of personal replenishment, reducing next year's pressures and fun/creative stuff. no. Definitely still struggling with list-resistance...
3) replenishment: back to basics - keep it up! Eating plenty of fruit and veg, drinking enough water, a small exercise habit (10 minutes a day of deliberate exercise), a small chore habit (5 minutes of picking up or one of the recurring chores like a load of laundry each day), journal daily more days than not for all of these - will count that
4) pressure reduction: if I have room in the 10 hours, review my honours module and decide what can stay from this year's iteration and what I can easily and quickly refresh. STICK to one online meeting a day... social stuff is meant to be good for a person, but I find it extra exhausting at the moment, plus talking to people face to face makes it extra hard to say no! no, there wasn't time. it turned out that no-one had picked up the marking for the first year core module AND that there were resits from first semester. So I'm Still Marking. Even though the official final deadline is past. Because no one else is responding, the Teaching Tsar is away until the exam boards start, & we NEED to find out if those first years need to do resits in August... I'm CROSS about that. Very cross. But I'm Still Fecking Marking. Did manage to stick to one meeting with people a day. It was hard...
5) fun/creative: write a letter to a friend/read for half an hour at least 3 days/do at least two crochet stripes on the "desert colours" blanket project/play D&D or write another job board game/play with watercolours a couple of times. NO, YES (and more because I found a couple of books that better fit my mood), YES and a little extra, YES and PARTLY, and one play with watercolour and one bit of sketching plus I made a Father's Day card with a drawing on it.
NEXT WEEK'S GOALS:
Delete1) work no more than 20 hours (I have to go to a meeting on my "no work day" which is a pain, but... it's an exam meeting and I need to be there partly because the Teaching Tsar is clearly not across my programmes (the current TT has previous teaching experience only in the higher years of modules which are designed primarily for the social science/humanities led version of our four broad programme categories, & I'm currently programme director for one of the STEM categories and for the "some of everything" category - one reason I want to be TT is that I have for the last 6 years taught a core first year module which all four categories take, so I innately have a very different relationship with students and colleagues around teaching - not necessarily better, but it would be different, and the current situation can be very frustrating!).
2) make some lists for smaller things that fit under the areas of personal replenishment, reducing next year's pressures and fun/creative stuff. I need to make lists...
3) replenishment: back to basics - keep it up! Eating plenty of fruit and veg, drinking enough water, a small exercise habit (10 minutes a day of deliberate exercise), a small chore habit (5 minutes of picking up or one of the recurring chores like a load of laundry each day), journal daily. The weakest area here was chores - surprise surprise - so this is a particular focus.
4) pressure reduction: if I have room in the 20 hours, review my honours module and decide what can stay from this year's iteration and what I can easily and quickly refresh. Add no more meetings (I've got 6 already in the diary... one is with a PGR and will be FUN as he's just been on field work (without me, sadly, but it was HOT last week so I don't feel entirely bereft!!) so there should be lots of juicy data and samples to talk about, one is student support which the TT kind of dropped (not entirely her fault, the student is not the best at speedy replies - but it is summer & the student has a complex of issues), four are more formal and far less interesting).
5) fun/creative: write a letter to a friend/read for half an hour at least 3 days/do at least two crochet stripes on the "desert colours" blanket project/play D&D AND write another job board game/play with watercolours a couple of times.
Thank you DEH, that's a very helpful comment!
DeleteI'm still mulling over that quote, and particularly the ideas of double shame, and what that shame might translate into - my experience of burn out was not only internal damage, but quite a lot of semi-public failure and bridge-burning, which definitely resonates with double shame. In U-turning, I've found that I do more consciously check in by asking if I feel right with myself, and right with the people my actions affect, and trying to take earlier action if the answer is no (and sometimes that action can be a conscious choice not to do things, or to remind myself about my sphere of control and its limits). So that reflection can be positive, but it also does involve sitting in a place of uncertainty, second-guessing myself, and discomfort, which a large part of my ego does not like, does not want. Work in progress...
ReplyDeleteLast week
-Final set of marking completed - YES!
-Get sem 2 unit overview populated, generate syllabi and contact tutors - overview roughly populated, tutors contacted, syllabi started
-Intentionally write on own stuff each day - no
-Contact internal and external people on grant application, get on site and start populating form - did just before putting in this update, so thank you accountability people
-Do the winter festival things on weekend - yes, fun, but major logistical hurdles now as the strain of the return trip was too much and the car is officially dead and the backup options are caught on supply chain issues and so I get a crash course in car-free living for the immediate future (/vent)
Next week:
-Finish syllabi, get materials/tech requests in, make progress on first module VILE content
-Write on my own research each day (read for my own research each day)
- (if permitted by gatekeepers), get draft grant complete
- conference paper proposal in
- 2 x yoga (livestream classes from home)
We're all works in progress.
DeleteI'm so sorry to hear about the car. I hope you get an A in your crash course in living car-free!
It sounds like you made good progress on the teaching things, so yay!
Oh no the poor car! That must be so frustrating! Lots of other progress though...
DeleteI'm leaving this afternoon (Monday), so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to comment the rest of the week. I will if I can!
ReplyDeleteBurglars, Sir John will be at home, so don't even bother . . .
I'll try to be around!! Have a great trip!
DeleteMy major block last week (because I really had one) had nothing to do with creative process, or internal resistance, really, but rather with another left-field curve-ball sports-metaphor-of-choice regarding my stupid visa application, which REALLY SHOULD BE A NO-BRAINER. The necessary document is now in transit from France, and I will overnight it to the consulate when it arrives (I hope) next week, and IT SHOULD BE FINE, but the stress monkeys completely took over my body and soul and I got nothing done for two days, then it was the weekend...and now I feel more equanimous, but I will not fully unclench until our passports are back in our possession, visas within.
ReplyDeleteI know that's a little off-base from the prompt, but it's what I've got for now.
It did make me reflect on my complete and utter inability to cope with things that are uncertain and entirely out of my control. I'm actually considering therapy when I get back in January, because, while it's infrequent, it's borderline debilitating.
Annnnyway, here's how I did:
1. Finish my part of the proofs of next journal issue - YES
2. Finish reading academic book & book for pleasure - YES
3. Content edits of revised article (for journal) - NO
4. Work on revisions of intro to edited collection - SOME, not all of it
5. Work through ch. 1 and sketch out where it's going/second part of chapter - NO, not at all
This week:
1. Complete intro revisions (my share, for now)
2. Content edits for journal article
3. Buy and plant pachysandra if it's still available
4. Get new driver's license; take car in for oil change; order contacts; figure out prescription
5. Read and take a few notes on 3 articles for tenure review
6. Make progress on super long book that I've been reading for months
7. Exercise again
8. Read over resubmitted essay
9. Start planning short trips
That's clearly WAY too much. But I've already actually done one or two items on the list--today, so they count!--so I'm going for it.
Oh the joys of bureaucracy... hope all goes smoothly from here on out!
Delete