Here in the UK the weather is getting hotter, the days are visibly a little shorter, and social media is full of posts about the first harvests coming in from peoples' gardens. Graduation finally happened, and urgent messages about Welcome Week are flying around. It feels like, even though there is summer left, the count down to busy season is starting (and we start back with students mid September, later than most north Americans, so it might be even more so for you). In our "preparing for the journey" theme that might translate into beginning to think about repacking our bags and what supplies we need to add to it. Let's start by thinking about how to keep summer feelings going, bringing along a souvenir and some lasting benefits from our pause. Examples might be bottling and canning the harvest, taking a good set of photographs of your garden in full bloom to look back on, pre-ordering a new novel by a good writer to arrive in a busy week like a gift from your past self, making sure you have supplies or a structure for a hobby you want to keep practicing, or doing a house project to make it easier to relax or spend some non-work awake time enjoyably. Any suggestions, or things to add to your plans for the next few weeks?
LAST WEEK'S GOALS:
Daisy
Field work – be efficient, kind, and supportive,
and just suck it up…
Extra points for at
least trying to have a little fun with the week…
Try not to panic about
all the things the house needs done to it...
Dame Eleanor Hull
- daily exercise, safe food, bed no later than
midnight
- Two hours x 5 on
research
- One hour x 4 on
teaching prep
- Half hour x 4 on
dead language
- Life Stuff as
possible
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell (carried over)
Enjoy the week off.
Send off the mid-internship evaluation to the
requisite folks.
Swim in my younger daughter’s pool (such luxury!)
Read and write as the impulse hits.
heu mihi
1. Deal with those journal articles.
2. Read through
revised essays for collection (4 of them).
JaneB
1) work no more than 30 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 25 hours, review my honours module and decide
what can stay from this year's iteration and what I can easily and quickly
refresh. Also have meeting to divvy up work for the shared project module.
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, write another job board game or do other prep/play with watercolours a
couple of times.
Karen (held over)
- 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)
Keeping summer going is a great thought! For that I’m going to make Fall gardening plans now so I know what to aim for instead of forgetting everything and having to guess at what I wanted to do. There will be no canning or jam-making, I resolve to support all the local markets and buy other people’s canned/jammed harvests! I love pre-ordering books, always forget and then they are brilliant surprises. I have 4 new books I’m saving up for a rainy/stressful day sometime in the next month or so. This coming month would be a great time to see if I can get a daily (or something close to it) instrument-playing habit started. Maybe I will add that to my last few weeks of goals for August!
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals:
Field work – be efficient, kind, and supportive, and just suck it up… DONE!
Extra points for at least trying to have a little fun with the week… GOT ICE CREAM
Try not to panic about all the things the house needs done to it…
Not a bad week of field stuff, we got enough done that I can leave student to do the rest. Some of it was quite fun. Whatever happens there is enough for a project so ’m not too worried what they do or do not get done.
The house is a bloody great big stress-generator. We knew some things needed to be done but there are a lot more things really wrong than we were told by house inspector and some of them are time sensitive (he was either bad at his job or not particularly ethical, I’m hoping for just bad…). Partner is freaking out like there is no tomorrow so I’m being very calm. We are lucky that we can pay people to fix things. But it is also time and inconvenience and disruption and waiting for people to be available and all that stuff so not fun…
This is going to be a rough week, big medical thing for partner so he’s stressed about that too, poor thing, there is nothing I can do to help. I plan to work like a maniac for the first three days of the week so I can be on medical supervision for the rest.
This week’s goals:
Get data analysis done and sent off
Write grant application preliminary notice
Update grant agency paperwork
Do not try to micromanage student’s field work from a distance
Pick a section from old paper and finish it
Patience, patience, patience in all house-human interactions
Medical stuff for partner
Get back on exercise wagon slowly and carefully
Ugh, I am so sorry about the house and inspector! We had that situation at the last house, and it truly sucked: lots of anxiety and expense. I hope that yours are all fixable and that there are other good things about the house. Also I wish your partner well with the medical thing.
DeleteThe field work is over, some was fun, and the student is set! That is excellent news. So yay for that!
Oh, that sounds like a lot of stress! But time will pass and it will be better....
DeleteJaneB and I are on the same page w/r/t thinking about extending the summer! I started a re-read of Agatha Raisin mysteries, found that my local library doesn't have them all but that I can ILL them through work, and decided I'll wait to do that till I'm back on campus regularly. I could have them delivered to a school nearer where I live, but I like the idea of extending my comfort read into the semester. I have started harvesting greens from my garden, and they'll keep going for awhile; before frosts come, I'll pick, cook, and freeze everything. We've now scheduled our road trip so I feel like there's a "hard end" to the summer (not sure why the start of the semester doesn't feel that way, probably just the amount of time till classes start vs amount of time till we leave for this vacation).
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- daily exercise, safe food, bed no later than midnight: MOSTLY. Still working on the bedtime/sleep problems, and made one food mistake that had me up till 4:00 a.m. But last night was good, so it's a good start to the week. Also I'm going for walks again, and the feet are holding up, so another good thing.
- Two hours x 5 on research. x3 or so, I think. Decent progress.
- One hour x 4 on teaching prep. Also x3. More progress.
- Half hour x 4 on dead language. x1. Better than 0.
- Life Stuff as possible. Um . . . does the trip planning count? I made a campus library run, returning a small suitcase full of books, but then checking out enough to re-fill the case! But that's more work than Life, though we also got together with campus-town friends while there.
Between the prospect of being out of town and making noticeable progress on work last week, I feel like I am moving to a state where I will be driven to tackle some of the Life Stuff I've been putting off. I'm working on breaking down some tasks into smaller pieces, and focusing on the benefits of having the un-break-down-able ones done.
New goals:
- daily exercise, safe food, bed no later than 11
- Two hours x 5 on research
- One hour x 4 on teaching prep
- Life Stuff as possible
Trip planning totally counts! And a suitcase full of new books is always a good thing... Good luck with the Life tasks, those are necessary but draining and they just keep multiplying!
DeleteI think that's one reason I put them off! I know there will just be more, so why even start . . .
DeleteI haven't posted yet because I'm preoccupied with actually preparing for the journey--we leave on Monday! For almost 5 months! And other people will be living in our house! So I'm not even going to check in or post goals; what needs to happen will happen because it simply must. I'll keep up with what you all write, though...!
ReplyDeleteBon courage! Tour ira bien a la fin, et sinon, c'est pas la fin.
DeleteTout. Not tour. Desolee.
DeleteTu es préoccupée par la Tour, peut être? (Merci!)
Delete