Apparently several people have had A Week, to judge by goals, carry-overs, and comments from last week. Best wishes to those who are ill, or overwhelmed, or any combination thereof. We'll keep on keeping on, floating like mist, flowing like water, and/or unyielding as ice, depending on abilities and circumstances, and we'll be sending good vibes to all members past and present who can use them.
Shape of the week: arrow. What are your associations? Up, down, forward, back? Archery? If you sit a squat up-arrow on its base, you might see a Christmas tree, or a fire hydrant. ⇒⇑⇓⇐⇯
Daisy
FINISH grant and send to colleagues
for reading NOW REALLY URGENT!!!
Do revisions for paper that just came back URGENT
Dame Eleanor Hull
- keep smoothing the essay
- Notes on MET book and C&C read 2 weeks ago
- Grade new set of undergrad papers
- Devise guides for in-class peer review (now urgent)
- Do some House/Life/Car thing
- Have fun at Saturday dinner with friends
- do yoga at least 4 times, weights x2, walk x5
heu mihi
Recover from COVID
Humming42 (carried over)
1 catch up on grading (already!)
2 write 1000 words for Food chapter
3 create module structure for online class
4 catch up on emails and organizing online files
JaneB
1) do two days on campus without
guilt at not being there more
2) don't do more than 9 hours a day max. Aim for one day with NO WORK.
3) prepare teaching for the following week
4) Rewrite another two sections of draft paper
5) do minimum house chores that keep getting lost.
Julie
1. Keep on top of teaching, but try
not to let it encroach other areas.
2. Keep Thursday research-only.
3. Get to writing group on Friday for at least a couple of hours before
teaching.
4. Enjoy some 'me' time while kids away for half-term.
One of the members of my RL writing group, working on a long project, sends us whole chapters with new or re-worked material marked by arrows at beginning and end of the section, and I've started doing that too. That's my current association with arrows.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- keep smoothing the essay: In Progress
- Notes on MET book and C&C read 2 weeks ago: NO (um, is this now a month ago?)
- Grade new set of undergrad papers: NO
- Devise guides for in-class peer review (now urgent): YES
- Do some House/Life/Car thing: YES (got new registration sticker, did a little more garden clean-up)
- Have fun at Saturday dinner with friends: NO (boo, injury to one of them meant we had to cancel)
- do yoga at least 4 times, weights x2, walk x5: YES to all.
To be honest, I am dragging my ass lately, with no good reason or excuse. I'm doing the bare minimum and spending a lot of time reading fluff, and I don't know what's up with that, unless I'm the group's designated relaxer. When I do work, it's fine: I'm interested in research, and class stuff goes well enough, but activation energy seems very high. Maybe it's time to get out the SAD light and see if that does me any good. I don't feel depressed, just lazy. Very lazy. Maybe I'm storing up energy because in November I'm going to have to be on campus very long days twice a week instead of having only one very long day? Honestly, it doesn't seem like anyone else has found my lost mojo. Maybe all of our mojo is off drinking mojitos in the Mojave or somewhere.
New goals are going to look very familiar:
- keep smoothing the essay
- Notes on MET book and C&C read 4 weeks ago
- Grade new set of undergrad papers
- Do some House/Life/Car thing
- do yoga at least 4 times, weights x2, walk x5
Maybe lazy is what you need right now? A sign of previously overdoing it? There's a quote I love from Katherine May's Wintering - I can't remember it exactly, but it's that rest is a radical activity these days and one we need to reclaim. I try and keep that in mind when I beat myself up for being 'lazy'. Why not read fluff?
DeleteIf my mojo is off drinking a mojito, it can bring me one back, please.
We are human beings, not human doings. Sometimes just being is what we need to do!
DeleteI heard a similar comment to Julie in the context of a podcast about sleep, and about how the modern world's inventions have all been about being more and more productive - electrical light and modern work patterns and 24-7 cities and entertainment and gadgetry all eat into the night, and down time, and rest... we're biologically designed and adapted to spend a lot of time NOT rushing around. hunter-gatherers in reasonably good environments got all their 'work' done in a few hours a day, leaving time for stories and play and napping and crafts...
Well, call me a hunter-gatherer then! I wish I could think that Julie has a point, but I don't believe I've overdone it any time in the past 20 years. I'm a rather low-energy sort to start with, and have learned the hard way to pace myself carefully. It's a good thing that doing little bits adds up over time, and also that I can manage the occasional binge when something really has to get done or I'm well into the Zone, because I don't actually get a lot of satisfaction from crossing things off lists and seeing that I've put in X hours. The rebel in me just rolls my eyes and thinks "yeah, and here comes the next batch of stuff, big deal, it's like housework, you're never really done."
DeleteAnd yet somehow I do get the most important stuff done (or maybe I just mean urgent), and people seem to think well of me (because I meet deadlines for small stuff), so I get away with being, er, low-energy. I don't volunteer for stuff, I don't have ambitions to edit a journal or hold office in a national (or even local) organization. I don't want to retire: I already do as much gardening as I want and read as much fluff as I think is good for me. I just want to teach my classes and do my research, with as little beyond that as I can get away with, and of course all the necessary Life Stuff.
Sounds to me like you're just channelling your inner cat - you want to do what you do, and stuff everyone else! :-)
Delete=^..^=
Sending strength to everyone who is struggling. I have been doing ok-ish, but it feels like a tricky balancing act. If I look down (ahead), I feel paralysed. Last week was productive, but only because my kids were away for most of it. It brought home to me that there just isn't time for everything now I'm solo parenting.
ReplyDeleteArrows: I thought focused, hitting targets. Maybe trying to keep goals in mind and not get distracted? But also straight lines, whereas real life is more meandering and complex, and often where research or writing ends up is a long way from where the original aim was.
Last week's goals
1. Keep on top of teaching, but try not to let it encroach other areas. - Mostly.
2. Keep Thursday research-only. Maybe two-thirds? I did do research, but also ended up doing something for a junior colleague I mentor. It needed doing, but ideally not on my research day.
3. Get to writing group on Friday for at least a couple of hours before teaching. Yes, and it was glorious. Peace and quiet and time in the writing 'zone'.
4. Enjoy some 'me' time while kids away for half-term. - Extra run, dinner with a friend, lots of Netflix.
This week's goals:
1. Minimal teaching prep, but do a bit of work on next term's module while I have more time this week.
2. Do some research.
3. Spend 4 hours at writing group on Friday
4. Referee an article
5. Book Covid jab for son.
6. House stuff.
Solo parenting, especially the kind you're doing, is indeed a different ballgame. It's one thing for people who can send their kids to the divorced parent for even smallish chunks of time, and even those who deliberately had children as single people are at least used to the constraints involved, but for you it's especially hard because you know what it was like to have a partner in that enterprise and now you just don't. So just focusing on the present day/week seems like the best thing you can do, and whatever you do, don't compare yourself to people who do have partners! If everyone is fed and clean when they go to school/work, that's a win!
DeleteThank you - I try not to make comparisons, but it's hard not to sometimes!
DeleteI'm definitely overwhelmed and I might also be ill - I have a scratchy throat and a runny nose and a bit of a cough and a sinus headache. So I have been Not A Good Workaholic Students-First Person and decided that I was going to "call in" and not go onto campus tomorrow (which is my birthday - I am a "leftover from Hallowe'en"). I'm still teaching 5 hours online, but I decided I was not feeling well enough to deal with getting up around 6am to get a place to park on campus, with not being able to blow my nose when mask wearing (therefore needing to do a fair bit of going-to-safer-spaces to blow said nose), with not being able to sip water throughout class - I talked to a student today for an hour WITH water and my voice was cracking by the end, so. It better just be a cold. Or allergies. Or your basic wiped out.
ReplyDeleteWe DID manage to get everyone together to play a short Hollowe'en D&D game this weekend, the first time everyone was able to join in in the last month, and it went down well, so that was a win.
Anyway, obligatory whine whined, arrows! My first thought was of the arrows I use when I switch from computer to paper for writing - I either print out a draft or I reverse-outline the draft then print out the outline, and I get to work with pen and ink - and that always leads to LOTS of curly lines with arrows moving things around, connecting a point to some thoughts I fitted in elsewhere on the page, marking links I need to make later with words. Open, free-flowing, free-flying arrows!
Arrows feel like freedom, like flow, like movement. They herald change and transformation in equations, they make me think of stories I loved ("Bowmen of Crecy", tales of Robin Hood, C.J.Cherryh's Morgaine Series, bent-legged steppe horse-nomads with uncanny skills), and of Zeno's paradox. All the lovely words and connections, fletching and bracers and the story behind the insulting two-fingered gesture. I did do a bit of archery as a teen - loved it, it was Non-School Sport where people were nice and I was actually not totally incompetent (although I learnt the painful, purple-and-green-skin-for-weeks way that female elbows aren't like male ones and why the Amazon's were reputed to have cut off a breast...). I'd like to do it again sometime...
LAST WEEK:
1) do two days on campus without guilt at not being there more actually managed both days! And did not feel guilty. Felt disconnected and undervalued! And achy...
2) don't do more than 9 hours a day max. Aim for one day with NO WORK. did less and less as the week went on - I ran out of steam... and it's BLESSED READING WEEK next week so I knew I didn't have much teaching prep this week so things got to drift...
3) prepare teaching for the following week YES
4) Rewrite another two sections of draft paper ye-esss - we actually decided we didn't have time to write all the planned sections before the deadline so one I needed to write got smooshed into two others...
5) do minimum house chores that keep getting lost. er. Well. I did some laundry...
THE COMING WEEK:
1) don't do more than 9 hours a day max. Aim for one day with NO WORK.
2) prepare teaching for two week's hence
3) work on the paper (it's due next Monday)
4) list out some easy steps on the Toy Project for next week (which is so badly neglected)
5) do minimum house chores that keep getting lost.
6) do something creative - D&D, words on a page, SOMETHING.
Happy birthday! Quite right not to go into campus. Hope you can take some time for yourself today.
DeleteI love all your arrow associations!
Happy birthday! And yay for Halloween D&D! This doesn't seem like a good year for NaNoWriMo, but I hope that you can make November a creative month more generally.
DeleteHappy birthday!!! Hope you had a fantastic day and some peace and quiet!
DeleteArrows… All I can come up with are “slings and arrows”… I did spend some time this weekend making arrows for kid’s Halloween costume so that was fun. I do enjoy doodling arrow shapes too – always good for highlighting points in writing I guess!
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals:
FINISH grant and send to colleagues for reading NOW REALLY URGENT!!! DONE
Do revisions for paper that just came back URGENT… DECIDED THAT IT WAS NOT URGENT AFTER ALL… SO NOPE…
Last week was the busiest of the term for sure. I ran field trips for a class every day and we had a student conference on the weekend so everyone is pretty tired this week. Tomorrow is take your kid to work day so as much fun as it will be it is also a dead loss for actual work, oh well… Will get up early and write so I have something done at least. I hope to get the grant submitted this week so it doesn’t wreck another weekend. I want a quiet one!
This week’s goals:
Incorporate all edits, polish, and submit grant
Catch up on ALL the grading and class prep for the next month.
Catch up on some dropped balls related to association work and conferences.
Field trips every day sounds like a lot! I am amazed that you got so much done on the grant in addition to that, and it sounds like a good choice to put off the revisions. I hope kid-to-work day is fun and that you can then get lots done Thursday and Friday so you can use the weekend to recover from the previous two weeks!
DeleteA field trip every day sounds exhausting! And a student conference at the weekend is brutal. I wish there wasn't still so much insistence on conferences happening at weekends. I'm on the committee for an annual conference here in the UK, but the conference itself is the first weekend of the Easter holiday, so have already told my co-organisers I probably won't be showing up. I feel it discriminates against parents, but also just contributes to this constant 24/7 work ethic which does no one any good. But not much sign of things changing, unfortunately. Hope you get a break this coming weekend.
DeleteHi everyone,
ReplyDeleteProbably not much point in writing here seeing as it's already (next) Sunday morning, but I wanted to quickly say that Covid has been recovered from, and we were able to salvage our trip. Just back last night. And I'm looking forward to re-entering some sort of structure! At least for a few days!
Also looking forward to catching up with you all. See you soon.