Happy New year to everyone!
We have a brand new TLQ session starting this week! Welcome to everyone, it is nice to be back. I’m Daisy, and HeuMihi has offered to co-host so we will alternate check-in posts. We will try to get posts up on Saturday night or early Sunday to make weekend check-ins work for all our time zones.
Shameless borrowing of text below from those who have been good enough to host here previously...
The format will be the same as ever. We will start setting goals for the session this week. Goals can be in any aspect of life although the key focus is often writing tasks that are personally and professionally important but that never quite tip over into important AND urgent. Urgent things sometimes find their way in here too, that is completely ok too, and process goals are also most welcome. Each week there will be a discussion topic or prompt to write about if you feel so inclined, no pressure or expectations. We’ll remind everyone of their big session goals about midway through the session (first weekend of March), I for one always find those quite a surprise when they pop up… We’ll go for 16 weeks, with our last day on the weekend of April 30th which of course feels very far away!
Anyone new or old is welcome to join. I would love for people to consider inviting a friend or acquaintance or colleague to join in, we would be thrilled to welcome new guests and expand our circle. And finally, don't worry if you miss a few check-ins. Life happens. This is a supportive, generous space with no intimidation factor so enjoy it! If you are not up to regular check-ins we would still love to hear from you occasionally.
So for this week:
1. Tell
us a bit about yourself. What's your main focus at the moment? You are welcome
to be vague and mysterious in the interest of maintaining anonymity while still
introducing yourself to the group.
2.
Post
your goals for this session (or if you want to do them next week put in a note
so I remember to go and find them later!).
3. Post
goals for this coming week, ideally they will kick-start the process of working
towards the session goals. Or they might just clear the deck for a nice clean
start.
4. Or just come say hello and tell us how you’ve been over
the break and then come back next week for session goals and discussion.
5. For a theme this session I’ve been thinking that many of us are coming off a pretty challenging semester, so I want to do something along the lines of “favourites” or “things that make us happy” or “small wins and pleasures”. So, for the start of the session I want to hear about something that falls into the category “small and insignificant to literally everyone else but makes you very happy”… For me one thing that comes to mind is the quite unreasonable satisfaction I get when a cake pops out of the pan without any crumbs lost… Or the joy of opening a brand-new stack of post-it notes in many colours! Or my favourite teacup… See, really tiny things that make us smile…
Our dates are listed below because I usually forget the schedule a quarter of the way in, this will keep it handy for reference.
Jan 7/8 (official start)
March 4/5 (week 8, mid-term post)
April 22/23 (final week for goal setting)
April 29/30 (session reflection on goals)
Welcome back everyone! Have a lovely week!
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI’m Daisy, an early-ish mid-career prof in a physical science field. I have a teenaged kid (baby when I started with this group!!) and two new cats, and a partner who used to commute to different provinces for work but now works remotely from home. In July last year I moved to my dream job at a wonderful small university with excellent undergraduate and graduate degrees in my field. Being here is wonderful and I’m loving the process of becoming part of the program and department.
The break was good, I took a proper break and did almost no work, so I was ready to get back to it. I realized in December that it was the first semester in many years that did not leave me exhausted and burnt out, that was quite a revelation… Everything is better in my new job, and I am grateful every single day. Every bit of work and struggle to get here was worth it!
The new house and associated construction still sucks. I really wanted my library/music/games/crafts space finished and set up over the break. Unfortunately we were hit with the third major plumbing disaster of this renovation project – the contractors had connected a pipe badly, and it leaked for the whole week we used the shower, and eventually broke through the nice new ceiling on Christmas day and flooded the nice new walls/paint/ceiling in my kid’s nice new room. So none of the stuff in the library space could be moved or organized, we are still sleeping in temporary areas, and everything is still a giant mess.
It is going to be a busy term. I am teaching three new undergrad courses (two of them are team-taught so I do parts of them) and one grad course I’ve done before. I also have a new grad student to get going, and one who should be finishing up this term and will need lots of attention.
Session Goals
Get my new lab completely functional and organized
Submit 2 papers that have been languishing for far too long
Get my library/music/games/craft space functional and beautiful
Try two 100-day projects (one with yoga, one with drawing)
Get back on the exercise wagon
Do one fun thing every week, bonus points if it is new
This week’s goals
Order new lab gear and get master list of items needed
Plan out three grant applications for lab stuff and analytical trips
Get the first month of lectures and labs organized and checked over
Paper edits to co-authors for two different papers
Something fun
“Small things irrelevant to everyone else that make me happy”
When there is a new bloom on one of my office plants on Monday morning
The first cup of coffee every morning at 11
The scent of my good hand cream
Using the “good” notebook and pens instead of saving them for no reason
When I manage to print financial reports from the new system
New crisp clean sheets
Random cat snuggles
Glad you had a good break. Curious about the 100 days project - is this committing to doing it every day for 100 days? Good luck, and I love that one of them is drawing.
DeleteThank you for hosting, so sorry about the flooding, yay for a proper break, and good luck/bon courage with the heavy teaching this term!
DeleteOh no, bad news about the flooding! I'm so glad that the job is going well, though.
DeleteIt's so good to be reminded that there are really good, not just OK, academic jobs out there! And despite the flooding sounds like things are going well...
DeleteHi, Daisy and everyone! I'm Susan, a senior faculty member in the humanities at a newish university in California. I'm a widow, living in a smallish city with 2 cats; my mother (who turned 92 today) lives in a local assisted living facility. In the time since I was last here (I think last winter) she has lost strength, but is still mentally acute. (COVID in fall 2021 left her very weak, and so now she's generally in a wheelchair.) Whenever there are health issues, I'm the contact person, so that is an important part of my life.
ReplyDeleteAt work I'm beginning to think about retirement, and seem to be taking on jobs to figure out how to make them manageable for other people. I'm currently chairing our graduate program, which needs revision because we have just finished program review.
I currently have three research projects at various stages of development.
1. Famous Author, what was going to be a short book finished in in 2020. I have a complete draft, and I've almost finished a revision that gets it to the point where I can send it to a friend for review.
2. Big Collaboration, a multi-author overview for which I am one of two editors. We have 30 contributors, and drafts were officially due in September. Right now we've had about 10. We've read all of them, and will be sending them back with comments this week. And hounding the rest! Other than reading drafts, the work on this this term is drafting an introduction. We have an outline...
3. Rest of Life Project: really, I want to work on this and not the others, so I hope I can fiddle with some talks I've given and move towards something publishable.
Goals for this session:
Research:
1. Actually finish Famous Author (with whom I am very bored) so I feel free. Send to publisher. Get it done.
2. Get draft of Intro to Big Collaboration drafted. I'm not teaching this term (lots of admin instead) so this should be possible)
Home:
1. This is the busy season for the garden: prune roses, pull up grass while the ground is (VERY) wet. Put down weedblock and mulch.
2. Plant some low growing drought tolerant plants along the new irrigation piping so the yard looks better.
3. Sort books that I don't want to keep and take them to various places where they might find homes. (This is in preparation for moving/downsizing when I retire, probably formally 3 years from now.
Life
1. Make sure I do something social for fun every week.
2. Regular exercise. At the very end of this session I've signed up for a 10 day walk along the Portuguese Camino de Santiago. So I need to be able to walk 10 miles a day. Walking, riding my expensive bike, yoga etc. Something every day.
This week's goals:
(There are a bunch of medical appointments for me and my mother which will take some time but I'm going to be optimistic.)
Get comments to authors on Big Collaboration
Re-read Famous Author, sketch out what needs happening in last two chapters. Start editing/revising
Do something fun
Prune roses
Walk/ride/yoga daily (this depends on weather. Right now the various atmospheric rivers are making walking difficult, since the path along the creek where I like to walk is flooded in places, and that's likely to be true through this week.)
Anyway, it's good to be back, and I look forward to seeing people!
Nice to meet you, Susan. Very exciting to be planning the rest of your life. I hope you can relish the freedom. The walk on the Camino de Santiago sounds amazing. It was something my husband always wanted to do. Spring will be a great time to do it.
DeleteI'm glad you're back! I wondered how you were doing. Santiago de Compostela seems to be a popular goal (I've thought about it myself), so I hope your training goes well and you have a great trip! Sorry Famous Author is still dragging on, but here's hoping you'll finish him off this session!
DeleteI walked the Camino (from Arles, then skipping ahead to St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port) in 1999--it was excellent. That's a great goal! What a way to celebrate the end of Famous Author.
Deletewonderful to see you back here again!
DeleteWelcome back Susan! I love your Camino plan, that is such a cool goal and experience, you are going to have to come back and tell us all about it!
DeleteAlso, I think it is amazingly cool that TLQ got a book acknowledgement!
Happy New Year, everyone! I'm Julie. I was new to TLQ last session and really pleased I asked to join. I'm a mid-career historian in the UK, in a prestigious department that isn't Oxbridge. I teach very able, if sometimes entitled, and not very diverse, undergraduates and a few PhD students. I'm in a very good department and good institution by UK standards in terms of support, but the wider situation in HE in the UK is pretty dire.
ReplyDeleteI am a widow (my husband died young nearly two years ago now) with two kids aged 11 and 14, so TLQ for me last term was about trying to find ways to manage everything. I came back to teaching last term after a year's research leave and bereavement leave before that, so it has been a shock trying to keep all the plates spinning at once.
I had a good break but not as restful as I needed: family here over Christmas and then we were abroad for New Year with my husband's family. All of that would have been fine except I had a lot of work piled up for the start of term today, and could really have done with some time to myself (or better still, not having deadlines right at the start of term). However, I did take some days off, there was good food, there was fun family time, and we made it through a holiday that's always going to be bittersweet for us.
This is going to be a very busy term: I am teaching three modules, as we call them here. Two I teach solo, one is team-taught. One of the solo modules I haven't taught for 5 years, so need to revise it as I go along.
Goals for this session:
Research:
Finish and submit the journal article I was working on last term (I came so close before Christmas!)
Plan how to use research leave next term.
Teaching:
Keep teaching under control - do only essential prep/revisions, resist the temptation to go the extra mile. Remind myself no one will notice whether I do or not.
Home:
Try to tackle some of the projects on the list, but not beat myself up about them.
Life:
Book holidays.
Regular exercise
Try to make some time for myself and use it mindfully.
This week's goals:
Get VLE for this term's module set up.
Teaching prep (see above on keeping it simple)
Read and comment on applications for big early career grant scheme.
Write supporting statements for applicants for a different grant.
Clear decks to make some writing time next week
Organise son's birthday celebration
Book hair cuts
Find cheaper car insurance.
Small things that make me happy (I think we are very alike here, Daisy!):
Nice notebooks and pens
Seeing the first snowdrops/daffodils/cherry blossoms
Birds in the garden
Using up leftovers
Organised shelves and cupboards
Fancy soaps/creams/diffuser oils
So glad you're continuing with us! The winter activities sound like they'll be nice to look back on even if they weren't precisely what you needed. I'm also working on VILE set-up this week, so . . . solidarity!
DeleteI really like your teaching goal--keep it under control! Those reins can be as short as you need them to be.
DeleteGreat to see you back! And I hope the research leave acts as a beacon of encouragement on the horizon...
DeleteNice to meet you, Julie. This is a great group. I somehow took the last year off TLQ, but it got an acknowledgment in my last book! And yay for research leave!
DeleteSo glad you joined us Julie!
DeleteGood luck with the busy week, and good luck submitting the journal article! Think of it as starting the year really strong... Kind of how we sometimes like doing a really big job on Mondays, that way never mind what happens the rest of the week/year you already did something important...
Hello, and thanks, Daisy, for getting us started! I'm heu mihi, a professor of medieval literature at a university in the Northeastern US. I have a husband (The Minister) who is currently between jobs and a ten-year-old son (Bonaventure). I'm on sabbatical this year, and we just returned from a semester in France, where I managed to actually do a small amount of productive work. Now I'm settling in for a few months of really ambitious writing.
ReplyDeleteI love the prompt, Daisy! The insignificant thing that makes me really happy is having a bottle of hand lotion next to the kitchen sink. To me, that's the height of civilization, and it only took me 44 years to realize that I, too, could place a bottle of hand lotion next to the kitchen sink. (I don't know why it took me so long.) Every time I moisturize my hands after washing the dishes, I just get an Anne-Shirley-style "thrill."
Session goals:
1. Encyclopedia entry due 1/31
2. Conference paper due 3/7
3. Book review due 3/25
4. Draft three (ha ha! Look at me being ambitious!) chapters
5. Do fun things, like seeing a friend, at least three times a month
6. Sit regularly, run regularly, get back into a steady yoga practice (at least one lesson a week on average); keep track of alcohol consumption, out of curiosity
This week:
1. Compile bibliography and ideally draft encyclopedia entry
2. Finish reading boring book about B
3. Submit final MS of WH, finally
4. Touch ch. 3 daily (M-F), even if primary writing work is on the encyclopedia entry
5. Post old booster seats on Freecycle (putting this on here because I keep stalling on it!)
Yay ambitious writing! I hope to be inspired by your progress. Another hope is that your tenants took good care of your house and that you're all enjoying being home.
DeleteThe tenants were great, and yes, being home still is truly the BEST.
DeleteSo glad to hear you had great tenants! Looking forward to enjoying vicarious research leave vibes...
DeleteAlso looking forward to writing inspiration!
DeleteHand lotion in kitchen is brilliant!!
DeleteSo glad your trip away was good, here's to a brilliant rest of sabbatical with wonderful writing!
(Once again, I'll borrow a previous introduction: I'm a late-career medievalist, hence my nom de blogue, still working on my first book (I got tenure long ago on articles, which is or was more common for medievalists than for many other areas in "book fields"). I live with Sir John and two cats in a 1970s split-level with a huge yard.) The winter break was a bit rough on me, with a case of Covid and two trips, the second of which I'm still on. I'm with two friends from college in a beach town that should be sunny and pleasant but we're getting hammered with rain today and tomorrow . . . at least we don't have to shovel it, which is necessary with winter precipitation in the Midwest!
ReplyDeleteI'm finding it hard to think about session goals; I'm in a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other frame of mind. But here are some general ideas, though "make progress" is pretty vague:
- grade efficiently and return comments in a timely manner
- make progress on book
- do some Responsible Adult tasks (such as get a new driver's license that satisfies Real I.D. requirements, find a new doctor)
- make progress on unpacking and other House Tasks
This week:
- write syllabuses for two classes
- finish setting up VILE sites for two classes
- write at least a couple of assignments for each class
- finish the fiendish jigsaw we're working on
- have fun with old friends
- review applications from grad students
- take at least one weekend day to recover from trip and catch up with Sir John and cats (who are not amused at being down to one servant AGAIN)
Oh right, small joys: good loose green tea in my favorite china teacup, the very restful view out my kitchen/dining room glass doors (just lawn and trees, but a lot of it, amazingly soothing after decades of living on city-size lots where your main view is the neighbors), cats sleeping with their heads upside down or otherwise being cute, enjoying the peach bathroom, pale turquoise guest room, and pale blue study that all were hideous light-eating shades until I painted them.
DeleteYour house sounds lovely! And upside-down cat heads are darling. We're hoping to get some cats soon, but we're waiting on news.... Hopefully I'll have a kitty update in a few weeks.
Deleteoooh kitty updates! =^..^=
DeleteMy study is also pale blue! I sometimes think we should get a cat, then people share horror stories about finding dead creatures scattered over their kitchen floors and I think again. My kids would love a pet, but life is already so, so complicated....
DeleteYay for beautiful house colours! Makes such a huge difference to a space...
DeleteFor Julie, indoor cats get you all the good cat stuff without the dead critters, injuries or the run-over-pet sadness so common in outdoor ones (where I am they also get eaten by coyotes and other predators). Senior cats are wonderful for first-time owners I think, mostly calm, not a 15 year commitment, and gets an older cat a good home. When we got ours after the move everyone in the house instantly de-stressed, and literally everything became more relaxed overnight. We were all strung out by the move and ready to throttle each other but with the cats around there is always someone smiling and playing with them, there's always a friendly topic of conversation, and there is always the option of stroking a purring cat which makes just about anything a little better...
+1 to keeping indoor cats, though at least coyotes haven't made it to the UK yet.
Delete+1 to indoor cats and to adopting middle aged cats - all of mine have been middle aged when I adopted them, and they all settled well, had clearly defined personalities (so the shelter was able to be confident they were suitable for my town-centre, small-yard, out at work a lot situation), and were happy to either have the run of a small house and yard or just the house (Fluffball, the current cat, has always been a house cat) because they didn't have the same energy/desire to conquer a younger cat might develop. Cat rescues - I've always gone through CP and my local branch are great - will take the time to make a match between your family and house and the kind of cat or cats that would enjoy that setting. And cats definitely help make a house a home - they can be great listeners, and something about having a little furry carnivore in your life that likes hanging out around you is very grounding (even if its only for your opposable thumbs and ability to buy cans of tuna)
DeleteHi, I'm JaneB, a mid-career academic in a regional UK university, where we are understaffed, workloads are painful, and we're dealing with fallout from the 5ht (or 6th, I've lost count) reshuffle in 12 years. Last year was not great and this one is not shaping up well - I'm very burnt out and struggling to care about any aspect of work. I'm struggling with the "return to normal" whilst being COVID vulnerable and very cautious myself (I am normally superb at getting viruses and being sick with them longer than anyone else, and I don't want to play that game with this one), trying to support an increasing number of students with chronic health needs (physical and/or mental) which make in person attendance difficult, and dealing with my own mental and physical health issues - I had a bit of a breakdown last Easter and am definitely not back to normal, in fact in December I was very close to back in the pit. And we're facing a winter of discontent with industrial action planned... so there will be whining from me, which is becoming quite normal, but TLQ is a great way to pick myself up each weekend and Just Keep Going.
ReplyDeleteThis academic year's goal is to Just Keep Going - I'm finally seriously pursuing screening for being neuroatypical (diagnosed with combined type ADHD in November, waiting for a referral for screening for autism as well), and then for referrals for support - this is relevant to TLQ for a couple of reasons at least. First, some of my most chronic health issues - disordered eating leading to far too much weight, generalised anxiety - can be part of both ASD and ADHD, and are treated differently for people with those conditions. Just KNOWING that is helping with the food thing - knowing it's not my fault, not just "oh JaneB has no willpower", is somehow helping me navigate things better, and despite a sedentary and painful-jointed few months, my work trousers waistbands are a little looser. Second, I want the protection of an official disability when dealing with certain colleagues (current head of department is great, but he's stepping down soon, the current head of teaching is very fed up with me being me...) and I also want to work out how to be a better support for students with a range of conditions (I've always been good at accepting and supporting students who struggle with anxiety, organisation, and over-thinking, because I've had to build such a wide tool kit for myself, and I'd like to do more of it). And it's a big mental journey which is taking up a lot more energy than I expected it to!
I had a very quiet Christmas break, living my best feline life - long sleeps, naps, reading, pottering around, eating small meals of seasonal deliciousness, stretching a lot, staring at bright things moving behind a screen (multiple seasons of low-brow TV shows were consumed). I didn't visit my parents this year because I wasn't sure my hip/lower back were going to cooperate with the drive, and because they weren't really up for visitors - they both had tooth disasters, had had a couple of courses of very strong antibiotics which are hard on the system, and were generally not feeling like doing anything visitor-ish. Which both meant guilt at not Good Daughter-ing and relief at the pure cat-life it made possible!
GOALS FOR THE SESSION: Broadly, survival - between industrial action, health, and lots of niggly stuff, Just Getting There will be good! But let's set some goals anyway, four categories as usual:
Delete1) Self-care - this comes first, and is about making sure that when I don't have very many 'spoons', I don't automatically throw them all into work. It's about maintaining the little habits and slowly adding to them, finding the motivation to make a pan of soup on the weekend, practicing saying "later" and "no" and "not today."
1a) reclaim my immediate physical environment. October, I decided to take some steps, and reached out to a professional declutterer plus researched and signed a contract to get the house doors and windows replaced (original wooden ones are close to 40 years old and have not been well maintained, plus drafty). In November, my roof sprung a leak which ended up requiring a complete re-roof of the house which emptied my accessible savings and beyond - but I do now have a water-tight house. And I'm committed to the windows and doors, so they should get done this month (all these expenses makes industrial action and pay deductions scary... but the medium term will be OK, just got to get through the next few months). After which, I want to work with the decluttering lady every few weeks, until I get to a point where I can possibly feel OK having a cleaner in once a month, and start saving again towards getting some redecorating done by persons not me! (unlike the Dame, I am terrible at painting walls).
2) research stuff. This is mostly just "ticking over" - I have two grad students at the moment, and several early career folks who I work with/mentor in various informal ways at other places, plus am part of various collaborative projects. Things which need to happen during this session:
2a) poor abandoned multi-author paper - needs to be revised using all the comments I got 14 months ago and be resubmitted
2b) review paper - a collective effort, the journal wants it in March (already about a 6 month extension).
2c) paper with senior grad student - their first manuscript, a little side project of theirs which we worked on together - would like to get a full draft by the end of the session
2d) consultancy - SGS and I have about a week's worth of computer modelling to do which is applied work on an interesting problem, will provide SGS with a nice bit of extra pay, and form the final section of a paper the scientist from the commercial organisation is already writing, so low effort for a solid reward
2e) wish-we-never-started project - has been and still is a nightmare but I HAVE to start producing outputs, even through I still don't know how to pay for stuff from the project (it's only been 18months of internal confusion...)
2f) what-do-you-mean-we-got-the-money project (I'm a minor partner on a very off-the-wall sort of project idea which was thrown together in about ten days for a cross-funding-body new horizons funding call, and, well, we were all rather shocked and now something has to happen. Thank the good LORD the hiring has worked smoothly and we have a great technical hire locally to actually do the making things happen...).
which is far too much for a teaching semester, so lets see what happens.
3) teaching. I have three modules to coordinate (all team taught, all non-standard in some way), a small herd of final year project students to support, and a newish administrative role to navigate on top of the two I already have. This is actually not only my light semester, but I have some extra-for-this-year-only help with some of the in person teaching (for two units, I do the writing/slides/ViLE setup/marking, and teach the virtual repeat, but the in person classes are taught by other people which saves me some commuting)... my main goal here is just survival, but to set something a bit more measurable, I'm aiming to be at least 7 days ahead in terms of prep/paperwork, and more once we reach March, the bulk of the content delivery is over, and the focus is on workshops and projects and the like.
Delete4) fun: this includes writing fiction or poetry, reading fiction or non-work-related non-fiction, making things, and playing Dungeons & Dragons with my nibling and their friends. I want to spend at least a couple of hours a week doing FUN THINGS.
GOALS FOR THE COMING WEEK:
1) self-care - making a list of small habits, noticing the places where things go wrong, data gathering
1a) environment - the Declutterer is coming one day this week to help me move stuff around ready for the window and door people next week (my house is a terrace/row house, so the tables and general chaos tends to cosy up to the windows...).
2) R- nothing this week
3) T- grading an assignment submitted just before Christmas, setting up one of the ViLEs
4) finish reading current frivolous read; play D&D
“small and insignificant to literally everyone else but makes you very happy”
* The tufts between the toes of a fluffy cat, kitty snores
* The determined sapling growing on top of a garden wall that I can see from my home-desk which has been there for about 15 years - every winter it looks done for, every spring, back again
* highlighting text with a Tombow brush marker in a pretty pale colour.
*new stationary, no matter how mundane
* getting the shell off a hard boiled egg perfectly
So glad you had a good break. Sounds as if it will be a very busy term (and like you, I am waiting with dread to see what industrial action will look like). It's so good you've made self-care a priority - burnout is all too real, sadly. And I love your small things - getting the shell off a hard-boiled egg, yes!
DeleteYay for quiet and restorative break! Felines know how to relax, we can all take lessons...
DeleteEnjoy the frivolous (aka vitally important!) reading and fun!
Your felinical winter break sounds lovely, and I hope it will help prepare you for sticking your nose outdoors and meeting Strangers in the new year! Scheduling time for fun things, or at least having a goal of hours spent on them, seems like an excellent idea.
DeleteSeconding all of the above, but also congratulations on working through the diagnosis process! I hope that the outcomes--whatever they are--provide some peace of mind and good tools for the future.
DeleteHi everyone! A slightly belated joining up as I'm navigating the last of summer holidays alongside remote work, so I can spend time with family while being productive. I've discovered that I really miss my large screens and that both teaching/VILE prep and writing are much smoother for me when I can have multiple windows visible simultaneously. But the trade off is time in a warm place close to the beach, so really can't complain.
ReplyDeleteI'm karen, I'm a mid-career academic in the creative arts at a satellite campus of a regional university in the southern hemisphere. I have a higher teaching load this year, and will be coordinating one course this semester which is moving online for the first time (so needing some tweaks to how content is delivered and how we replace field trip components), teaching the local face-to-face class of another course and waiting to hear if I'm getting lumped with some extra on top of that. I have a partner and two kids (the oldest kid is starting high school this year), and a reasonably productive garden that seems to have a knack for pumping out things that need to be preserved right at the busiest moments. This semester I'll also be missing a couple of week for surgery and recovery time, so that's going to be an extra juggle.
My goals for this session are:
Research - have KL article ready for submission; be on track with body project
Teaching - stay at least a week ahead on VILE; all marking done within 2 weeks
Self and home - keep up monthly and weekly planning in bujo, maintain an intentional exercise schedule each week
For this week:
- have weeks 1 &2 of VILE content done except for a/v recordings
- get KL rough draft to 4000 words
- go to one yoga class
I love the idea of a small wins and pleasures theme. My insignificant things that produce out-of-all-proportion happiness are lying down on fresh sheets, having flowers from my own garden in a vase, and a really good back stretch.
So glad to have you with us again, and for the reminder of summer's existence!
DeleteGreat to 'see' you again! Oh yes, the joy of clean sheets (especially if they were able to be dried or aired outside)!! And oh, preserving... my parents are keen gardeners and allotment owners (even now), and preserving was a big thing every year growing up - stripping currants off their stems or slicing beans or peeling apples gets really tedious when you're a kid!!
DeleteWelcome back! We will all be following garden progress and vicariously enjoying the produce!
DeleteNice to meet you! And yes, clean sheets, especially when you remembered to make the bed in advance, instead of heading upstairs dead on your feet only to find a bare mattress.
Delete