Hope everyone has had a good week. It really doesn't feel like summer here in the UK, even though we have just one week of school left in England (Scottish schools have been on holiday for a while). For those of us with kids, conversations here are inevitably about managing the approaching six weeks when other people will be competing with writing for time and attention. Thankfully mine are getting to an age when they can entertain themselves, even if I have to ignore just how much of said entertainment involves screen time/staying in bed/eating more snacks than ought to be humanly possible.
So on that note, this week's post is about one of the indispensable things described as necessary for a woman to be able to write: A Room of One's Own. Tell us about your writing space, whether at home or on campus or both. How have you made it your space? What things about it work for you (sentimental objects on the desk, the view from the window, soundproofing, ban on offspring entering before noon...)? Feel free to share pictures!
Last week:
JaneB
• Self-care: think
about baselines and how I can make it easier for me to be consistent with them.
Hopefully work with decluttering lady! Do at least seven things to improve my
environment (do not need to be large things). Do at least an hour in total on sorting
out my financial paperwork chaos.
baselines, decluttering person is coming Friday I
hope.
• Check work email no more than twice (for urgent
support of research students going to conference stuff and deleting of junk
mail only)
• maybe make a pretty and detailed version of the
teaching to do list (maybe. if it's really hot and I just want to sit anyway!)
• Fun. Play D&D AND do some D&D planning.
Read one fiction and one non-fiction. Start the next blanket. Draw some things.
Keeping adding to a summer wish list for non- work days. Start watching a
series.
Heumihi
1. 1500 words of
chapter
2. Send in grant pre-application materials
3. First round of edits on Proceedings essay
4. Finish reading current research book; start new
teaching book
5. Finish first photo album from fall
6. Work on the cover of my house book
Susan
1. Read comments on
Famous author and plot revisions
2. Meet with co-editor of Big Collaboration to
plan introduction better
3. Read the book I need to review
4. Go to a museum
5. See friends
6. Make plans for rest of summer here.
7. Go to at least one museum, maybe another play?
Dame Eleanor
• continue to
expand Alms chapter
• dead languages: Latin daily, Greek x3
• finish and submit tenure review letter
• start over reading Relevant Romance
• experiment with structuring work hours
• at least 2 things from Huge Summer List
• prioritize sleep
Julie
1. Finally finish
interlibrary loan, read another from the pile.
2. Write
3. Work-related admin: edit section of a handbook,
meet with a colleague to discuss next year's teaching.
4. Read and comment on dissertation proposals.
5. Order scans from archive.
6. Finances!
7. Get daughter ready for school trip to France
next week.
8. Fun stuff - watch Tour highlights, find some
new pleasure reading for the summer.
Daisy
Review
Field stuff
Brainstorm papers/project with colleagues coming
for field work, this is fun!
I dislike my at work office space for many reasons - it's just an awkward shaped space with limited shelves, the three previous occupants (over the previous 18+ years when I was in my dear little office at the end of the same corridor, which I was very annoyed to have to leave) were all energy-draining, cause-of-stress-in-others types of depressing, draining male colleagues which gave the space bad associations and in some ways flavour it (it was not repainted or refloored or anything when I moved in, no budget, as usual), the neighbours have never been positive (social space, then post-doc space for a project with a bad clique culture on one side, a very sexist/patronising/difficult colleague then our current HoD who only uses it for meetings which he wants to take out of his "research and teaching" office), it's short on natural light, and I had to move into it in a badly planned rush plus STILL have things in boxes because I was also promised a new storage space for research samples etc. at the same time which was never delivered, so various items from several labs and cupboards are still in there.
ReplyDeleteMy home space is... fine. It was only planned for occasional work, but it's a good sturdy table with good light and the best view in the house (mostly the parking area behind local houses and two blossom trees, but it's a nice varied set of buildings around the space in red brick with tiled roofs, there are green areas including bushes maintained by the bit of the buildings which are supported living for the elderly, and it's quite a green view with birds, patrolling cats, and on hot summer evenings bats too). Over the course of the COVID pandemic it's gone from being my space in which I occasionally work (before COVID it's main uses were personal computing, some fiction writing (I also wrote downstairs sometimes), arty and crafty activities, that sort of thing) to being primarily a work space, with untidy temporary arrangements for lighting and height of devices and managing many cables and plug ins which have been in place for over three years now, but sort of evolving. Sort of. I don't not like it, and it IS a work in progress. I wish I had MORE SPACE but to be honest I don't think I ever would have enough space! Since I live without any other humans, that's not an issue, but there are cat accomodations (a cosy bed behind the computer monitor where the warmth from the back of the monitor and rising from the radiator meet, a clear windowsill for cat sprawling, a space between the desk and the extra little table I set up during COVID for Overflow Stuff (stationary, D&D supplies, things that need to be visible - one ADHD characteristic that really resonates with me is the tendency to need to keep everything out and visible otherwise it either gets forgotten or causes acute anxiety about the risk of being forgotten...) with a stool in it for easy cat access to desk and windowsill (leaping from the floor only works when I'm having a tidyish patch, otherwise all sorts of stuff goes flying and neither of us like that). Today it's a work space, and also a cat hangout (and grooming station), place I eat meals, D&D playing and planning space, craft space, place I do my personal computer stuff (email, shopping, etc.), where I take social calls, where I do art and crafts... and not much writing any more. one day!
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAnd I tried to add some bad pictures of my home space here
DeleteLAST WEEK'S GOALS
DeleteI didn't have a great brain week - very little get up and go and I was very tired - but that's allowed on leave, right?? I'm feeling glad not to be at the big conference - there's a major heat wave in parts of southern Europe and people I know who actually LIKE hot weather are saying on socials that it's so hot in the session rooms they can't concentrate, and that they haven't been able to bear sight seeing, and next week is due to be hotter. So it would NOT suit my fat, bred-for-northern-climes body...
• Self-care: think about baselines and how I can make it easier for me to be consistent with them. Hopefully work with decluttering lady! Do at least seven things to improve my environment (do not need to be large things). Do at least an hour in total on sorting out my financial paperwork chaos. made a list of baselines. Decluttering lady came and my kitchen and living room look SO much better now. Did some things, with the decluttering they definetly add up to 7. All the financial papers are now sorted into heaps (in cardboard boxes)... which is a start!
• Check work email no more than twice (for urgent support of research students going to conference stuff and deleting of junk mail only) three times - once to feed back on different presentations people were working on, once to sort out some last minute travel paperwork for a grad student because the person who had said they would cover that task has their out of office on this week (sigh), once to answer some MSc student queries
• maybe make a pretty and detailed version of the teaching to do list (maybe. if it's really hot and I just want to sit anyway!) NOPE
• Fun. Play D&D AND do some D&D planning. Read one fiction and one non-fiction. Start the next blanket. Draw some things. Keeping adding to a summer wish list for non- work days. Start watching a series. yes and yes for D&D, read a fiction and am most of the way through one of each, neither of which are brilliant. yes. Yes. no. no, was not in the brain space to decide something - watched a lot of youtube and shorts, that was where my head was
GOALS FOR COMING WEEK:
This week I have one day at work - it's graduation day, and I'm not booked to attend the actual convocation etc. (I find them really stressful anyway, and the summer ones can be unbearably hot, plus of course no COVID precautions and a lot of social pressure to not mask), but I will work - and assuming there isn't a heat wave in the UK will be on campus in case any students are around. I'm on leave until then...
• Self-care: think about how I can be more consistent with baselines. Do at least seven small things to improve my environment. Book another decluttering session. Do at least an hour in total on sorting out my financial paperwork chaos.
• Check work email no more than once outside of work day. Work day: focus on clearing email and making lists plus making a plan for office moving (which SHOULD happen this summer - checking on plans/when is another job for the work day!).
• maybe make a pretty and detailed version of the teaching to do list if there's time on the work day
• Fun. Play D&D AND do some D&D planning. Read one fiction and one non-fiction. Crochet some rows on the next blanket. Draw some things. Keep adding to a summer wish list for non- work days. Maybe start watching a series.
I love the annotated photos, and the combination of screens, notebook, sketchbook (I'm so jealous of people who can draw or sing or play an instrument). Hope you can carry on having fun during leave, and that work can be kept to just the one day.
DeleteI'm pretty bad at drawing/art, but I enjoy the process! Sometimes the process is the point...
DeleteYou're absolutely right!
DeleteLoved the annotated photos, especially the cat stuff :)
DeleteGlad that you had some space and time this week! I hope this week is relaxing and restorative and has all the sitting around and reading and general resting that you can get!
No photos in the end as I can't get a good angle and my desk is too cluttered! I am moving offices at work this summer, as part of a huge reshuffle designed to make office allocation more equitable. I currently have a big office and said I would rather move to a smaller office than share. (I have shared in the past and it has been fine, but not sure I would cope with it now, especially as I wouldn't necessarily get a choice about who with.) My new office isn't actually that small, but it doesn't have shelves currently and the rumour is we won't be getting more than a bookcase each for some stupid reason, so I have no idea where my books are going. So I'm not looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteMy home office is much better and where I get more writing done. It was my husband's office, as he was working from home long before Covid. I had a desk in our spare room, which was fine until the pandemic. So over this winter, I moved in here, had it repainted, shelves fitted on one wall, and made it entirely a study (it had a single bed in previously). It looks on to the street, but it's a quiet cul-de-sac. I can see trees, and the end of the sunset currently. I have to stand up to see the neighbours' cherry tree, and in winter there's a view out to fields and hills, with what looks like the Parthenon in the far distance, but is actually an eighteenth-century folly we haven't got round to visiting yet. I have a desk that looks old, but isn't, with drawers, and a lot of clutter. Some of the clutter is sentimental: objects that were on my husband's desk, cards people have made me, my daughter's artwork, a weirdly designed mini set of shelves my son made, which I use as a desk tidy, a photo of us all at the Acropolis. On the walls I have a little picture of a winter scene I admired in an art exhibition which my sister-in-law then secretly bought me, and a notice board with all sorts of random stuff. I need to frame and put up some other pictures: a Picasso print that was in my bedroom growing up, a drawing my daughter did for me with a Barbara Kingsolver quote and a business card from the shoe shop my grandmother ran in Barcelona in the 1950s. And get a table for the printer, which is currently on the floor. So it isn't quite finished, but I'm pleased with it, and it's entirely my space.
Last week:
1. Finally finish interlibrary loan, read another from the pile. - YES
2. Write - YES (blog post that's a requirement of a small grant I got)
3. Work-related admin: edit section of a handbook, meet with a colleague to discuss next year's teaching. - YES
4. Read and comment on dissertation proposals. - NO
5. Order scans from archive. - NO
6. Finances! - YES (finally!)
7. Get daughter ready for school trip to France next week. - YES
8. Fun stuff - watch Tour highlights, find some new pleasure reading for the summer. - YES (nail-biting this weekend) and YES (picked up three books)
This week:
1. Read last two interlibrary loans (have until Friday for one)
2. Write one day
3. Read and comment on dissertation proposals
4. Order scans!
5. Couple of small house jobs and start one big one.
6. Fun - Tour de France, read, lunch with a colleague.
So much yes! And your home space sounds great, especially all the objects that remind you you are so much more than an academic production machine...
DeleteLove the description of your home space... It sounds cozy and friendly. Yay for getting the pesky finances done along with lots of other things. Hope the week has some good fun stuff to come!
DeleteSpaces… So very important… I just moved into a bigger office at work as part of becoming assistant department head. I loved my little one and had it set up pretty well, but the new one has giant windows and a big table. I do not love the corner desk because I hate having my back to the door, so I’m using one side of it for typing and the rest for other stuff. I need an extra bookshelf though because the cabinets that come with the office are full of department stuff. The office will come with lots of interruptions, but that is fine, I have a lab space for truly quiet work if I want/need it. I need to hang pictures, the previous occupant had lots so the walls are pretty bare now. I have some nice plants of my own in there, and there is an institutional cactus from many heads before that predates most of the department. I quite like it…
ReplyDeleteMy home space in the new house is awful, I’m back to the ergonomic nightmare that is my kitchen counter, very March 2020.... I never had a real workspace at home but had to make one in the last house for pandemic life so I had a tiny desk in a nice bright former dining room, with lots of plants and a sliding door for privacy without being too isolated. Now I have a “sort of” space set up beneath the stairs but that is quite isolated and it feels like a production to use it so I have not done a great job of setting it up right. Perhaps that will be a Fall project. But I really love working in my office and I much prefer to not bring home too much…
Last week’s goals:
Review DONE
Field stuff GREAT!
Brainstorm papers/project with colleagues coming for field work, this is fun! GREAT!
It was a good week for field stuff, but of course everything else is now way behind and I’m playing catch-up with everything…. I’m going to try hard to be all caught up before the end of the week.
This week’s goals:
Fiddly lab things
Outline for grant application
Fancy machine training if possible
Revisions for new accepted paper
Fill outline for Crunchy paper
Do at least one figure for Shiny paper
Design outreach activity for next week
Plan vacation with kid
Book fun family thing
Ooh, plants are good. I shall have to get some for my new department office, as I will miss the trees I can see from my current one. They will need to be tough, though, I am not good with plants. Perhaps a hardy institutional cactus.
DeleteI didn't think that for scientists work space also includes labs. That's a very different setup. I like the idea that labs can be quiet. I always imagine a team of scientists hovering intently over an experiment and exclaiming loudly over some unexpected finding, but maybe that's only in films...
Sometimes the lab space is great for quiet work, other days it is more chaotic for sure! I have a communal space with my two favourite colleagues that is sort of a chatting and thinking and collaborating (and coffee) space, and I also have a smaller clean space for doing my fiddly lab things that is mostly just mine. I mostly use it for the intended purpose of fiddly lab things but it is nice to have a quiet spot!
DeleteI miss having lab space that is "mine" - a former head of department rationalised space use and in some ways it looks much better (which mattered a LOT to him - our labs looked too old fashioned by far) but it's more problematic to actually do work in, and is no longer a place where I could go on campus as an alternative to my office... when students were actively using it it was busy (but a good place to spend time with them without interruptions from undergraduates/email pings/phone calls), when they weren't in it was a great place to concentrate for an hour or so (typically in my field a paper's worth of data might be a week of fieldwork, 4-6 weeks of work in the actual chemicals/pingy machines lab area, 4-12 months in the microscope lab area and on a computer in the office, so the chemicals lab was not that busy all the time (I'd need HUGE amounts of funding to keep it that busy!) and it was a nice small room with a good window and a spare bench for reading/paperwork with a decent chair not a stool (we kept it there because a lot of our methods involve adding something then waiting ten minutes, then stirring then waiting ten minutes, then putting the sample in a machine and waiting 8 minutes... so we had a corner that was more comfy where people could read or edit or whatever in 5-10 minute bursts (it both encouraged that sort of multitasking and DIScouraged leaving the lab unattended/messing around with stuff whilst waiting))). I know people go to coffee shops etc on campus but there are people there who might want to talk/interrupt/comment (different to a public coffee shop where you don't work with the other patrons, just alongside them) - and the most annoyingly chatty at work people tend to be in the coffee shop the most! - plus right now I'm not comfortable unmasking in a public space due to COVID risk, so the coffee shop is generally awkward!
DeleteWhen I started at NorthernUni there were several others working in similarish areas and we all had our smallish chemical/pingy machine spaces along a corridor at the back of our buiding, so it was also a great opportunity to chat and hang out. Other kinds of researchers had their own places where they had clusters of work rooms/facilities. But now we all share one suite of spaces which naturally are not ideal for anyone, have to be booked by the half day including set up and take down (nearly all the equipment is either in cupboards or can only be used with a booked technican being around and otherwise takes up bench space in rooms used for multiple purposes - and ends up suffering as a result at times...) etc. And the main space is also a teaching room, so that's fun, plus there are fewer colleagues in my field (pretty much just me, but I am eclectic so still have some people I can collaborate with). It means that whilst I do run into colleagues, it's usually in the context of us being busy, trying to make the most of limited time, in a public space shared with students from all the groups, etc. It just doesn't work the same.
And Teaching Tsar wonders why I get stressed going onto campus. Despite having my own office, I don't really have reliable access to any space that feels safe or collegial on campus, and at the moment when I'm dealing with burnout and more emotional lability than 'baseline' not having reliable access to a safe space makes being there harder (thanks menopause plus the increasing challenge of masking neurodiversity when I'm this badly worn down and living through a pandemic most people are pretending isn't happening but to which I am more vulnerable than most and hugely increased student need/openness about their issues). Gah. Sorry, ADHD talking about me again.
Hoping the office move will help me do a reset!
Susan, a colleague has a wonderful shelf of cacti, which are "pricks of rejection" (she buys a new one every time she gets a grant or paper rejected), and they are thriving despite her self-proclaimed black thumbs. Or maybe some pictures of green spaces would be good too?
DeleteDaisy, at least you get good windows for the new role! And we have an institutional tank of tiny crustaceans in a mostly closed ecosystem which has been here for multiple decades, and predates the current department by about ten reorganisations... and a fig in a pot which has been around a lot of offices over the years.
Space: when we moved to my current city, we got a house where my husband and I could both have offices. My husband, who was then retired, got the one with really good light looking out at the street. After his death, I gradually moved into his office, and I have slowly made the office mine. (I got rid of his old desk, for instance.) It has lots of bookshelves, which are overflowing with books, so de-accessioning is on the agenda. The books are sort of organized, but get disorganized every time I get a new book, so it needs a big rethink when I get home. My desk is always a disaster area, because I seem to attract paper. I go through piles from time to time so that I can see the surface, but it just reclutters. I do have some nice pictures, including one of my favorite photos of my husband when he was about 3, looking like a brave explorer: it reminds me to keep going. What I love about the office are the windows - it's in a corner, so windows on two sides, and my desk looks out on the street so I can watch people walking dogs, or just walking. The cats don't love my office, and have rejected my attempts to add beds; they show up only in the late afternoon when I need to feed them!
ReplyDeleteI almost never work in my office on campus, though it has the overflow book collection! I do hold office hours there, of course.
How I did:
1. Read comments on Famous author and plot revisions YES
2. Meet with co-editor of Big Collaboration to plan introduction better YES
3. Read the book I need to review NO, started
4. Go to a museum YES
5. See friends YES
6. Make plans for rest of summer here. STARTED
7. Go to at least one museum, maybe another play? NO
It was a pretty good week: I read the comments and decided I could do the revisions pretty easily; I did more work on the introduction; and generally kept up with work at home. The two days of disciplinary hearings were exhausting, but I've now dealt with everything that can be dealt with before early August. And I saw friends, visited a museum, and generally was relaxed.
The really nice thing this summer is that I've been reading *a lot*.
This week:
I have two working days (yesterday and today, Tuesday) and then go on holiday until July 30. I am heading up north for a week with a friend, and will also see some family members. I won't be here next week. My goal is to have fun.
Windows on two sides sounds amazing. I hope you have a great time on holiday, though the weather up here in the north is awful! Fingers crossed it brightens a bit.
DeleteHave a fantastic holiday, I hope it is beautiful and restful and fun!
DeleteHave a wonderful holiday whether it rains or not!
Delete