Week 101
View from the Houseboats
My academic life for the last 5 years has been too frantic. A result of the scramble of trying to “make it” in a soft money environment and of collaborating with several phenomenal teams working on multiple projects and papers at the same time. With all the losses I experienced, renegotiating expectations felt too hard – instead, I just pushed through and did too much. Yet overtime I’ve realized the cost of that frantic pace – not just to me, but to my family. The pandemic slowed the pace a bit, but I’m grappling with the ways in which the pace is habitual, and I default to perpetuating it.
Slowing that pace down takes active cognitive work. I’m engaged in an ongoing effort to find ways to simplify, reduce friction, and make space for creativity. I spent time this week – on my own, with a mentor, and with peers – thinking through current short and long-term goals and determining heuristics for prioritization and boundary setting. Much like meal planning reduces decision-fatigue of grocery shopping and dinner-making, so too am I trying to develop rules that will reduce decision-fatigue for evaluating opportunities – to protect myself from my overly optimistic self. A simple example: I am currently only accepting an average of 1 journal review request every 1-2 months. Having this rule has reduced my agonizing about “shoulds” – I simply reply to editors with: “I’m sorry I’ve accepted a review for another journal this month”. I’m working on developing similar rules for mentoring requests, manuscript focus, choosing between grantwriting opportunities. After that, I want to build myself a repository of response emails so as not to spend energy constantly re-recreating the wheel.
One of the themes this week has been to reflect on what I can do as opposed to what I should do. I’m attending to what my behaviors and emotions are telling me about what is working right now and acknowledging sources of resistance. A silly example: today was a sunny morning and I felt I should go out to exercise. But judging from yesterday, I worried I’d never make it outside because I’m currently battling a fear of falling and feeling behind on work. I realized I’d be more likely to get exercise if I spun indoors, and any exercise is better than none. Indeed, I felt better having done so. I’m hoping to not open my computer this 3-day weekend, not to go to the ED with Theo again (he’s healing well), and to rejuvenate a bit. I hope the same for you.
Interesting things on the internet
New book, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of Love and Loss, which I learned about from this NPR podcast
Another new book, Welcome to the Grief Club, which I learned about from a recent Dougy Center podcast – the author also has a company Kwohtations that has cards and things like self-care stickers and care packages with titles like “For Anyone Trying to Work While the World is On Fire.”