Week 79
View from the Houseboats
It’s been a strange week, one where I am grateful for the flexibility of my professional life. In the big picture all is well, but day to day life has included all the small weirdnesses. Examples include a fire in the hills behind us and a catfight among dock cats after we went to bed, leaving a pool of blood on our doorstep (as a colleague said, fire and blood, what a metaphor for the last year and a half). Grief season starting early with Theo’s excitement about Halloween. Motivating to exercise early morning led to falling and spraining an ankle and badly skinning the other knee. A last-minute scramble to make another unsuccessful offer on a house. Rearranging each room of our house. Theo deciding to sleep on the floor one night. Preparing to celebrate Sam’s 40th a week early because he’ll be away next weekend. All the usual madness of regular life.
To navigate this in my professional world, I’m practicing self-compassion. I’m setting clear boundaries that I cannot start new first-authored work for a few months until I get my backlog submitted (and make more progress on R01 aims) – and I’ve asked my colleague to remind me every week to not take on new work. I discovered my Fridays have no standing meetings other than writing accountability meetings so I blocked them off entirely for use as I need (writing, strategic planning, PTO), rather than adding more meetings. I’m ignoring the size of my to-do list and focusing on just a couple things at a time. I’m trying to write an average of a paragraph every day on a paper draft, which ends up working out to two paragraphs every other day. I’m taking Randy Curtis’ advice and focusing on what matters most to me right now.
Interesting things on the internet
New GeriPal Podcast with Randy Curtis about living and dying with serious illness. This one is so good and so hard to listen to, as Randy is well-known and loved in palliative care research and was diagnosed with ALS in March
New OnBeing podcast series, The Future of Hope, starts with Kate Bowler (professor and young cancer survivor) and Wajahat Ali (journalist and father of young cancer survivor) started Thursday
Duke University’s second annual, half-day symposium centered around grief is coming up on November 19th
A few posts from me this week about grieving: resources, advice for supporting grieving people, and ideas for navigating grief triggers