Spring was certainly doing its thing today. I waited until mid-afternoon to take my walk and did so in a t-shirt. I had the front window open for a bit, too, which the cats loved. And as the sun worked its way down in the afternoon, it filled the house with warm light. All of this helped, of course, with the Sunday blues, though they are still here, or at least the vaguely unsettled version of them.
This will be an interesting week, which is weighing on me, though not in entirely bad ways. Senate meeting tomorrow (blah). Papers coming in tomorrow, too. Advising starts on Wednesday. And I am test-driving a new car on Tuesday. That is filling me with all the "spending big money" feelings.
I also realize I've done less work this weekend than a usual weekend. I did more TV watching, more hanging with the cats, more relaxing. In fact, all semester, I've been doing less weekend work and more of the above. Ostensibly, this is okay! Weekends aren't exclusively for work, after all.
But Sunday rolls around and I get anxious about what I haven't done. Nothing on that Dorothy Allison piece or another conference paper (that hasn't even been accepted yet). No work on the practicum I am running (again, for no money, so wtf am I anxious about?).
Clearly, Project Balance is out of whack. Needs some retooling. I just tried to find a post that I swore I wrote in the last year or so about deciding that focusing more on writing would be a good distraction from other stuff. This kind of compromised version of Project Balance is perhaps an implicit admission that my life is always going to be disproportionately weighted on the career front. I can remember thinking about it a lot and acknowledging it and feeling okay about it, but I guess I never posted about it.
But the inclination of that "lost post" (ha!) is still here with me, this acknowledgement that I want time to read, research, and write because it gives me pleasure and doing things that are pleasurable is a way to carve out some balance. I feel a bit sad about not getting the research/writing work done, but glad to know it's still there to do. I am excited to do it. I can't say the same for the other work stuff I didn't get to. All I feel is kind of anxious about it (and maybe a bit resentful). Nothing fun about it.
Anyway, maybe by the end of the week, I'll have some new wheels, some more writing done, a bunch of happy advisees, some graded papers, and one fewer Senate meeting. For now, shifting towards my Sunday TV viewing and soaking up some more good weekend vibes.
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