This evening, I took a couple of hours out of my day for some violin and cello practice. No big deal, right? As the current POTUS would say, 'WRONG'. Those few hours to myself were the respite I'd been looking for for a long time. Over the past few weeks have been getting pretty frantic and furious. Ok. Not the past few weeks. The past few months...
Despite my current burnt-out state, I would be lying if I said that I hadn't been having fun along the way. My PhD research has been satisfying and fulfilling, and has taken me down some weird and wonderful academic rabbit holes. I've met some fantastic people at various conferences, from so many different disciplines, universities, and non-HEI cultural institutions. This term's teaching allocation has allowed me to look at Classical texts outside of my main research project in greater depth and detail.
This is all very nice. But the reality is that I ran out of juice several weeks ago, and have been running on less-than-empty (coffee, pro plus, and a growing sense of guilt/inadequacy) ever since. It turns out, organising two conferences in 8 months, writing multiple papers/presentations, hopping from city to city and conference to conference all Summer, trying to learn a modern foreign language to academic standards, sitting in on an advanced Ancient Greek class, and attempting to maintian some semblance of a social life, is an exhausting business.
It's no fun at all to crawl into bed at the end of the day without any energy to enjoy a good book, only to wake up 4-5 hours later to the loud clatter of the obnoxiously loud alarm clock you bought yourself because you no longer wake up to any of the alarm tones available on your phone. I have a long list of 'things that would be nice to do sometime', an embarassingly large collection of draft blog posts which I never got around to publishing, and permanent dark circles under my eyes which not even the most powerful industrial concealer can hide. I found myself drifting back into old bad habits: working through meal times, sitting in the same place and position for hours on end without moving, and using caffeine as a substitute for actual nutrition.
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It's not that I regret taking on lots of projects. More than anything, I like to stay busy. I like to have new and varied goals and visions, and to be challenged to think and work in different ways. I regret not taking better care of myself as I went along. For every person who told me that I looked tired (or terrible!), there was someone else who would compliment me for having my sh*t together. I guess I assumed that appearing to be getting along just fine was enough.
This week, it's Reading Week (at least in my department at the University of Liverpool). And yes, as undergrads, we're always told that Reading Week is not a holiday, but a time to, funnily enough, READ, and make a start on the term's assignments. But, I figured that, since I spend pretty much every week of the year reading/writing/stressing, I would take this time to slow down a bit. Not stop altogether (I think I'd start climbing the walls without something to do), but just try and establish a bit more balance in my days, and force myself to switch off in the evenings when I've left my desk and work behind.
So, I'm setting smaller goals for this week. I'm going to try and finish drafts of two papers, spend more time on my hobbies, and, finally, publish all those posts which have been gathering dust in my drafts folder. I promise (most) of them are cheerier than this. I'll probably still feel guilty for not devoting every waking hour to academic work. But hey. I still have goals to achieve and hurdles to cross. No one said that all your goals should be academic...
Elaine Over & Out
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