I know I am supposed to be writing new stuff – and I am, sort of. Not sort of. Exactly new stuff. But it is all school stuff. All of it. The thing I posted yesterday was written seven years ago. The thing I posted before that – three months ago. The last podcast I published – December. That was also the last we recorded anything new.
I told myself that I was not going to do that this semester. I told myself – and you – that I would do better about the balance. Be better about carving out time for me to do just this – sitting at my computer and putting words on a page that have nothing to do with school. I haven’t done that.
The thing is that I LOVE school. It is my happy place. It is the place where I stretch and move and tickle all of my wonders. But, as you can imagine, there is a problem, and it is completely my fault.
I knew this semester was going to be difficult. The two seminars I have cover subjects (the English Renaissance and Indian literature) that I am almost completely unfamiliar with. This means, obviously, that they take more time. And I have big goals. I really, really want a first-round acceptance into a funded Ph.D. program. This means the work has to be good. Of course, I am so passionate about the work that I think I would feel this way regardless of the goal, but application season is always looming. The construction of my CV is always in the back of my mind.
Classes three and four are in preparation for teaching English Composition in the fall and spring (Professor Trepagnier, if you please). I thought that these classes would be less daunting. They are not. When I realized the importance, the responsibility that I was moving towards, I got real serious. As is often the case, when I got real serious, I realized all the things I didn’t know. It has been both a personal and professional journey.
Class five is Thesis Prep. I am not even going to think about that right now. That thesis is summer April’s problem.
Then there is my assistantship. I work with students to help improve their writing for various assignments in different classes. I didn’t think I would like this work, but it has been one of the biggest joys of my year. I am fortunate to work with the amazing Professor Berry. The students who come to see me want to do good work; they want to learn how to make the ideas in their heads work on a sheet of paper. Many have no idea how to do this, but they want to. And I get to be a part of that. Teaching assistants are supposed to be mindful of how much time they spend doing their assistantship work, and I try to be. Some days I do better than others.
But these last two weeks have battered me. I have papers that I struggle to formulate, presentations that are weak and ill-constructed, and projects that are just not coming together. My only remedy has been to bulldog it. I was exhausted, irritable, and not doing anything that resembled good work.
A week ago, a friend of mine, Kathleen, posted the 8+8+8 rule. I had never heard of it. I don’t know where it came from, as my quick Google search didn’t provide anything concrete. But the basic concept is to look at the 24 hours of your day in groups of 3, 8-hour periods.
- 8 hours of good sleep
- 8 hours of hard work
- 8 hours on everything else (family, health, self)
There was something about this idea that I really liked, so I scratched it out on a sticky note. Luckily for me, my book club met this week, and I had to put the Bitch Barn in order in preparation. The sticky note showed back up. After the day I had and the rush I was in, I told myself, “Tomorrow. Noodling this idea is a priority, tomorrow. Not the ‘someday’ tomorrow. The literal tomorrow.” So, that’s what I did.
Understand that this is not a rigid idea. I mean, I suppose it can be if you want it to be. I do not do well with a rigid schedule. My life does not work that way, and I have no desire to make it. But I removed myself from the computer and sat with the sticky note and a legal pad in the Thinking Chair for about an hour. Here is what I came up with.
I am not doing myself any favors grinding the way I do. No favors at all. While the work gets done, it is neither all that it could be nor efficient. It is the type of work that comes from fear, exhaustion, and anxiety. Just yuck.
I began to look at my schedule.
– Did I really need to be up at 4 in the morning? No. I have intentions of being in bed by 10, but that rarely happens. Even when it does, that amounts to 6 hours of sleep (which means I am probably closer to 4 or 5). I changed my alarm to 6.
– But, if I change that, how in the world will I be ready to get out the door by 6:45? Do I need to be ready and out the door at 6:45? Also no. Most days, I drive our youngest daughter to school. Because I am already 10 minutes into my commute to school, I have decided it is more productive just to go straight there when I leave. For a timesaver of 20 minutes, I begin my day way too early, with not enough sleep, often in a rush to get my life together and out the door. I am not doing that anymore.
Believe it or not, this changed damn near everything else. My day as a working organism sorted itself into this attainable movement that quieted my disgust of linear time. Did some things on my to-do list get left undone? Yes. Did I have too much stuff on that list to start with? Also, yes. Did the world crumble in a mass of “April is the worst person on the planet, completely irresponsible, incapable, not worthy, we always knew she was a total imposter?” No.
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