Category Archives: personal

Unlike Herrick, I do not delight in disorder. However, the end of term (and two piles of exams) has brought a lot of disorder to both my work and my personal environment. Add to this the usual burdens of the season and, well, I’m disturbed by all of these messes impinging on my space and taking over my brainpower. Because they do: there’s a palpable psychic weight to all of the stuff that accumulates, waiting to be managed. First thing that’s on my to-do list once marking is well and truly wrapped up is to tackle the mountains of random paper so I can purge what’s likely a lot of trash and set the rest to filing or, in the very rarest of cases, responding.

I had hoped to get on top of all of my office paperwork last summer but the new puppy took the wind out of my sails with her needy nature. Here’s hoping that the summer of 2014 will be one for organization and decluttering!

There was a family medical emergency this week that necessitated packing one dog off to the kennel, arranging for our trusty cat-sitter to watch the felines and then the loading up of everyone else in the household to hurry south.

The good news is that the affected individual was professionally and capably treated, so much so that normal life resumes tomorrow.

The bad news is that there went a lot of time – particularly for the ill individual who’s a university student. I’m hoping that the medical excuse provided by the clinic and corroborated by the hospital will do the trick for ensuring accommodation but, as always, there’s only so much that can do when the student’s class time has taken a hit.

I’m rejiggering my own schedule. The blog post that I’d planned to share on historical and Game of Thrones women, reputation and ambition will wait as I make up for four less-than-productive days in terms of writing and marking. I have an article to polish off, two classes of marking still to complete and other sundry requests on my plate. And revisions on an accepted chapter have come back now that it’s gone through the press’s peer review – thankfully that’s not due until 15 December!

Over the past week, I’ve battled a horrific headache that’s felled me by the late afternoon most every day. I’ve described it as rather like having a rusty icepick slowly inserted and twisted from the base of your skull into your eyeball. At first I thought it was a simple neck strain, but it didn’t really respond to ibuprofen the way that has in the past. Then I wondered if it was a particularly long-lasting migraine of the type that I occasionally suffer for a three-day stretch.

These were getting so bad I was a snarling mess: pity my poor family who bore the brunt of my ill-temper, try as I might to bite my tongue. I longed to curl up somewhere and lie down and just turn my brain off for a while, hoping to get away from the pain that dogged me most of the day and into the night.

Yesterday, after spending much of the day pain-free, it clicked. The pain only appeared once I’d spent half an hour or more sitting in my customary seat in the living room where I computer and also hangout with the family. My comfy spot is literally causing me agony. I confirmed that today by avoiding my usual seat entirely, opting instead for either the floor, the dining room chairs or the wing chair. If I sit in any one of those, I’m good, although trying to mouse anywhere other than with my elbow at my hip causes some twinges. But even just sitting on the slightly reclining seat I normally use causes the lower point of my right trapezius to tweak like a son-of-a-gun.

I’d calibrate my pain levels over the past five days peaking at a 5-7 on a scale of 10. Today, the worst that I felt was a 3, somewhat stiff upon wakening and twinges again after trying to mouse on a slightly raised surface.

So, obviously, I have to engineer an entirely new work schedule and situation for the rest of the summer. Some days I can spend a bit of time at the office (not right now as the recent hot spell has left our under-ventilated chambers feeling like saunas) but I need to come up with a compact and comfortable solution at home. Wish me luck! If you’ve got any suggestions for how to help my trapezius relax any faster or better, I’m all ears!

Long time no blog – it’s another teaching term, I’m writing on three separate projects (not quite at the same time, but I jump from one into another). And there’s real life with some moments of profound sorrow, as when we said goodbye to Ozzie, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, early in the new year. But the hardest thing I’ve been doing is trying to close the door on work some of the time.

Like many academics, I’ve been guilty of letting work take over my life or, more precisely, to succumb to the idea that I need to work all the time. With the last book, there were weeks when editorial tasks ate up so much time that it simply pushed my other work into the remaining hours and, whoopsie, there goes actually living life. You know, the parts like spending time with your kids, taking care of your health, stopping to smell the roses?

It’s scary how easy it is to fall back into those bad habits where work takes over your life – grading piles of papers, writing others, tackling course prep.

So, while I avoid new year’s resolutions, I’ve taken the new term as a cue to remember to take time for myself and my family as well as to pursue more healthy work-habits during the week. This op-ed piece from the New York Times, Relax! You’ll Be More Productive makes a strong argument that rest is essential to true productivity. The author cites studies that show a good 10 hours of sleep (Wow!) helped basketball players to score 9% more free throws and three-point shots. The particulars of their 90-minute personal cycle I haven’t tested, but knowing when to step away for a bit is essential for my productivity, not only on the macro scale of taking a day off each week, but also in the daily grind

The idea is also at odds with the prevailing work ethic in most companies, where downtime is typically viewed as time wasted. More than one-third of employees, for example, eat lunch at their desks on a regular basis. More than 50 percent assume they’ll work during their vacations.

In most workplaces, rewards still accrue to those who push the hardest and most continuously over time. But that doesn’t mean they’re the most productive.

Most of us know now that burning the midnight oil or being continuously ‘on’ is no way to get things done. The idea that you naturally work in cycles of on/off is appealing. It’s also the mantra of one of my favourite personal/home-care blogs: Unfuck Your Habitat, which advocates cleaning and chores carried out in waves of work. The common rhythm there is 20 minutes on/10 minutes off or, in their parlance, a 20/10; alternatively, 45/15. When my available blocks of time in a day vary between half an hour and two, some of these cycling schemes work very well.

And blogging totally counts as a break from work, doesn’t it?

2012 has been a pretty good year hereabouts. We’ve weathered our storms (some quite literal while others were more figurative). There’s a beautiful new book to treasure in Star Wars and History and many other projects underway. Pet health crises have been weathered.

Marks are in, cookies have been baked and family members will soon arrive for a holiday visit. What more could we want?

Here’s hoping that your year ends as happily as ours.