What I will post

What is really happening in my life:
* I've been second guessing my career progression as I've attended meetings on applying for promotion. I will need to explain why I don't have more PhD students, more citations. I need to find five international experts who can write a letter of recommendation for me, but I feel like my best letter writers are either collaborating with me (conflict of interest) or facing retirement.

* Two different coauthors are writing papers away from me, and I can't find the time during work hours to catch up with what they are doing and contribute my share. I don't want to work over weekends, but it keeps happening.

* The engineering students I am teaching have better intuition than I do, and I keep having to start lectures by apologizing for errors perpetrated in the class notes, or in the last lecture, or my inability to give them good answers to their excellent questions. I'm only being paid for about five hours of teaching per week, but I'm spending far more time than that figuring out where their equations came from, and why, because they ask!

* My church seems to be playing cover up with sexual abuse, at higher levels than imagined. It isn't a surprise, but still horrible. I decided I'm done with church and taking a week off. And then I decided to go because it is easier to go than to find a substitute to play the organ. I am in a rough place with religion right now.

* Taxes.

But I won't post any of that on my blog. 

What I will post about on my blog:
* Grand Prix! We didn't pay for tickets, but we walked across the street to watch the fighter jet doing tricks. Very loud. And fun. This is the more economical way to enjoy the Australian Grand Prix.

* Relay for Life. Jonathan participated in a walk to raise funds for cancer with some good kids in his school.

* Pictures from my coloring book. My coloring book helps me stay calm and happy while I sit through church on Sundays, dealing with my religion issues. Other people don't deal with these issues because they are more calm than I am. So I color to become calm. My current book has an ocean theme.

Shells.

Clown fish.

Crabs. 

See? If I avoid the real things that are bothering me, it isn't so hard to write a blog post after all.

Unlocking life achievements

Although I may not be unlocking blogger achievements, I am doing important life things.

Like cleaning my refrigerator.

And spending quality time with my son. There was no school on Monday or Thursday last week, and Tim was away. So Jonathan got to come with me to work. In addition to doing homework in my office, he decorated all my whiteboards.

He and I also took a walk around the botanic gardens on Sunday.

And went to the Moomba festival -- basically a carnival on the river -- on Saturday night.

There were a lot of intense carnival rides. After watching people ride the Death Hammer and the Puke-O-Swinger, I asked Jonathan if he wanted to come with me on the ferris wheel. He said no. So we just walked around and then went home.

It still counts as a life achievement even if you don't go on the Death Hammer.

First week of autumn

It is autumn now. The season officially changed on the first of March. You could tell it was coming, though, by the way the sunrise came later and later, and the sunset earlier and earlier. Last week, sunrise happened after we were all awake and dressed and eating breakfast. Although I do like the early sun in the summers, it is nice to be able to enjoy the sunrise without getting up at a crazy hour.

Another sign of autumn are the little yellow leaves appearing everywhere. When the breeze blows while you walk through the park, they scatter and swirl all around you. The borders of the path are lined with them. That looks like autumn.

So autumn. Here we are.

As I mentioned last week, I've started teaching again. That's also very autumn-esque. The first week went very well. I'm all prepared for the first day of the second week, too, and I expect it will go well. But I'm not prepared at all for the second day of the second week. I did that on purpose. I've been trying to regulate my teaching prep time. I will spend too much time over-preparing if I let myself. So I have consciously held back. I have time on Monday to get ready for Tuesday. Because only 10% of my salary goes toward teaching this year, but 80% of it goes to research, I should finish the research paper first, and prepare for teaching later.

But then things come up. This time, a colleague had a family emergency, and I was happy to step in to cover her classes next week. But knowing I'm teaching twice as much next week, somehow I feel twice as nervous about not being prepared -- even though I actively stopped myself from preparing, and even though I still think that was the right thing to do. Stupid brain. Calm down. Chill. Everything will be ok.

Happy autumn.