To be completely honest, I am burnt out.
I like working with people, but I haven't been able to keep up with the meetings, with students, with collaborators, with responsibilities. Up until the holidays, I was working most evenings and most weekends just to keep my head above water. I've let a few important balls drop, including one or two when I've been sideswiped by an unexpected migraine. The migraines seem to be increasing a bit in severity as well -- possibly due to the fact that I am aging, but also possibly because I'm doing too much and trying too hard to pretend the migraines aren't there when they've always been there. So rather than looking forward to the new year with anticipation and curiosity, I find myself facing the idea of returning to work with some unwelcome dread. I don't want to go back to the place where I'm letting all those people down again.
Things have to be different this year. They have to be. But I'm not really sure what that's going to look like. Jonathan has been asking what I'm resolving to do in the new year. I'm not much into resolutions, but I know there needs to be a change.
I've stepped out of one position, effective immediately -- but the paperwork hasn't yet come through, so I'm not sure what "immediately" means. Also, I agreed to write a couple dozen reviews in January related to the old position rather than drop the new person into it. So there is also that.
And I won a prestigious internal grant this past year, which will allow me to try to focus more on research and less on teaching and administration. So that will also be different. But it comes with strings attached -- I'm supposed to leverage it into an even bigger grant and a big grant application.
Dread.
I know what I need to do. I need to take things slowly, one day at a time. I need to plan little steps to finish the big projects. I need to devote reasonable amounts of time to homework -- more than I've been scheduling in the past year -- and I need to be able to step between projects. And I need breathing space between projects, not meetings after meetings after meetings.
My superpower has never been that I am smart or kind or curious, although I aspire to be all of those things. My superpower is that I am organised. I can look ahead to what needs to happen in a year, and I can make the skeleton of a plan, and I can fill in the details as I go. For example, below is the plan that I showed to the committee to win the prestigious internal grant.
Organised. But not even organisation can overcome a calendar packed completely full. So I resolve to keep gaps in the calendar every week. Every day. Big gaps for thinking and being and solving.
I hope the gaps will be enough to help my head get back to a better place. I hope they allow space not just to deal healthily with the migraines, but also space to relax and laugh and think and enjoy some of the things I stopped enjoying last year, like reading novels or writing and thinking.
So I guess I resolve to do less. You read it first here.
