I was reading some of my favorite blogs this afternoon, catching up on all the goings on, and I became inspired to compose one for here. I think this has been one of my problems with consistent postings: I haven't found much to inspire me. Or I have just been so freakin' tired, distracted, and otherwise busy to notice that there are inspiring things around me. Yeah, that might be it. Since the New Year, things have been a bit different.
One thing that has made a difference is that I haven't been working all the time. I am still fairly busy with side projects and the like, but I have had a chance to really gain perspective on what matters to me and how I want to live my life. I know that sounds like I am about to launch into some Greeting Card Moment, or take a page from some self help guide, but I am serious. A consistent amount of sleep and a decrease in the amount of stress in my life has made me more like myself. I know my Beloved Husband appreciates that I am not losing my poop on a regular basis, snapping at him for suggesting that he is tired (no one could be more tired than me. I just did not allow it), and generally being no fun to be around.
Let us take a moment to acknowledge, that things are not perfect. I still experience stress. I am still frequently tired. I am still often busy. I continue to lose my temper at the weirdest things...
I have done a few things of which I am proud. While my book is not yet picked up by a publisher, there is still a chance for it. I know that it might take more than one go-round to get it published, but I have not lost hope. I have completed other out-standing projects, which has made room to revisit work I had feared would be lost due to time. (Basically, I have the opportunity to use the research from my dissertation and I couldn't be happier.) I am on the verge of having a more exciting CV. All these things make me happy, make me feel like I haven't failed as an historian.
Another aside: it is really easy to feel like a failure in academia. Man! There are tons of people, I am sure, who are lovely, generous, and all around good eggs. That being said, there also tends to be a plethora of people who are obsessed with status and academia is full of hierarchies. Mean, soul-crushing hierarchies. And those at the top, tend to yell the loudest in support of egalitarian ideals. Funny that.
So, back to being all happy with myself. Professionally, I have been unhappy with where things have gone. My current position, which I am grateful to have and generally enjoy many, many things about what I do, can be an exercise in humility and frustration on a regular basis. The distance I have had between my every day work life and what I had hoped to do professionally has become a chasm and there is only one person who can fix that: me. So, I have taken tentative steps to rectify the matter and hopefully in the coming semesters I will teach a class.
The last thing I had resolved to do (well not the last thing, but the thing which I actually have done) was get in better shape and be healthier. Well, I make no case for being the perfect specimen of physical fitness and good health, but I have joined a gym (I actually go) and joined Weight Watchers (Online. I could not stomach the meeting and all the potential embarrassment). Considering I am not good at patience, the slow pace of weight loss has been challenging, but now that I can see actual results, I am not stymied. I do feel like I might have joined a cult, though.
The rest of my resolutions (granted they were unnamed, so how would you know), to be nicer, stop complaining, that sort of thing, fizzled and died shortly after I made them. I think there might be an un-social-scientific blog post in complaining and why I think it might be a good thing, but who knows what will happen next.
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