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29/52 - Summer Slump
Jul. 20th, 2020 03:02 pmI am fully hitting the summer slump. The stress-pocalypse of the last 2-3 weeks at work is finally rounding off, next set of deadlines are all pressing but vague, the sun is out, the valley is calling me out to walk and walk, and I'm on leave from Friday so somehow starting anything seems absurd (on a Monday..)
Because of the corona-sprawl teaching duties are only just wrapping up at the end of July; meaning I really only have 4 weeks to do three seperate research and/or professional development jobs. Entirely possible if I pull my finger out but working flat out over a summer after 9 months of working flat out is not filling me with enthusiasm or generating much motivation.
My last three summers I've mostly lounged about, worked half days, socialised with my other aca-friends, and generally taken it easy. The amount we all overwork during term time means, if anyone tracked concepts like time in lieu, I'd still be well up to my contracted time. The new academic year is going to start a week late this year, which means finishing a week closer to Christmas which will be painful and I don't want to go into October already burned out. I think I need to give myself permission to achieve just two of my three tasks. One of them I need to ask around and see if any aca-friends can do some really constructive, interventionist editing on my work so I can move ahead on it from the utterly stuck place I've been with it for 6 months.
What I want to do is work on the Union branch website, turn it into something navigable and sharable that provides useful contact point, and information sharing for our members. That's already seeming like an oddly impossible task as I've been given limited editing powers when I need admin access but it's one for the to do list (which I seem pathologically unable to stop adding things to)
In many ways, I'm impatient. Impatient to be in my summer break regardless of how vanishingly short it is, impatient to have acheived the things I am still looking at from a wary distance, impatient to be past this weird year and all it's limitations and cancellations and smallness, impatient for relationships to grow as they can only do with time. Simultaneously I'm scared of what is on the other side of all of this; what will next [aca] year look like? What will the world be like in pandemic terms in 6 months, a year? What will my work look like if my project bid is successful? What will this relationship be - what if it fizzles or breaks? I want it to grow, but not everything works and it scares me to wish away the tentative moments that exist now for an uncertain 'next'.
Psychically there's a lot going on, it's a big drain. It's not surprising I'm hitting a slump.
Because of the corona-sprawl teaching duties are only just wrapping up at the end of July; meaning I really only have 4 weeks to do three seperate research and/or professional development jobs. Entirely possible if I pull my finger out but working flat out over a summer after 9 months of working flat out is not filling me with enthusiasm or generating much motivation.
My last three summers I've mostly lounged about, worked half days, socialised with my other aca-friends, and generally taken it easy. The amount we all overwork during term time means, if anyone tracked concepts like time in lieu, I'd still be well up to my contracted time. The new academic year is going to start a week late this year, which means finishing a week closer to Christmas which will be painful and I don't want to go into October already burned out. I think I need to give myself permission to achieve just two of my three tasks. One of them I need to ask around and see if any aca-friends can do some really constructive, interventionist editing on my work so I can move ahead on it from the utterly stuck place I've been with it for 6 months.
What I want to do is work on the Union branch website, turn it into something navigable and sharable that provides useful contact point, and information sharing for our members. That's already seeming like an oddly impossible task as I've been given limited editing powers when I need admin access but it's one for the to do list (which I seem pathologically unable to stop adding things to)
In many ways, I'm impatient. Impatient to be in my summer break regardless of how vanishingly short it is, impatient to have acheived the things I am still looking at from a wary distance, impatient to be past this weird year and all it's limitations and cancellations and smallness, impatient for relationships to grow as they can only do with time. Simultaneously I'm scared of what is on the other side of all of this; what will next [aca] year look like? What will the world be like in pandemic terms in 6 months, a year? What will my work look like if my project bid is successful? What will this relationship be - what if it fizzles or breaks? I want it to grow, but not everything works and it scares me to wish away the tentative moments that exist now for an uncertain 'next'.
Psychically there's a lot going on, it's a big drain. It's not surprising I'm hitting a slump.