Week 30
View from the houseboats
I’ve seen a new pattern in our house the last few weeks. Fridays feel good. Saturday afternoon/evening everything falls apart (mostly my introverted spouse, who really misses rooms with doors). Sundays are better. Mondays and Tuesdays I feel emotionally turbulent; this week I made time for resilience work. Things start turning around on Wednesday, and I get surprised at my own productivity. Thursday shocks me with its arrival. I can’t even bring myself to comment on the news; suffice it to say I’ve been reading the SF Chronicle, NYT, WaPo and Twitter more than is likely healthy.
Gratitude & appreciation
Made an impromptu plan Sunday to take Theo on a stroller hike during his nap…and Sam and I ended up getting 3 hours to talk while hiking 9 miles.
I took a poetry class in college from Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature this week. I read a few of the articles, and this line in the NYT piece resonated; “The usual feelings of euphoria and relief [of finishing a manuscript] were compromised by Covid, because I had to do battle with my daily terror and the necessary limitations on my daily life.”
Invested quite a bit of time in self-care activities this week – meditation, journaling, biking.
I finally had a breakthrough on two of the personal essays I’ve been working on for the last year – I figure out some reorganization and changes that feel like useful progress.
(Re)Learnings and observations
Things fall apart: My mother sent me this On Being podcast from earlier in the pandemic that is two enthusiasts reading and reflecting on their favorite passages of Pema Chödrön’s book. This reminded me that I own the book, and like most non-fiction books I own…I’ve been ignoring it. Nevertheless, I’ve been opening it and reading a page or a chapter at a time before or after meditating. She talks about the daily opportunities to face fears. I’m finding this concept useful as in my current struggle with insecurity.
Self-compassion: I’m trying to take a “trauma-informed approach” to my own research. In other words, instead of being angry at decisions my past self-made (specifically around study design or data collection), I’m trying to reframe this as: “oh, I wonder what adaptive/protective purpose that served? And more importantly, how can I move forward?”
Claiming credit for whole-self-care. Dr. Sakar wrote a great blog post about the importance of rest. The problem for most people is there are more things on our to-do lists than time in the day. Hence my recent strategy on choosing just a few things to focus on getting done in a week (and sometimes what I thought I should do isn’t what I needed to do). As a fellow and now as a K-award recipient, part of my job, in theory, is to invest time in career development. I am going to think about ways to “claim credit” for practicing pandemic functioning on my next NIH report.
Women asking for help: Check out this Women at Work podcast about asking for help. Talks about importance of boundary-setting. They point out that a form of help respecting and supporting boundaries and reasons for saying no in other people. As a side note, I went back to earlier blog posts from Dr. Sakar and she has one with great reminders for productivity/collaboration.
Actions to be anti-racist: A few small things (retweeting Black scientists, sharing the work of Black artists on Instagram) and lots of donations to presidential and senate campaigns, and to fight for fair elections.
Making space for feedback: This is a question for all of you. I’ve been thinking about how people create cultures where it is safe to share constructive criticism, feedback, recommendations for change. Please share if you have examples of ways that leaders or mentors or teachers (or anyone) has done this well.
Things I’m looking forward to
Taking off next Monday! I know, I was planning to take the week of but learned my promotion/series change job talk is likely to be scheduled in 2 weeks…which means I need to create it. So I’m hoping to avoid meetings and take a long hike or bike ride or sail every day (as weather and tide allows). Plus I do have Monday and Friday afternoon completely blocked off.
As in past weeks, I invite you to report in on your wellbeing, share your goal of a tiny step towards a passion project (and perhaps a second goal of a collaboration, if we have one) and report in on your progress from last week's goals.
Thinking of you and hoping you and your loved ones stay healthy and safe.
Krista