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I wanted to get my previous post off of the top of the page. While it was cathartic to write it, to complain, to share my frustrations, that’s not what I want to focus on with this blog. No, life isn’t always rainbows and bunnies. But. Life is good, in general. It’s my attitude (and, honestly, the way I live that life) that I need to work on.

So today I wanted to share some bright spots from the last week. My blogging friend Elisabeth talks about “joyfinding”, which is such a lovely and appropriate term. But I don’t want to co-opt it for my own. Instead, I’m trying to focus on bright spots from my week, to keep my eyes up and on the positive, instead of mired in the depths of my own frustrations and challenges.

(1) OK, you’re going to think I’m insane. But. In-person meetings Friday were a truly unexpected bright spot in my week. I haven’t been shy about my full-on embrace of pandemic life. As the introvertiest introvert who ever lived, I am so much happier working from home when I can, rather than working in a cold, uncomfortable office, where I have to keep the door closed, I am never warm (seriously – always, always freezing), and there is a fair amount of non-work socializing and distraction. Yet, seeing my colleagues and friends in person, in a meeting that was just like meetings in the pre-COVID days, was surprisingly uplifting and energizing. It reminded me that just because something is comfortable for me (I still do love virtual meeting attendance), there are also benefits to attending them in-person. (It also helped that I was able to advocate for adding one of my passions to our curriculum, in collaboration with two of my favorite faculty colleagues… an academic nerd’s mini-heaven. :>)

(2) Fall. Oh fall. It came in – literally – overnight this year. On the day of the equinox. I do not remember a previous fall that arrived so abruptly and that (to this point) has not taken a bit of a break so that temporary summer could come roaring back. (I hate it when that happens. If the seasons are going to change, just change. Don’t be wishy-washy about it!) It’s been refreshing but also, for some reason, more challenging this year than in years past. I am finally starting to adapt to the idea of heavier jackets and gloves and (soon) my handwarmers and heated vest. Despite that, I will be eagerly anticipating the return of slightly warmer weather in a few months.

(3) Phone calls and lunches with friends. Again, don’t fall off your chairs. These involve… socializing. In person and on the phone. I know – who am I? But last weekend and this I had the opportunity to have an (excellent) lunch out with a friend (cannily timed during the home football game). The only drawback with lunch was my view of the person in the next booth, who… um… didn’t have the best table manners. I tried not to look. (My ability to achieve this varied, unfortunately.) And then Saturday I talked with a very old friend on the phone for an hour+, about the book we buddy read (Longitude, by Dava Sobel, which we both loved) and life in general. Our lives are so very different but I really appreciate that she takes the time to update me on her kids’ lives and what HER life is like these days. That said, we have made some very different choices in life and some things she said yesterday highlighted those (these are “big” choices – related to religion, and political leanings, etc., so not easy to dismiss out of hand, at least for me). It was still wonderful to connect, though. She’s picking the next book. Nonfiction, usually science-focused. We are both nerds. 🙂

(4) Quotes. I’ve had some quotes come to me this week that I wanted to share. What is eerie (side note: I just love that word. There is something about how “eerie” is spelled that is just, well, eerie. It’s not onomatopoeia, really, but… anyway, I digress…) is when multiple quotes from different sources all point towards the same general idea. Here are the ones that spoke to me this week:

• “Even when I work so hard to be perfect, it’s never good enough.” Catherine Andrews
  • Oh, the truth in this statement. Driven home by the fact that I took Ingrid Fetell’s quiz on killjoys. Mine were (not surprisingly), the Taskmaster, the Perfectionist, and the Control Freak.
• “It’s these choices that add up to make you, you. You are the sum of one small choice stacked upon one small choice stacked upon one small choice, ad infinitum. If your life were a painting, these choices would be the brushstrokes that compose it. In other words, your life is defined by your choices, by your discipline. Which is why, as we have said recently, discipline is destiny.” Ryan Holiday
  • I don’t always like Ryan Holiday’s writing but this one spoke to me. It’s the little things we do every day that make a life. In one way, this puts a lot of pressure on what often seem like they should be easy choices. On the other hand, this also makes me feel a sense of relief, that no one decision is going to derail my entire life.
• 5 AM Joel shared this one: “The slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word: balance. Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for. Seek to live at what musicians call tempo giusto – the right speed.”  – Carl Honoré
  • Living at the right speed. Something I really, really need to work on (see previous post…sigh…).
• Oliver Burkeman shared this one in his weekly newsletter: “action is the antidote to despair.” Joan Baez
  • This also aligns with the quote about choices, from Ryan Holiday. Doing just one thing can make a difference. Start chipping away at things.

(5) You. All of you. All I can say is thank you for being here, for supporting me, for your comments on my last post. You could have rolled your eyes, thought “there she goes again, complaining about something that’s her own darn fault”, but you didn’t. And I appreciate that more than you will ever know. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – finding this little corner of the blogosphere has been life-changing for me. A small group of people who write about their lives, who share their thoughts, and who show up? What more could I ask for? So, thank you again. I appreciate you more than you will ever know. <3 <3 <3

And with that, here comes another week. I got good (work) news very early this morning that has me breathing a small sigh of relief, and a to do list that is full but not overwhelming. Time to do this thing.

I just unpublished a long, whiny post after some second thoughts. I’m going to do some judicious editing and repost it, but… just in case there’s a broken link out there, that’s why.

(I was feeling sorry for myself, wrote a bit too much, and, well, no one needs to read all of that. :>)

Note – This is an edited version of the even whinier version I posted briefly on Friday afternoon. I left most of it intact (that’s why it says I wrote it Friday) but modified how detailed I was in my description of my day.

***OK, and further edited to add (10/4) that I recognize my extreme privilege, and this is such a first-world problem. There are people suffering and dying without water, or food, or shelter. There are people dealing with the aftermath of multiple climate disasters. And I’m complaining about a situation I put myself in. I absolutely know that I am lucky. I know I am privileged. I also know that I’m still stressed, and frustrated, and I let that out here. So, if you’d rather not read about first-world problems given all that’s going on in the world today, I completely understand.***

Enough. I’m done. Not with this blog, with how I have been living my life these past four weeks. It’s ridiculous. I’ve pushed myself into the margins of my life. I feel constantly rushed, time-deprived, and unable to keep up with the parts of life that feed my soul, rather than my job and other responsibilities.

I’ll be honest – it has sucked. I have wanted to come back here to write for the last 2.5 weeks. I’m just now ‘making the time’. The reason? It’s a fifth Friday – no standing meetings (Our school-wide “meeting day” is, believe it or not, Friday. And yes, this stinks more than you can imagine.). So I have had a (relatively) productive day and feel like I “can” take the time to write this post.

That’s ridiculous.

I know I don’t tend to share much about my days here, because honestly? they’re boring. But maybe sharing a bit will help you see why I’ve finally reached my limit. Here’s a typical work weekday (M-F; also note that all “holidays” are typically also work days, so, really, this is just a “typical weekday”):

****A quick note before I get to the pathetic part…PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not think I am writing this out in an effort to get sympathy, or to make people feel bad. I put this on myself. This is how I set up my days – it is literally all on me. My colleagues do not have schedules like this – but as one of the few single, childless people on faculty, well, this is what I feel like I have to do.****

• Work out, shower, and get dressed. This always happens before I start to work. Nonnegotiable. While working out, I also check through work emails that arrived overnight, read the paper online, and listen to sports radio/podcasts. Multitasking at its…worst? Also, yes, this includes my walk, and yes it is dark outside. I know. With the Eliza Fletcher murder, I should probably rethink this, but it is also often the only time that works for me to get outside for more than 5 minutes.
• I’m usually at my desk with my coffee between 5:55-6:10 (yes, seriously, it’s this narrow of a window), then talk to my parents while also looking at Google news with half an eyeball. I work from about 6:30, sometimes 6:45, to 5ish. This includes a combination of: my own work, work on behalf of others, meetings, teaching, prepping for teaching, etc.). Plus, of course, checking emails, attending webinars for continuing ed, etc. I also, of course, eat, which is when I read blogs. Unless I have meetings, and then I eat during the meeting with my camera off. Each meal is probably 15-20 minutes – I prep my food on weekends so that I can grab it, heat it as needed, and eat. There are days when this gets broken up by appointments, or other one-off things, but for the most part, this is my work day.
• Post work routine includes cleaning up the kitchen, taking a quick lap of my building outside (I need SOME fresh air during the day!), taking a shower (my signal that the day is really over), PT, reading the paper online, and emailing my parents. Yes, I talk to them on the phone, and email them almost every day. It makes all of us happy, so I do it.
• Then, dinner, during which I read more blogs, and the evening routine of cleaning up, tea, reading, and dessert. Ice cream. Always. Then I brush my teeth, read in bed, and pretty much fall asleep the minute I turn out light.
• Repeat.

The only time this changes is on teaching days, Thursday (clean the bathroom and go grocery shopping before I start work, so I tend to start about 45 minutes later than usual), and weekends (do other things first thing in the morning, so I don’t sit down to work until 7:30 or so).

I’m basically working full days, 7 days a week, and this year is particularly bad. I need to hit certain benchmarks so that I can be considered for promotion next year, so the pressure is on. Even though I’m pretty sure this is unsustainable, I struggle with how to change.

This is why I haven’t been here, why my comments on your blogs are even later than usual. I hope to show up more in this space – how many times have I said that? – because I like to write here. I like connecting with you all here. And dammit, somehow, I need to figure out how to feed just a tiny bit of my soul.

From Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes… “Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.” Yes, it is rare. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

A long time ago, I wrote a post about the word sonder. Since you all probably don’t need or want to go back and read my random ramblings from 2020, the basic idea is that everyone is living their own lives, separate from yours. And that you will never have the privilege of knowing everything about those lives – only they will know that.

Sonder came back to me when I read Ed Yong’s recent piece on Umwelt in The Atlantic. Umwelt is the concept that each animal (and I would include humans in this) has its own “sliver of reality”, as Yong said. Yong focuses on animals and how their perceptions of the world are so very different from those of humans, thanks to different senses, abilities, color perception, and many, many other things. A tick (to use one of the examples in the article) has a very different perception of the world than I do. Same goes for all other animals.

Extending that to humans, it made me think that I will never know the world in the exactly the same way as other humans. I will never know what it is like to live in their bodies. I won’t know what it feels like for them to move through the world. It’s a humbling thought – we are all the center of our own stories, of our own worlds. But so is everyone else. And no one person’s story is more important than any other person’s. (Granted, some people may think their stories, their lives, are more important than others’, but that’s not a philosophy or worldview that I follow… )

I have seen this in my work life, my personal life, my day-to-day life. I have my own way of seeing the world, and so do my students, and my colleagues, my parents, my friends… It’s immensely valuable to me to try to improve my understanding of how others see the world. Without trying to learn at least a tiny bit about others’ lives, I can’t really know them. This hit home last week when I was learning more about the new students in my seminar class. There are four of them – all have unique histories and experiences and contexts that will influence who they are as students in my class, and who they become as they move through and beyond graduate school. Like all Umwelten, they also have their own limits to how they perceive the world, just as I do. Knowing even the tiniest bit about who they are helps me when I listen to their insights in class, when I grade their assignments, when I challenge them during our discussions.

And then another article came across my feed, this time from Raptitude. The author of that piece makes the case that we are always The Other in everyone else’s life. We come and go in others’ lives, but we’re not the center of their stories. They are.

Another humbling thought. I’m the center of my life, sure. But you are the center of your life – I am a bit player, who wanders through periodically with a new blog post. I’m not even a primary Other in your lives – I suspect I am waaaay down on the list, to be honest, as I’m not even a daily presence in your lives.

But even those minor, or secondary, Others can be so important in our lives. They can offer insights, different ways of seeing a situation, different perspectives.

We may never know what it is like to be living someone else’s life. We may never know what it’s like to live in their body. But we can still learn from them. We can expand our own worlds by learning more about theirs.

There are some people who never want to learn about others’ lives. To them, I guess, it’s more important to focus on their own ways of being in the world. But to me? It’s critical to know more about the worlds the Others in my life inhabit. Otherwise (sorry, couldn’t resist…), how can I expand my knowledge of the world? How can I expand my knowledge of them as a person? If I don’t try, then I’ll just go through life in my own little bubble of reality, blissfully unaware that my life is so very different from others’ lives. It seems a lonely and isolating way to live, if I’m being honest. I can’t even conceive of being so, well, uncurious about others.

What is it about some people that makes them inherently curious about the world and how others see it? And, in contrast, what is it about other people that makes them so focused on their own lives? Questions for another day (as this is getting really long)… but oh, so interesting to contemplate. (And, can people change? Can they go from wanting to know more about others’ lives to being completely uninterested? Seems impossible to me, but.. maybe?)