Something I thought about:

  • I started to plan my days a bit differently this week, and I’m currently trying a few new things as I sort my new schedule and try to develop a routine that works for me. This isn’t related to the new year or anything; I have a non-academic schedule for the first time in a long time, and I still have the fixed points of my child’s schedule, and I’m trying to figure out how to balance the two. As an academic, I had more flexibility in my schedule, but I also had no downtime. Now that there is some downtime, I want to reserve some of it for personal projects: writing, crafting, French classes, etc. It’s really easy for “free” time to be taken over by household stuff, so I’m trying to plan and chunk my time more deliberately. Work time, as well. I’m more productive when I take breaks and don’t try to be “on” all the time, so I’m scheduling work chunks, personal project time, and actual breaks.
    I’m also trying to better organize physical spaces to lower the activation energy required to do personal projects. I’ve been rearranging some bookshelves for better access to the books I want. I got a small magazine tote for our piano books. Before, my child had current piano music in the piano bench, but all of the old piano books and my piano books were on bookcases in another room, so playing the piano meant finding the right book, changing rooms, playing, and then changing rooms again to put the book away. Who’s going to spontaneously play with so many steps? It was too much effort. Now all of the books are organized and easily accessible next to the piano, and we can just sit down, grab music, and play. And we have been.

Something I did:

  • Went to a party
  • Went to my child’s piano recital
  • Went to French
  • Usual PM things: meetings (in French and in English), planning, writing, etc.
  • Looked at what was working and what wasn’t in my days/weeks and started to arrange things differently (both space and time)

Something I read:

  • I started another slow read — this one is a parallel project of reading Kate Briggs and Barthes simultaneously. It’s really great — reminds me of graduate school and reading a poet’s correspondence alongside their compositions. Also, I loved the translation seminar that I took with Rosanna Warren at BU, and this experience is reminiscent of that course. Here’s background on that project.
  • Write for Life by Julia Cameron