My brain is like a bureaucracy. Sometimes it can take a very long time for new or unexpected inputs to work their way through the system. Not because they’re not important, but because there may be bureaucratic structural reorganization that needs to happen before movement can occur. And then ditto if you want some action output.
Guess what amazing and rare thing I did today? I properly indexed and labeled the lab book I finished with a few days ago. This is a task I haven’t managed in over 2 years (and I’ve finished with 8 lab books in that time period). Feeling hopeful there really is a Light at the end of the Burnout.
So, here’s a crazy thing. I’m writing this on a Wednesday, and as I left work today I was actually feeling a little excited about my job. This shouldn’t be a crazy thing. I work in Astronomy, as a Scientific Programmer, which is a combination of two things I really, really like and am good at. However, for a variety of reasons, not all of them to do directly with my job (you can probably guess one or two), the…
(*) Well, dang. It looks like mental fatigue is a beast I still haven’t licked yet. That’s the thought that crossed my mind last year after I’d been hammering away at assembling a formal code update and found myself (once again) feeling extremely mentally rundown. Except that ‘mental fatigue’ and ‘run down’ really don’t cover what it feels like, and, taking another look at that sentiment from this perspective of a year later, there’s also this whole extra layer of…
Okay, I don’t know quite how to parse this. I was feeling really out-of-sorts. And then sitting in on the (otherwise unremarkable) weekly status meeting made me feel better?
I think my imagination space is getting too crowded. Not with cool ideas, but with just too many types of things. Like, I’ll think “What’s a cool story idea I can noodle on today?” And then, “Oh – an item from my housekeeping list. That is not what I was reaching for.”
Okay, friends. I think it is time to tell you about something I call Quick-Chores, which is a house-keeping tactic I’ve been playing with this year, to varying degrees of success. First, I should say that on the spectrum of people, I am the sort of people who neither enjoys housework, nor feels strongly compelled to do very much of it. I think I’m in a lot of pretty good company. Never-the-less, I do prefer a clean house to a…
Warning: This post contains thoughts about a big, existential sort of topic, triggered, in part but not in total, by the recent devastating fires in Maui. At the moment, I am able to approach it with curiosity, but that’s certainly not always the case, and it might not be the case for you right now. If you don’t want to be thinking about climate change and other slow-moving disasters, and what some of the potential follow-on affects might be, even…
Apparently flawed logic makes me nauseated. That…explains a lot, actually.
I am an introvert, and I like to travel. I also have anxiety, though, so those first two traits don’t always go together as well as you might like. I also like to go for walks (less scary). As a happy traveling/walking introvert, I was once asked by a friend of mine who is not an introvert what did I do while I was walking. She was baffled at how I would sometimes walk the two miles from campus to…