Wednesday morning stuff

* So, one of my labs is getting filmed (well, videoed, I guess, but I like "filmed" better as a verb) for a marketing video we're making. Of course, guess who winds up with a bad-hair-day today? (I have a section of my bangs that sticks up and won't lie flat. I suppose I will have to try wetting it or something.)

* I'm a little apprehensive about it. I just don't like being filmed, and I hope when this is put on the internet, it's not so very public that there are legions of people out there watching it and laughing at my on-screen awkwardness. (I know, I know: tells you more about them than about me, but this is just one of my "things" - I don't like being a butt of jokes, I spent too much of my childhood doing that).

I'm doing this as one of those "This will probably be good for the department as a whole, and I'm doing it to be one of the team" things rather than a "I really want to do this" things, but sometimes that's just how it is when you're an adult - you do stuff you'd rather not do because it's "good" and you don't do stuff you'd like to do because there's other stuff that takes up your time.

* I'm slowly working on the Electric Fluttershy socks (I think that's what I'm calling them). The yarn is String Theory Colorworks' "Continuum" in Strontium-90. They're just simple socks, but sometimes with striping yarns that's the best thing you can do with them.

I'm almost done with a cowl thingie, and now I realize the yarn I bought for it (sort of an orangey brown) doesn't match either of my coats. Oh well. I'll have to wear it on days when it's cold enough for a heavy sweater but doesn't absolutely need a coat, I guess.

* Sometimes I wonder if my subconscious is telling me I need a pet of some kind. I dreamed about having cats again last night, and I also had a dream in which I was living or staying or working somewhere where there was a pony colt- he was very small, about the size of a medium-sized dog - and when I sat down to do something, he climbed up in my lap like some dogs will. (I don't know if a small pony would want to sit on a person's lap, I mean, if they were small enough to do it safely).

I guess I just want something that gives me affection with relatively few other demands on me. I get that with a pet they have to be fed and walked and taken to the vet and played with and sometimes bathed, but the not-talking-back-to-me thing would be a big thing. (I won't be getting one; my allergies are too bad for any kind of furry animal, and reptilian pets or fish don't really appeal).

(Actually, a lot of the time I feel like stuff I do is kind of one-way: I have a few people around me I'm trying to shore up a little, but when I need shoring up, it's not always available or forthcoming.)

* I probably just need to work hard on the manuscript this week and next, get a good full draft that I can then feel okay about letting sit over the last weekend of the month, and take that weekend and go do something fun -my birthday is on the 27th and I feel the need for something fun and something more and different than just, "Okay, I'll do a quick run to JoAnn's and then go get groceries." Maybe do my grocery shopping Friday afternoon and then go back out Saturday and go antiquing or something. (I wish the construction around McKinney weren't so bad, but I just don't want to brave it, and I'm not sure I want to try to find an alternate route to get there and back).

Though I admit a part of me says, "You don't NEED more fabric or yarn or books or stuff, you don't use what you have now" and that's true. I don't know.

The other option would be to go to some museum or other...I'll have to think about it. But I need a day doing only what **I** want to do.

* I probably drive myself too relentlessly. There was a situation yesterday where one of my colleagues could not do his planned lab because of Reasons, so he just cancelled the lab. I admit, I was a bit startled by that - when that has happened in the past (when the cricket-truck didn't come in at the local pet store, or it was raining when we were to go out in the field), I would pull one of my 'alternate labs' out - I have a bunch I COULD do but there aren't enough weeks in the semester to do them - and do one of those.

One of my colleagues asked me one day if I was "doing too much." At the time, I kind of snarled and said I didn't think I was doing enough. Though sometimes I wonder. What IS "enough"? I often feel like no matter how much I do, it's not enough. And there are some people who would never be satisfied with how much I do. And for me, sometimes it feels like I'm never enough, that what I can do isn't "enough." 

And I admit a certain amount of humorlessness or sighing, eye-rolling resignation when someone can't fulfill a commitment because of some unspecified problem, and I think about all the times I taught slightly sick (or even once, pretty sick, but I was filling in for someone and didn't want to let them down) or that I put off doing something I really wanted to do because of something I felt I needed to do (and never got to the thing I wanted to do). And I don't know. Work-life balance is hard for me. I do fall into the trap of thinking, "Because you don't have a family to care for, you should work that much harder at work" and I think it also plays into my insecurities about people thinking I'm a "fake" grown-up because I'm not married and/or don't have children. (Seriously, there are studies out there that claim people "don't mature fully" unless they do at least one of those things).

I probably spend way too much time online, also, but some days the main positive reinforcement I get are from the folks on Ravelry and places like that, so, I don't know.

* It occurs to me I probably "edit in the wrong direction" for the blog - lots of other bloggers/Pinterist people/Tumblrs/etc. have a sort of conscious editing or curation where they show the best parts of life so they look a lot happier or richer or more creative than they maybe really are. I don't know. A lot of days my life isn't much other than going to work, teaching a few classes, trying to plan research or write a manuscript, dealing with the various administrative tasks I have, coming home, fixing dinner, maybe reading a little or watching a half-hour of tv and trying to knit, and going to bed. I don't have a whole lot else a lot of days to "curate." I don't get out to the thrift stores to find fun and cool stuff (and a lot of it here gets snapped up fast and sold on eBay) or I don't have pets that do cute things or anything like that. Even the cooking I do isn't very photogenic a lot of the time....so yeah. Things are probably going to continue to be kind of boring for a while because I'm not good at invention, and I think sometimes it would take outright lying for me to show an exciting and cool life.

I don't know. I'm just tired right now, don't listen to me*


(*I remember as a kid, a few times when I started crying over something and I didn't understand why I was crying, and someone asked me, I would say, "I'm just tired." Which strikes me as funny now and rather "old" for me to have been saying at five or so. And I wonder: did I hear that from my mom, at some point when she was overwhelmed and upset and didn't feel like talking about it (which was rare - I mean, that she seemed overwhelmed) or whether I overheard her say it about ME as an excuse for my less-than-ideal behavior, and so I just figured when things felt like someone divided by zero and I couldn't explain why, it was that I was just tired....)