Monday, February 08, 2016

five minutes' peace

That's what I'm trying to grab right now. I had a meeting at eight, a meeting at noon, I have one tonight at seven. I taught my morning class, my afternoon lab is now in the waiting phase. I put together a review sheet for next week's exam.

The eight am meeting was slightly eye-opening in that I am probably being too hard on myself about this tenure review process thing; I am probably fine and just have a few minor faults that can be corrected. Still, the constantly-being-judged-on-every-aspect-of-what-I-do wears me down.

The noon meeting was the typical concerning things, new ideas being proposed from On High with relatively little scaffolding under them to help the people who must implement them (namely: us) do that. There's gonna be some push back on at least one of the ideas, as well there should be.

Mostly, it's just that these past few days have been tiring. Too much to do, not enough time to sit and think, not enough time to decompress. That's what gets me: for one thing, I'm enough of an introvert that Too Many People stresses me out and I need time to be quiet and alone. The other part is that I just need more downtime from working these days and that seems increasingly hard to come by.

I wish we had a pretty atrium with plants, or a proper greenhouse, or an aviary, or somewhere I could just go that was warm and green and pleasant (I COULD go outdoors, but the grass is all brown and the trees are naked, and right now it's very windy). Maybe somewhere where there's the sound of running water. I think part of the problem is I have no good place to go and refresh myself during the workday - my office is not enough of a sanctuary.

After Wednesday this week things should let up temporarily. If I can make it that far.

No comments: