Almost home again

Well, break is winding down. I always have mixed feelings about this. We took the tree down yesterday afternoon - another thing I have mixed feelings about. I hate to see the official holiday season end - to see all of the shininess and the pretty colors and the little lights go away for another 11 months, and go back to "ordinary time" and diet-company ads on the television and more talk of politics or economics or other things. But on the other hand I like the new start. One of the nicest things about being in academia is that every four months or so, you kind of stop what you were doing, take a break, and then get to start sort-of fresh again.

I like the start of the new semester. I like the freshness and the new hope and the chance to maybe metaphorically put away some of the problems of the past semester.

And, I'll be honest: I just like winter. I do. Especially in Oklahoma, winter is a far more interesting season than summer is. Summer is ten or twelve or sometimes more weeks of unrelenting heat, bright sun, and no rain - it really does feel like "Groundhog Day" sometimes, like nothing will ever change again. In the winter, you can have misty days, or days of heavy rain, or days that are just overcast, or even days with snow (Yes, I like snow. I don't like ice storms - probably no one does - but I kind of like snow, especially if it's on a Friday afternoon when I'm already home for the weekend and I can sit and watch the snow fall and not have to think about going out into it). And there are the occasional bright clear cold day where the air feels almost brittle. And there are days where you can almost feel spring being right around the corner. (And at any rate, spring starts comparatively early in Southern Oklahoma)

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions this year. To be honest, I rarely do. And I figured out why I don't like the concept, at least in its most typical form....it's for the same reason that I dislike the periodic e-mails we receive which are probably aimed at raising morale but do just the opposite for me, where we are exhorted about "What did you do today that you can do BETTER tomorrow?" Because to me - and I realize, I'm seeing this through the lens of my perfectionism - hearing that tells me that people think either you're not doing your best at the moment, or that what your best is, isn't quite good enough. And neither of those strikes me as a happy prospect. And it's also like those health-related news stories that make me so irritated - the ones where, once you've finally managed to figure out how to choke down five servings of vegetables in a day, and get in an hour of vigorous exercise, and not sit idly for more than an hour at a time, you're all of a sudden told, no, no, five servings of vegetables are not enough, it must be eight, and to maintain health you really need to be sweating for 90 minutes every single day, and don't dare sit for more than fifteen minutes at a time... And it reaches the point where you (well, where *I*) want to throw up my hands and go, "Oh, what's the point?" because nothing you can do is ENOUGH.

And that's why the typical, "be more gooder at work" or "lose forty pounds in the next six months" or "only eat processed sugar on alternate Thursdays" sort of resolutions don't appeal to me - it's like I feel like I'm already trying pretty hard, so please leave me alone.

I often make vague plans to do fun things - an idea that flitted through my mind was to try to take one Saturday every month and go out to do something fun, whether it's going shopping at a quilt shop somewhere I've never been to, or going to a state park, or even going to see a movie - but then again, life has a way of getting in the way, even with Saturdays. Or my plan to try more different recipes...I get busy and wind up eating the same general round of salad, simple soups I can throw together, or something like beans...

And I'm a bit dreading my schedule in the coming semester...Monday and Tuesday I am in class, straight (no breaks) from 11 am until 3 pm (or perhaps later one day, if I can get a lab moved that will otherwise conflict with my piano lesson...) None of my classes start before 11, which is not ideal for me - I'm much better getting stuff like that done early in the day. I'm trying to figure out a reasonable eating schedule; I'm thinking one of two options - a small early breakfast like I typically eat, a lunch sort of meal at 10:30, a snack of cheese or a boiled egg or something like that when I get out of class at 3, and a normal dinner, or, alternatively, plan not to leave home so early, eat a bigger breakfast (like, eggs or even some kind of a salad) a bit later than I currently do, take some more time to practice piano early in the day, and then grab a snack at 10:30, come home right after class and eat my dinner more as a sort of early "high tea" (High tea, as I've been told, was actually the term for the sort of working-class person's tea - like an evening meal) and maybe have some crackers or something before bed if I need something more to eat. I don't know. The fact that it's two days of the week - some people have been counseling me to change my eating schedule every day to conform to that so I can avoid upsetting my system, I don't know.

I just wish I had more time. I could probably carve out more time by cutting something else out - resigning as a moderator on a couple of the Ravelry boards where I help out, and forcing myself to spend far less time "socializing" on there. Or cutting back on volunteer work. Or not be so willing to help out when a student has problems. Again, I don't know....I often feel bad when I say "no" in situations because it can be hard to tell when someone is just playing you vs. being genuinely in distress; there have been a couple of situations where I agreed to help someone out (sort of through clenched teeth) and then later on found out that the person really was facing a problem as bad, if not worse, than what they had let on... and I don't like to be the one to turn down someone that I truly could help. But then again, you get people (I've been dealing with one via e-mail of late; they couldn't enroll in one of my classes before it filled and they've been asking for all sorts of accommodations) who will take up all your energy and good will if you let them. And it's hard sometimes for me to tell the difference between people of the first case (people I genuinely need to help) and people of the second case (who probably mainly need tough love or a kick in the pants).

So I don't know. I may be thinking of this partly because I read about a woman in the new issue of Country Living - she had a degree in genetics, was working in a genetics lab, and then found that the 80-hour weeks were getting in the way of her ever being able to pursue her hobby in charms and jewelry making...so she started selling off her stuff on etsy. (And the upshot being - she was able to make that work for her, I mean, she was able to start a small business via etsy and apparently quit her pressure-cooker job - though I'm guessing she had to have a spouse to help pay the bills and maybe to provide stuff like health insurance). And while my weeks have never been 80 hours of work, there have been times they've felt close.

I don't know. I wish I could resolve to "have more free time" and somehow magically get it, but I don't see that happening... so it seems too painful to me to resolve to, I don't know, never eat cake again or exercise an extra 30 minutes every evening or spend less money frivolously, because I do feel sometimes kind of like I've already sacrificed some of the things I would like to do (dietarily, time-wise, work-wise, whatever) for things I need to do. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm trying so hard already to juggle everything successfully that I resist taking on something more, or even admitting to myself that there are things that people would look at and tell me I "should" change.

So, fie on the sort of troublesome New Year's resolutions that toss another plate into the mix of five or six that I feel like I'm already juggling....