Yeah, yeah, yeah: it took me very little time to break my “every Tuesday” promise. At least I had a slightly better excuse for August 6th: I was still happily overdosing on Olympics coverage.* Last week’s hiatus was nothing more than that old perfectionism:

I’ve already fucked up, so I’d better have something SUPER awesome or insightful to say for this “relaunch post”!

(And of course, I didn’t have anything super-awesome to say…)

DAMN, that self-critical voice is a vicious bitch.

And no, I absolutely do NOT pretend to have something super-awesome to say on THIS Tuesday night. (Spoiler alert!!!) I’m just leaning into the discomfort and writing anyways. So here we go!…

Now I’m talking about this blogging hiccup not just as part of my usual apology/self-flagellation cycle.** I’m using it as an excuse to dig into a tension I’m currently facing in my day-to-day life.

I don’t entirely know what to do with myself!

I mentioned in my “restarting the engine” posts (one and two) that I’m in a bit of a redesigning my life phase. Practically speaking, one of the biggest elements of that is how Mr. Mezzo and I figured out how to financially swing me resigning from my non-profit job and creating a 6-month “sabbatical” of sorts for myself.

And I am so relieved and SO grateful for that space to breathe. The incessant pressure (like doing-the-job-of-3-people’s worth) on the job had brought me as depleted as I possibly could be. I’m strong as fuck, I know I am, but the last few years at my NPO finally took me to the end of my energy reserves and my resilience. My health was suffering (mental and physical), my quality of life was suffering, and my studies were definitely suffering.***

So I can absolutely see and feel the benefits of stepping away to rebuild and recover. I’m slowly curing the bone-deep exhaustion. My EdD studies are 100% back on track. I’m spending more time with Mr. Mezzo. I’m making some progress getting the house and my physical environment in order.

AND. I feel ever-so-slightly adrift and unfocused.

Up to a certain point, I kind of like being concretely scheduled. I respond well to clear instructions and specific deadlines: this is why I’ve been such a great grants director for all these years, and also why I’m so good at the taking-classes part of being a student.

Now, I won’t pretend that the time from November 2021(ish) didn’t do me harm by taking that preference and overloading it beyond all sense of human kindness or survivability. (Let’s call it going up to 11,000 instead of up to 11.)

Hence my depletion, and my gratitude for a chance for renewal and recovery.

But the general fact remains: I am better at managing my time towards definitive, externally-imposed deadlines than I am at motivating myself to do independent work.

And now that I DON’T have weeks where I have 1-3 deadlines plus 6-9 meetings per day, it’s a bit disorienting. How can I start holding myself accountable to things that don’t REALLY need to be done today, but that ARE part of something(s) that 100% require(s) long-term effort and commitment?

I don’t entirely know the answer to this yet. But I know it’s something I gotta work on, so I’m trying to lay in new neural pathways: day by day and habit by habit.

Call it a work in progress.

---

* My thoughts on that could be a post or two of their own, but I feel as if that moment has well and truly passed.

** Exactly how many times HAVE I restarted and then re-abandoned JALC, anyhows?

*** Nothing like your dissertation chair telling you she thinks you are legitimately at risk of fading away and not being able to finish your program to open the door for some internal reckoning, eh?

---

Image credits:

• “inner self-critical voice”: Created by me on OpenArt AI. Usable through a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
• “self-imposed deadlines”: Screengrab sourced from this Reddit post.