Accidentally in Code

Tag: commitments

  • Trying To Be Everything

    Trying To Be Everything

    Is the #chalkmug half empty or half full?
    Credit: flickr / Austin Kleon

    It was inevitable, the amount I’ve been flitting about, and the number of bugs that have been going round, but Thursday last week I came home early and pretty much keeled over. I barely got up for 3 days. Monday I got up but I was berating myself for being so lazy, annoyed at myself for having no symptoms left but still feeling so utterly unable to do anything.

    The following day I woke up feeling amazing. Like, “wow I was sick, this is me normally”. After a great and productive morning I went out for lunch instead of eating at work and shortly after was ill some more.

    So I was sick for 5 days and when I was finally feeling better I got food poisoning. A day later I am still feeling rough (and irritated!). But, more than anything, overwhelmed and behind with everything. Travel has this week and next being four day weeks, which is stressful. I’m also giving four talks this month, which is insane.

    I feel pulled in every direction – trying to be good at my job, trying to contribute to the community, trying to be interesting, trying to be healthy and keep working out, trying to make time for my friends and my boyfriend.

    It feels like I’m failing at every one of these things. I did pretty well the other week – 5 workouts (3 at 6am), dinner with a friend and mentor, girl geeks, lots of code produced. But of course the following week is an utter fail and at this point it’s got to a feeling of, “what’s the point? I’ll try and sort my life out – again – when I get back.”

    The irony is, this next trip is to Seattle, where my friend and I will talk about “Secrets of Superheros”. We’re talking about the people we admire, who achieve a lot, and strategies for being a superhero too – or, more likely, realizing you already are.

    During that one (rare) good week, someone asked me how I contrive to do everything. I told her it was by not responding to email. It’s like, yeah, you see me doing something useful, but there’s a lot slipping through the cracks.

    And yes, my inbox is out of control. But getting everything in is always a challenge, and there are always things that I don’t manage to do. It’s the trick of the one positive thing, I guess. Saying, yeah, I’m stressed by the long list of emails I should respond to but I’ll dash of a quick reply to this one that is most bugging me. Shrugging off the fact that last night I ended up working late and then reading a whole novel, and managing to do something productive this evening in spite of it. Leaving the office at 5 to make it to one spin class this week, because one is better than nothing.

    Yesterday might have been a disaster, but there’s always something you can do today that will make today at least slightly less of one, so don’t write it off as hopeless. Do it.

  • Changing Paces

    Changing Paces

    tortoise > the hare.
    Credit: flickr / Sang You

    I’m a little… tired and uninspired lately. Not at work – but at not-work. Once home, I’m not driven to write, or code, or read that stack of papers. I’m actually reading novels. I’ve been beating myself up for procrastination. Wondering, how do you tell the difference between being a little burnt out and needing a break, and procrastination. My inner dialogue is arguing with itself about whether I’m genuinely tired and in need of a break, or in the throes of procrastination so deep that I’m developing involved reasons and stories for not-doing stuff, rather than constructive procrastination, or better, just getting shit done.

    How could I spend a day curled up on my sofa with not one, but two novels? How could I read four novels in a week? A deadline is heading towards me and I’m just looking at it with interest, wondering, idly, when inspiration will hit – rather than going and seeking it out.

    The pace of my life is different now than it used to be. In school, there were always periods of intense activity punctuated with crashes which I would spend consuming novels, or TV box-sets, or both. It was a series of sprints, and every few weeks or months I would crash, and regroup. Normally once at the end and once during each semester.

    Now, my life is more like a marathon. And whilst over-achieving-productive-Cate yells at human-Cate “how could you just do nothing all weekend?!?!“, human-Cate responds – “because sometimes I need to do nothing!”

    This week, I’ll give my 4th and 5th talks of the year. It will be my 5th trip this year. I’ll also host the first Girl Geeks KW. I’ve submitted a conference paper – twice. Since getting my Kindle in December, it tells me I’ve read 14 non-fiction books, plus a couple of physical ones (and 32 novels, most of them on planes). Maybe this is a normal amount of stuff to do on top of 40-50 hours a week at work, but I’m starting to feel like I’m planning sprints, but never allowing myself to crash – my baseline is now 40 hours at the office, whereas the baseline in grad school is nothing. I got sick twice this year, once with a week-long temperature, and once with a throat infection. During the first I spent one afternoon home sick.

    For a while, I wondered if the problem was getting dressed every day – some of my most productive days used to be spent in my pj’s, but even if I didn’t work to draw lines around my day it seems insane to work from home when the office is one block away and so awesome, whilst my apartment is not set up for working, and also never contains any food (to be fair, I do see some people in the office in the pjs on occasion, but I don’t have the nerve). But perhaps the problem I’m having is adjusting to this new pace of life.

    I’ve been thinking about sustainability, rather than balance. When I consider sustainability, apparently I don’t consider my need to sometimes do nothing. I’m going to have to figure out how to factor that in. At work, I tried blocking off a week that said “DNS – Cate is Anti-social“. It was a useful experiment that I’ll likely repeat. Can I do some equivalent for my personal life? Like a “No commitments, Cate is reading novels” weekend (or week!) a month?

    Sustainability is a work in progress, and a constant balancing act. But – at least I’ve moved from novel-reading to structured procrastination. That’s progress, I guess.