For the at least the fourth year in a row, April seems to be consistently eventful and/or hectic. Oh wait, you mean it's May already?!
Work is insanely busy right now. I tried to take Friday off and ended up taking only half of Friday off. I got more than 30 new emails on Friday afternoon. If I don't stay right on top of my emails, they very quickly pile up—and that's just work. My personal email is like a precarious stack of snail mail that I aspire to deal with but mostly just ignore. I've said yes to too many things, both personally and professionally. I want to do them, but I'm running short of hours in the day and having to do some ruthless prioritization. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I think about the dissertation home stretch and try to take some inspiration from that. Similar to then, I'm working towards a very specific goal and deadline. I can see the end in sight which is why I can justify pushing myself to do a ridiculous number of things.
I thought I'd do some work tonight, but instead I've just procrastinated. Maybe I needed a night to veg out with some tv, ice cream, Facebook bingeing, and blogging (OMG, this sounds like a sentence a childless person would write. The beauty of early bedtimes—when they work!). And now I even went back and read my posts from April of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. It's the month of getting fellowships, getting married, insanely time-consuming field work, defending my dissertation, crushing rejection, and at least one successful interview.
Work is good, just really busy. More changes were announced but nothing that directly affects my job. Still don't know what I'll do when work slows in July, but now I'm getting positive signs for the future of my project, so that's something good at least. I also may get another offer soon.
I'm really looking forward to a vacation in June. A real vacation where I don't answer any work emails and barely even check them. Imagine that!
