I decided to log in and make some updates to this blog. It’s
been going for about 7.5 years now, and I want to start using it for more
intentional things, but it seems like it’s just hanging out here taking up
space not really doing a great deal. I would say that’s a semi-metaphor for how
I feel. But I don’t usually hang around anywhere long enough to take up that
much space. Certainly not for 7.5 years anyway! Even if the other half of the
metaphor works – it’s true that I might sometimes be plagued with imposter
syndrome or that impending sense that you have no real purpose and should
really start to be more intentional, despite the fact that most things you
spend each day doing are pretty bloody intentional and have a purpose.
Anyway, I decided not to make any updates to the actual blog because it is what it is, and that’s actually OK for now. I want to start writing about more work/research/academic related things – and I suppose I will. I don’t need to make it look any different in order to start doing that. I decided to write something this evening because otherwise we’ll reach March tomorrow and February will disappear into an abyss of nothingness and it won’t be captured anywhere here. I didn’t want to lose it. Lots has happened. I especially wanted to capture the ‘Let’s do a Harry Potter seminar’ coffee chat we had, that actually turned into an awesome reality (more of this to come, but for now, check out Charlie’s blog on her talk on representations of women in Harry Potter). So, the last evening of Feb. Sat in my flat totally flat out exhausted and it’s about -7 degrees outside. It's quite tame compared to more Northern parts of the UK, judging by my social media feeds and the news. I mean, we’re not on a red weather warning alert-type-thing (i.e. we’re pretty safe). There was a small, reserved scattering of snow across campus this morning that gradually became a little denser throughout the day, leading to the point of when I’d finished my 2-4pm lecture in a room on the second floor of a building, the snow was flying through the sky quite horizontally, and my students (bless them all) were semi-planning a sleep-in overnight. I trust they all actually got home…
February has been one of those months where you reach the end and you are thankful you’re still breathing. OK, it hasn’t been that bad. It’s been busy. I had an intense week where I travelled *a lot* - Leeds, Manchester, Bristol (no, not Bristol – Bath), back to Rushden where I live, full days teaching and I don’t know how, but then up to Scotland for a few days. Conferences, PhD stuff, other work, and also coming out of semi-modelling retirement (only for shooting in abandoned spaces with very cool people though). I haven’t got back in my car for a long drive since, because I can’t face driving. I love travelling – I even like driving. But all of that kind of killed it for a while. I guess it’s a double edged sword. My job enables me to do all of this – be anywhere (obviously not for months on end), but in general, I can be flexible with where and how I work, as long as I *do* the work. I’m also really at the start of my process in academia only a year and a half into my PhD and teaching, and I think that enables me to think about what I want, where that’s going and how it is working out. On the one hand, I am so fortunate with my job(s). I am fortunate to be in a position where I work with some wonderful students and can be creative and flexible with things (really, sometimes I’ll have an off-guard conversation, or they’ll pop into my office for 10 mins, or we will chat in the break in the lecture, pass on book recommendations, talk about life and plans – I guess I am fortunate and sometimes those small conversations really make my week). I’m also fortunate that I can work on research that genuinely matters and I can keep a small counselling caseload and work with fantastic young people who remind me week by week, again, of what matters. It’s out of the academia bubble and away from things that in the grand scheme of things, aren’t so important at all. The email can wait. The box ticking thing can wait and my presence at the meeting where I may (or may not) be heard, is also probably not as important as I’ll be worried it might be.
There’s also another side to all of this, and I think that’s the side that isn’t spoken about very much. The side that fights to keep up with it all and that very invisible but sometimes deafening perfectionist thing (I don’t like that term, but I’m yet to find another word that’s got a relatively universal meaning). I say this as in the past 24 hours I submitted a book review and an abstract for a conference (a conference I went to last year and actually left half way through because I genuinely felt out of my depth, so much so that it was easier to leave than it was to stay and be OK with feeling like a bit of an imposter. Now I realise it’s more than likely that I definitely wouldn’t have been the only one at that conference feeling that way). Anyway, this is quite a regular thing for me, yet I go to the things and do them anyway – I write short things, I submit things, I put myself forward for doing things, I book myself onto things (whether that’s writing an abstract for a conference or special edition, or drafting an article or booking a place at a workshop) – I put myself forward to do the very things that I know I won’t do unless I have to, because it’s pretty terrifying. And I know myself enough to know that if my application/paper/presentation is accepted, there’s no way I’m pulling out, so I then have no other option but to process and do the very work that I was afraid of doing. Hello pressure. Goodness knows how people do this with full time jobs – I suppose this is back to the double edged sword thing. So many really wonderful aspects of so much of this work. But it also comes with the additional stuff that we don’t always talk about. Maybe here’s me talking (writing) about a bit of it.
I’m not entirely sure if that sums up February, but it does do something to sum up this evening!
