I am not trying to follow any kind of schedule at all, just get up and start doing things that need to be done, sit down for all meals and go to the pool/gym every day. This is how I always did things before, and I will point out that no schedule does not mean nothing happens regularly. Before I always studied my foreign language for an hour a day, for instance, and often at the same time each day, but I did not try to fit things into a grid–I let them find their own rhythm. One of the things I most dislike is to feel rushed and prodded; it causes me to play dead like an opossum until the danger has passed. This is why I think I am not like most professors. I think they cannot handle the flexible schedule and have to find a way to make it rigid. I, on the other hand, may have been born for it, or perhaps I was coached to it from an early age.
Not being rushed is one of my main innovations this term. Taking on service that I am in the mood for and turning down all service I am not, is also new (in the past my criterion was what was most necessary). I have dropped my “busy” persona, that I imitated from my dissertation director. She always said she was overwhelmed with random work so as to gain more research time without being called selfish. I know how dangerous it was to say directly that you were going to commit the sin of research during regular business hours–I tried it myself and paid dearly for it–but the “busy” persona is stressful and I think it also stresses the students, so I have dropped it.
I have realized that some of my colleagues are not colleagues but bad boyfriends. That is, they are boyfriends, but they are not very good at it and they seem to think of me as a girlfriend and not a colleague, so that is that. I am breaking up with them, which means I am rescinding the honor of considering them colleagues. This cuts cognitive dissonance and time spent negotiating, so reduces stress. I am gravitating to other people because they are colleagues.
I have protested an instance and a half of mistreatment. I will follow up on the half, and protest a third incident as well. I am recognizing a fourth, from the past, as another such incident although it was too long ago to address–at least not in the original form. I am not rising above things and this is another way in which I am departing from standard advice, which is not reality-based but insists you convince yourself you are living in the world the givers-of-advice seem to do.
I have not recovered from Reeducation or from my first education, much though I have talked about them. Reeducation had two phases, in two cities, and each had several steps. I am afraid to address these things as I should because I need an analyst to do it right. I am fairly sure I will veer destructively if I do it alone, and the topic bores psychotherapists since they believe in staying on the surface of things. Meanwhile I beat around the bush, walk around the lake, not walking through or jumping in.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 