I’ve been spending several hours each day since the 25th on some EPAA editing duties. The end of the semester put me behind on a number of tasks on the journal, and if there is a professional New Year’s resolution for 2008, it is to devote enough time regularly to the journal to scramble back from the hole I’m in without spending so much time in a single day that it becomes a chore. <\/p>\n
In many ways, the trick of being a middle-aged professional is judicious pacing. I have two adolescent children, a marriage, some interests in the community I live in, and a work environment where I have a wonderful situation in many ways, being overcommitted with free choices I have made. I have had some stretches where I put in serious overtime (60+ hour weeks), and in many ways I have some skills in short-term detail work that are a professional advantage. But you don’t really survive an academic career with constant stretches of two-week-turnaround massive projects, or at least I couldn’t with my sanity and family intact. <\/p>\n
I’ve done far better in the long term when I poke persistently away at projects, with periodic panic weeks when everything else is tossed aside. (The periods of concentrated effort require a long gestation\/fermentation period to be effective.) There are some psychological side-effects of such a habit: I don’t feel happy if I go a number of days without working on something<\/em>. A touch of workaholism, perhaps, but it’s a tradeoff for complete nuttiness punctuated with occasional lassitude. Some people can do the utter lassitude for long stretches. Not me, or at least not right now.<\/p>\n So if you’re spending this week relaxing, please enjoy. I’ll work for you if you’ll drink a cocktail for me at noon. Somehow it’ll all balance out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been spending several hours each day since the 25th on some EPAA editing duties. The end of the semester put me behind on a number of tasks on the journal, and if there is a professional New Year’s resolution for 2008, it is to devote enough time regularly to the journal to scramble back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-academic-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-iF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}