There’s something about work-related socialization: after being sick earlier this week and the holiday, something in my brain told me I had to spend at least half a day working. I am sure that within 20 or 30 years, a neuropsychologist will be able to tell me why I have this impulse. (And I am equally sure that a psychodynamics-oriented therapist will be able to speculate today on that, entirely absent evidence.) But it’s less the impulse than what I do with that impulse that interests me. Today, it was poking away at small things. Clearing away a small packet of tasks; nothing big happened, but I have fewer Things hanging over me at the end of the day. And given my energy level during the week, I’m quite happy with that result.<\/p>\n
I am not going to claim that I am the Tortoise in some metaphor for career paths; I can churn projects out when necessary and when the conditions are ripe. But I’ve been successful thus far combining an occasional frenzy with the long-term poking away at projects. The instinct to get out of bed and do something<\/i> works. <\/p>\n
In other words, I probably could plot my career better than I do now, but I plod along fairly well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s something about work-related socialization: after being sick earlier this week and the holiday, something in my brain told me I had to spend at least half a day working. I am sure that within 20 or 30 years, a neuropsychologist will be able to tell me why I have this impulse. (And I am […]<\/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-1389","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-mp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389","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=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}