Considering I'm feeling rather miserable today and have spent a lot of the day on the couch, feeling all miserably and contemplating my navel, I've had some time to think. I generally don't ever get to slow down enough to do this regularly so it was a rather odd experience. Anyhow, here's what my topic for the day was: cutting myself some slack. Now, this is not something I (ever) do. I'm kind of one of those people who expects perfection of myself the first time, and anything less frustrates the hell out of me. I can't help it. I am a perfectionist. Even on things that are totally out of my control. And it's killing me.
There are a lot of things I could point to and say "hey, this is the reason behind my affliction." But, I've never been one of those people. Honestly, I'm this way, and I just have to deal with it. So, this is my current plan: I am not going to beat myself up over things that are out of my control, or even those things that are moderately under my control but still don't work out perfectly. Life is a learning process and if I don't get it right the first time, I've learned something and will do better the next.
So, the fact that my students this summer session are a lazy bunch of remarkably unintelligent people who never seem to attend my lectures? This is NOT because of me. I'm going to cut myself some slack and remember this is the first class I've ever taught on my own and I am still learning. This fall, I will be better, and even if my students don't grace all of my lectures, it's not my fault.
My family may go to hell in a handbasket, and it won't be my fault. They are all adults. They can take care of themselves (well, yeah, I won't get into this one). I'm going to cut myself some slack if I don't get time to call every night and visit my grandparents enough.
My research is difficult. No one goes into ancient DNA knowing everything, and considering I went into this field with NO genetics background, I'm always leaning new stuff, and if I sometimes miss contamination in my sequences, well, I'll just fix it. And do better with my new samples. My adviser is going to think I'm an idiot always, so the hell with it. Cutting. Some. Slack.
Despite the fact that I have a MILLION things to catch up on in the lab tomorrow, I'm going to write. Damn it. I am. There's an awesome anthology I want to contribute to, as it's right up my alley, and if that means that I am going to ditch the lab, writing lectures, critiquing the two other books I need to have read and comments on before August, so be it!
Um, okay, enough ranting. But yeah, honestly, I think cutting ourselves a little slack every once and a while is a good thing (well, for some people; there are a few people *cough my students cough* who need to take a little less). So yeah, that's my plan. We'll see how long this lasts :-)
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Another perfectionist here. One of the toughest things about being unpublished is our internal task master cracking the whip :) I give writing 5 days a week like a regular day job (but not the same days) and have learned to build in some slack time because if you don't the spark extinguishes. Do something fun for you, like paint pottery, take a new up a form of exercise, read a book you've been dying to read...
ReplyDeleteOn the other stuff, I'm with you on everything but the grandparents. Spend as much time as you wish/can with them while they're here!