Category Archives: NaBloPoMo

Siesta

National Blog Posting Month – January 2013 – Energy

Prompt – At what time of day do you feel the most energetic and productive?

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At different times of day I’m productive in different ways. It’s hard to pinpoint any single time of day when I’m most energetic and productive. I do, however, know when I am least productive.

The doldrums hit me around 2pm every day and I’m a slug until around 5 or 6. I know myself well enough to know that unless there is a seriously urgent deadline, there is little point in fighting the afternoon drags. Instead, I strap on my exercise shoes and mindlessly workout for thirty minutes to an hour. And once I’m done and showered, I start on the evening chores. By the time everything’s done and all members of the household are fed, I’m back to being constructive and energized and I get on with whatever brain-intensive tasks need doing.

It makes for me keeping strange work hours, but everyone seems to be OK with it. I come into the office in the morning and do whatever lab things need to be done until my energy starts to wane, then I leave, usually around 2. I make up the lost hours in the evening at home when my brain returns to normal function.

I get away with this because I’m on salary and I need only present results to justify my employment. I feel fortunate because of this. I only have to work during my optimal times. I’ve had jobs where I had to grunt my way through the less-optimum hours of the day. I know what it’s like and I can do it. I’m glad I don’t have to.

For 1-4-13

Energy through Exercise

National Blog Posting Month – January 2013 – Energy

Prompt – What is your favourite way to recharge when you feel drained of energy?

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I’m drained. I just want to go to bed. My head is heavy. Everything is overwhelming. What do I do?

I could eat a bag of potato chips (which sounds fabulous right now, by the way!). Or, I could drink a soda or a cup of coffee (which I’ve been known to do). But if I really want to get myself back on my feet to get some work done, I have to get on my feet!

I take a deep breath. I change my clothes. I pop in a workout DVD. And I exercise. Some days it’s just a 20 minute workout. Other days I challenge myself to a 50 minute workout. Sometimes, I’ll opt to go for a run or hop on the elliptical for a while. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Exercise is what I need, most of the time. And usually, it’s enough of a kick to get me back into high-productivity mode.

The only time this doesn’t work is if I’m in energy-saving mode due to illness. Then exercise knocks me out. This is how I usually find out that I’m sick, not just exhausted. Recently, that’s been the case. I’ll have a good workout, then I’m in bed for an hour. Nevertheless, I do feel better for working out than I would have had I just had some ice cream and watched more TV.

Exercise is the key to my energy. I exercise nearly every day. It’s part of my daily routine. It’s what I do.

 

What do you do to recharge?

 

For 1-3-2013

Energy Sapping

National Blog Posting Month – January 2013 – Energy

Prompt – Which daily tasks take up the most of your energy?

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Where does most of my energy go on a given day? Can I narrow it down to just one thing?

The daily chores just sap my energy, especially in the winter time. They’re endless: Water and Feed the chickens morning and night. Take care of the cats. Make lunch. The dishes. Move snow. Stoke fire. Bring in firewood. Feed the boy. Feed myself. It takes maybe an hour to two hours every day just to stay on top of these things, and at the end of a long work day, it’s not what I want to do.

In the summer it’s not as bad. The chickens are able to forage and their water doesn’t freeze, so I can deal with them once a day. We don’t have a fire, so I needn’t worry about that. And with all the extra daylight, I don’t have to do any of these things immediately upon entering the house every day after work.

So maybe it’s partly the chores and maybe it’s partly the lack of daylight. I sleep when it’s dark. When I was in the high Arctic with 24 hours of sunlight, I was full of energy. Winter time down south – I got nothing.

All right. Another month or so and daylight will be getting reasonable, even if it still is cold. That’s ok. I can handle it. Right?

Whence does my energy come?

National Blog Posting Month – January 2013 – Energy

Prompt – From where do you draw your energy?

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Or perhaps “Whence do you draw such energy?”

So where does it come from, all this jumpy-aroundedness? Exercise helps. Eating well. And doing what I like.

It seems though, that I mostly only have energy when the Sun is up. Apparently, I’m solar powered. In the winter, I can’t get anything finished, because my day is seemingly only eight hours long. But in the summer, I whiz-bang through so much stuff I astound myself.

There have been times in my life when I’ve put up full-spectrum lights so that I can work well into the evenings. This is how I survived my graduate school days. I’m beginning to think I need to do that again. My to-do list for these next two weeks is horrifying and I don’t know how I’ll get anything done without being able to work after my son’s bed time.

Energy is such a fleeting substance. Though I know I’m operating at a low-energy status right now because it is winter and cold, were it not for exercise and being employed at something I enjoy, I know I would be complete toast. So I’ll slog through the next couple of months, waiting for the days to extend in length and for my energy to return.

She Shoots! She Scores!

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – How do you celebrate your accomplishments?

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Celebrating accomplishments is a challenge. Perhaps it’s the constant, nagging suspicion that what I’ve done isn’t really all that good. That I’ve really done nothing more than fool the masses. Maybe it’s because, given that I’m a scientist, that every completed task is little more than a gateway to the next thing. I mean, finishing something really means that I’ve just suddenly got a whole bunch more work to do! It never ends!

At best, I celebrate accomplishing something by going home and chilling. I’ll drink an adult beverage and *gasp* watch a movie. Or better yet, I’ll go to bed after having shut off all the alarms for the following morning, thereby giving myself permission to sleep a little later.

Yeah, it’s possible I’m doing this wrong. Maybe that’s why I always feel a little stressed out. There’s always something that needs to be done. I can always come up with something I ought to be doing. So accomplishing something just means that now I have time to do the other things that I’ve been putting off. Maybe I ought to give myself a break.

Well, today marks the last day of 2012. Maybe next year I’ll go ahead and give myself that break. I deserve it, right. Perhaps I should sit down and list the things that I accomplished this year. I’ll bet it’s a long list. I wrote a book. Oh heck! I wrote two books! Went to the Arctic. Got in shape. Started learning swordsmanship. Managed to collect a bit of a following on my blog here (hi everyone!). Ooh! And two papers published (-ish)! That’s an improvement over zero papers from last year!

Yeah, I’m getting somewhere. I deserve a vacation. I think I’ll do that. Heh. Well, eventually anyway!

For 12-31-12

Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – What is the hardest job you’ve ever done?

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Hardest job ever?

Parenting. Hands down. No contest. No comparison.

Toughest job I’ve ever done for a paycheck?

Graduate student. Lousy paycheck (though still pretty decent, really). Long hours. Little respect. Nightmares. Uncertain outlook.

Positive aspects of both jobs?

Rewarding. Meaningful outcome. ‘Character building’ (whatever that is).

If I had it to do over, would I?

Yes.

For 12-28-12

Working alone… with others

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – Would you rather work alone or with other people?

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This is a hard one. There are situations in which having partners on a project is great as well as those which wind up being a nightmare.

Working with others means that you have back-up if there are problems and built-in help. It means also that you don’t need to know every single thing – your colleagues can fill in for your knowledge gaps. The downside is that, unless you’re working with a great set of people, sometimes you might wind up being more of a cheerleader for an unmotivated group. This can result in a pretty crappy result (if any ever arises).

Working alone means that you don’t have to coordinate meetings and you can work at your own pace. Plus, you can take full credit if the project is successful. Downside: Failure is all your’s too, and there’s no-one prompting you or encouraging you to stay on task. Things might never get done!

I’ve had successes and failures in both scenarios. I like to think that I’d prefer to work alone, that I’d be more successful if I didn’t have to deal with other people, but there are a lot of things I just can do on my own. It doesn’t help that I have social anxiety – just picking up the phone to call someone to ask on their progress can be a nightmare! If I could, I’d rather work alone, but the reality is that I just can’t. So I often get into collaborative projects, and hope that either a) my colleagues will be as motivated as me and won’t need much prompting or b) I’m not the leader on the project. It doesn’t always work that way, and I’ve suffered through many failures. I’ve also had many successes.

So I’m going to take the middle road and say ‘both.’ If I could, I would probably prefer to work alone, but I accept that that is not a viable option in most cases. I move on. Things have to get finished. And they do – most of the time.

For 12-27-12

I can haz career?

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – Do you think you have a job or a career?

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To me, having a ‘job’ would be working for an hourly wage at something that you do only for the pay and not because of any long-term goal. ‘Jobs’ are typically positions that do not provide much (if anything) in the way of benefits or retirement plans.

A ‘career’ involves working at a single type of work (hopefully at a single place of employment) with a long-term goal of working up to higher positions and greater pay and usually includes some manner of retirement plan.

Most definitely, I have a career. It’s hard not to have a career when one has put the time into getting a Ph.D. (though it happens). I expect to be doing the same sort of work (science and teaching and maybe a little writing) until I’m ready to retire.

Further evidence that I have a career: I finally got business cards. I feel all grown up.

Back off, man! I'm a scientist!
Back off, man! I’m a scientist!

For 12-26-12

Going for a ride…

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – How far would you travel daily for a job you love?

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Since I really like my current job, let’s examine how far I travel each day to get to it, shall we?

The drive is approximately 35 miles one-way, according to my car’s trip odometer. That means 70 miles round-trip each day, 350 miles a week. Happily, the drive itself tends to take less than 45 minutes, unless there’s heavy traffic or lots of snow. Some folk’s commutes take that long and they only have to go two miles!

It’s worth it because I also really like the house we live in: an 1830’s colonial farm house on two acres. It’s huge and has space for all our books.

Yup, I have a job I like and a home I like, and it only costs me 350 miles a week.

For 12-25-12

Noises off!

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – Can you get work done with background noise or do you need the room silent?

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Everyone has there preferences, but for myself, I generally need silence or white noise in order to keep my thoughts from wandering too far. Sometimes I can work to old, familiar music, but most often, silence.

Noise distracts me constantly. I hate extraneous sounds. I like quiet. The noise in this room right now is disturbing me.

Sigh.

For 12-24-12