Being out of school feels a little bit like being unemployed to me. I have so many things I should be doing and just don't feel like it. Without a schedule or structure, I forget about the discipline that gets me out of bed early and keeps me following my to-do list. Its not that I don't have things to do, somehow it just seems easier to put them off. Today I read a whole book in between cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming the living room. I left the coffee table perched on the couch, where I'd moved it on the way to vacuum, and sprawled out on the floor.
I had intentions to spend a couple of hours writing and researching this afternoon, but somehow I had lost all motivation. Instead I read a book about a woman who discovers herself and a new life in the middle of making bread . . . sounds wonderfully simple. I think its the obligations of research and logic that make me want to go back to the simple things like scrubbing out the sink and kneading bread. Somehow I keep flipflopping between those two worlds of academic and, well, I'm not quite sure what the other is.
I don't necessarily believe they need to be isolated, but unintentionally I have segregated my life into "productive" and "unproductive" times, giving myself permission to shirk academia, even leave the coffee table on the couch in an acknowledgment that things and obligations can be displaced temporarily making space for indulgence. At the same time, knowing full well my functional life requires to-do lists, schedules and coffee tables in their proper place on the floor.
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