Don't need to wait for an invitation, you gotta live like you're on vacation
Eight years ago, I exited a job that involved selling device that I hadn't even heard of immediately prior to being occupationally obligated to declare myself an expert in their use. More problematically, given my admitted shortcomings in all things scientific, I occasionally had to help clients design full-scale electrical infrastructure solutions. Instead of work that was right on the border of my capabilities and well outside my interests, I got a job in higher education. It was primarily concentrated on serving as the adviser to a college radio station, so it felt a little like a retreat and an exercise in nostalgia for my own time as a student on the left end of the dial. That didn't mean, however, that it wasn't also a good match.
Since the radio station was a year-round endeavor, my responsibilities were similarly unending. When my colleagues were rejoicing at the end of a school year, my professional obligations, if they changed at all, got a little more demanding. The staff dwindled, but the number of hours in the day remained stubbornly locked at twenty-four. The student leadership was usually cut in half and it took more of my time and attention to support those who remained. I'm not complaining. I liked my job and was comfortable with the extra challenges. It's just an observation. I didn't have the same sort of summer that my cohorts enjoyed.
That has changed. Two years ago, I switched jobs, colleges and states. My new position is packed with responsibilities that are clearly consolidated into the eight-week stretches when classes are taking place. When Commencement comes to a close, so to does the demand on my time. At least until August, when new student orientation planning begins to simmer. This occasional intellectual idleness has made for a tricky adjustment. While some might think it calls for a thrilling vacation (and I did allow myself a little multi-state, baseball-filled excursion with old friends last summer), I find myself, more often than not, at loose ends, trying to find the motivation to do the things that I don't have time for during the rest of the year when work weeks move well past the forty-hour mark. Certainly some of the choices I make in pursuit of filling the days are...well...let's call them questionable.
Complicating matters further at the moment is a lovely illness I've picked up (hence my absence from the blogosphere yesterday). I have a hacking cough that sounds a little bit like a steel radial tire blowing out on a gravel interstate, and my body is weary from the wrenching contortions it goes through to accommodate those bursts of poor health. Luckily, I visited our overbooked family physician today and walked out with a fistful of prescriptions. Plus she told me that one of the best things for a cough this bad is drinking whiskey, the doctor's recommendation of my long-gone twentysomething dreams.
Hmm. Maybe I've got a medically-recommended route to summer relaxation, after all.
(Posted simultaneously to "Drilling Holes in a Wall.")
Since the radio station was a year-round endeavor, my responsibilities were similarly unending. When my colleagues were rejoicing at the end of a school year, my professional obligations, if they changed at all, got a little more demanding. The staff dwindled, but the number of hours in the day remained stubbornly locked at twenty-four. The student leadership was usually cut in half and it took more of my time and attention to support those who remained. I'm not complaining. I liked my job and was comfortable with the extra challenges. It's just an observation. I didn't have the same sort of summer that my cohorts enjoyed.
That has changed. Two years ago, I switched jobs, colleges and states. My new position is packed with responsibilities that are clearly consolidated into the eight-week stretches when classes are taking place. When Commencement comes to a close, so to does the demand on my time. At least until August, when new student orientation planning begins to simmer. This occasional intellectual idleness has made for a tricky adjustment. While some might think it calls for a thrilling vacation (and I did allow myself a little multi-state, baseball-filled excursion with old friends last summer), I find myself, more often than not, at loose ends, trying to find the motivation to do the things that I don't have time for during the rest of the year when work weeks move well past the forty-hour mark. Certainly some of the choices I make in pursuit of filling the days are...well...let's call them questionable.
Complicating matters further at the moment is a lovely illness I've picked up (hence my absence from the blogosphere yesterday). I have a hacking cough that sounds a little bit like a steel radial tire blowing out on a gravel interstate, and my body is weary from the wrenching contortions it goes through to accommodate those bursts of poor health. Luckily, I visited our overbooked family physician today and walked out with a fistful of prescriptions. Plus she told me that one of the best things for a cough this bad is drinking whiskey, the doctor's recommendation of my long-gone twentysomething dreams.
Hmm. Maybe I've got a medically-recommended route to summer relaxation, after all.
(Posted simultaneously to "Drilling Holes in a Wall.")