Tag: fatigue

Rebooting… The annual new year’s post

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It’s 2022. In many ways, I am massively relieved that 2021 is over. It was a hard, hard year. Some amazing things happened – dream job meaning big career boost and much-appreciated validation for years of hard work; moving abroad for said dream job. But, these amazing things have also meant hard changes, like leaving one of my children behind because he is now too old for a family visa, leaving my dream house near the beach in the best city in the world, having to adjust to a whole new country, people, job, house, everything, really. And I lost my mum, which I haven’t even really begun to process. And Covid, which I don’t think I need to really say too much more about this stage of the pandemic. But, because it was such a Year, I am Tired. Like on a Never-been-this-tired-before-ever-that-I-can-recall scale. I know I am not alone here. Many of us are burned out. Done. Tired to the bones. Over it all. And it feels like no amount of holiday or rest or time off can really take that level of tired away. It’s not just physical or even mental; it’s a deep emotional and psychic weariness, I think.

This pandemic is a big thing, a huge thing, really, because we have no idea when it will actually end (still assuming it will). But, climate change, political strife, war and unrest in many parts of the world, the ongoing awfulness of Internet trolls and mean, narrow-minded people who just don’t seem to care at all about anyone except themselves – all of these things may also feel like they are draining us. They’re there in the background all the time and sometimes in the foreground, and if we actually think about it all it just adds to the tiredness. You could say ‘well don’t think about it then’ and that can work for periods, but then you probably also have to take a very long break from newspapers, Twitter, and/or anything that feeds you information about the world around you, which would also disconnect you further from the world. Probably not the best idea at a time when disconnection is a significant concern, and when we actually do need to be informed and knowledgeable about what is happening around us.

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So, we’re Tired, we’re still disconnected, we’re not exactly rested and raring to go just yet, and the year is beginning. We need to get back to work, back to the doctorate, back to research and writing: we need to get back to Being Productive, whatever that means for us. My question for myself now is ‘How?’ I could really do with more time for country walks, knitting, and Netflix, to be honest. There’s a small part of me that’s starting to get a bit excited about my research, but feels pretty tired at the idea of all the reading and writing; I am starting to look forward to going back to my teaching, but feel pretty meh about all the admin. This is all normal, of course. I refuse to feel any kind of bad for not being super-excited about 2022, about my work, about all the writing I have committed to, about anything. I am grieving, I am tired, I am weighed down by sadness and stress, really. I am allowed to feel my feelings at my own pace. I am also saying this out loud in case any of you need to hear this and say something similar to yourselves.

But, I am also a Doer and part of a team. I am no longer just me, working all by myself at home online with no office or immediate colleagues or projects and workshops kicking off a week into the new year. This is a big change from previous years where, partly because of my contract role and partly because of the university calendar, work only got going in late January/early February. I had more time to ease myself into the year and into Being Productive. Here, the university year has started and my active teaching starts next week. I am part of a team. I’m still working at home thanks to Omicron, but not alone. So, I’m getting going but I’m giving myself permission to ease myself in this week. Start with email: clearing the inbox, replying where needed, turning off the auto-replies. Then the calendar: look at what’s coming up, make some small-and-achievable goals to get going with the writing and research, make some to-do lists for things that need to start happening. Then work: meetings that need to happen, workflows that need to kick off, tasks that need to be completed now, people that need to be connected with. That seems like a manageable plan to reboot my work-self and get things going in a non-overwhelming way.

I can’t end on one of those gung-ho, ‘we can do this!’ notes for this New Year’s post. I don’t really feel that so it would not ring true. What I do feel is an increasingly urgent need to take care of myself, to put acts of self-care higher on my list, to not push-push-push until I cannot actually move forward another step. I want to reach the end of the year, for starters, and when I do I want to look back on a year that has been full of enriching interactions with students and colleagues, a year that is more settled at work and at home, a year that has been full of really exciting and interesting reading, writing, conversations, and research. But I also want to look back on a year of time spent walking outdoors with my husband, drinking wine, dancing, and laughing with friends, hanging out with my boys, gardening and knitting, going on holidays with my family, exploring our new country (and hopefully one or two others as well). I want to feel I have grown both personally and professionally, that I have done meaningful work, that I have given back to and really been part of my different social and professional communities. I have to make that the balance between work and life and work and me happen and I hope I am finally learning how: to take it a task, a day, an interaction at a time; to slow myself down when I get ahead of myself; to surround myself with people who support and encourage me; to be that person for my students and colleagues – my students especially, who definitely need to see more examples of this in academia.

I hope you all are able to create your own intentional and meaningful paths through the year ahead, in whatever ways and spaces you can. I hope you will take care of yourselves and others this year, and that you will feel purposeful, useful, supported, challenged, and also stimulated and joyful in your writing, your research, your teaching and supervision, and in the things you choose to give yourself to outside of work and studies. Happy new year to you all, truly.

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On being down (and not quite being ready to get back up)

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There are different ways to be down during a PhD, Masters, or postdoctoral fellowship. You can be down in terms of writing time, just struggling to get words onto a page; you can be down in terms of your mood, feeling low and tired and unable to carry on. You can also be down on your luck, if data gets lost, supervisors change institutions, or funding applications fall through.

Pinterest.com

Pinterest.com

I am currently down. I have two blog posts half-written that I cannot seem to finish. I have two papers that have come back from reviewers with mainly positive comments, and suggestions for fairly minor and quite manageable revisions. I have odds and ends that need doing. But even though all of this is actually quite manageable in size and scope, I just cannot seem to do anything. All I really want to do is lie on the couch and watch back-to-back episodes of ‘Bones’, and maybe check my email from time to time and send a response or two.

I am worried about this down-turn in my desire to be productive and energetic about my research. Because, while I have all these little manageable things to do, there are much bigger things waiting: a book that needs to now be written, an edited to book to finish putting together and finalising, a mountain (no I exaggerate not) of raw data that needs to be catalogued, organised, coded and fed back to research participants before year-end. I am worried that if I keep lying on the couch, I will not only lose the will to do the small things, but the bigger things will stall as well.

I remember feeling like this during my PhD, especially towards the end of each of the three years, as I took time off over Christmas and then struggled to get going again in the new year. I am trying, now, to remember how I got myself up then, because I am battling with feeling unable to really get up now, and also wondering if I want to get up. The work waiting is SO much. I am not finding it easy to take my own advice, and just get up and going again.

What do you do when you have lost your work mojo? I tell myself: just do it. Just sit down and do the revisions. Just sit down and finish the blog posts. Just sit down and work. But then I open my email, and fritter away my mornings sans children with silly things that are not getting my work done. Interestingly, I don’t feel as ashamed of this down-turn and what can only be described as laziness as I have in the past. Perhaps I am finally getting better at being kind to myself? Maybe. Perhaps I really am just tired, and my body and brain are recognising that I do need a rest, and they’re taking it. Either way, the mojo is on hold, and while I am not terribly shamed by my non-productivity of late, I am still worried that if I don’t un-funk myself soon, I will get stuck for longer than I can afford to get stuck.

I am sure I will now, as I have in the past, get up. Downs are certainly part of the journey – any journey – as we seldom travel along flat and easy paths only. A PhD, a paper, a book – these are definitely full of highs and lows and everything in-between. I don’t have any good advice for myself today. I just have kindness, a mental hug, and a commitment to at least open one of the the papers that has to be revised, and make a list of things I have to do to finish it. And hope, hope, hope that the mojo will kick in on Monday.

The PhD and illness

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I have been umming and aahing about writing this post because it may come across as a whinge of some kind but it really isn’t meant to be. I think it’s about an issue that needs to be talked about; one related to the kinds of physical stress that come with working for several years on a PhD. We talk a great deal about mental stress, and even the emotional toll that a PhD process can take on students, but I have not yet seen very much written about the physical toll except in a couple of main areas. Perhaps I am not reading widely enough, but most of what seems to be written about in this regard is by and about people working on their PhDs while managing a mental or chronic illness that already demands a lot of their physical, mental and emotional energy. I would imagine that this must be incredibly difficult. But I want to add to these conversations here  by reflecting on the more run-of-the-mill physical illnesses like flu, colds and similar that may become more common for you during your PhD and may not immediately be associated with the stress of undertaking PhD research.

I have been ill quite a bit more than usual for the past two years, and I am not a person who gets colds and flu much at all. I tend to use my sick days for my kids’ illnesses rather than my own. But in the last two years I have had to take sick leave and actually stay at home, on the couch, and not just go to work and solider on. I have felt physically run down – just generally tired and worn out, and I have to say it has taken me a long time to associate much of this with the stress attached to my PhD. I am not offering empirical proof here, but I think many PhD students could probably understand this. I have had several sinus infections. I have allergies, but I have hardly ever had these turn into actual sinus and chest infections that have really had me down and out. I have been thinking it’s just because I’m really bad at remembering to take my vitamins, or because I eat the wrong things, or because of changes in the weather. But since the beginning of this year, and last year finishing my thesis, I have felt really worn out most of the time, and today I went to the doctor for the 6th time since January. This is not normal, and definitely not for me. At the moment I have no voice at all, mild vertigo and sinusitis and I finished my corrections on my thesis the day before yesterday.

I’m starting to think there’s a real connection here. I have been very anxious waiting for my reports from my examiners. It has weighed on me, the waiting and wondering. After the high of getting my reports back I felt really down again, and found doing the corrections mentally tough (more on this next week). I had a couple of really bad sinus days trying to work on them. I handed in my thesis at the end of last year but really battled to unwind and relax for the three and half weeks I had between handing in and starting work again because I was wondering about the examination process and how it would go. It was handed in, but the thesis was not finished and so I could not just shake it off and forget about it. I worried and wondered and the stress stayed with me. And so, it seems, did the fatigue and the illness. I don’t think I am alone in finding myself more physically run down during and just after a PhD, but struggling to make obvious connections between the PhD process and my feelings of fatigue, and not really feeling completely well (and sometimes being quite sick too).

Apart from multivitamins and having people around who are instructed to force you to take mini-breaks, and even take you away when it all gets too much, I think it is important for PhD students to try and get enough rest and eat well, although this can be hard on the bad days when you want to mainline sugar and chocolate, and on the many nights when you lie awake between 3 and 5 am rewriting your theory chapter in your head, eventually getting up to write down your ideas because you know you won’t remember them in the morning. It’s especially hard if you are a student and working and a parent, and you cannot remember the last time you were at the top of your own list of priorities. As a mum, having an inability to put myself and my needs first feels like something that comes with the job.

But I think what I have learned, am still learning, is that you have to say NO to the things that really don’t matter so much, and say YES to focusing on what you need to do your best work in every area of your life, like what you need to get through your PhD in as healthy and sane a state as possible. I am not fully sure that this is possible, though. When I told my supervisor, coming off 6 months of suspended studies to finally work on my proposal, that I wanted to try and be a  mum and do well at work and write a great PhD and stay sane, her response was that I could certainly do that but that I might have to let go of the sanity. I think, if you also include great physical well-being, that she was probably spot-on. But as always, I (we) can solider on and get better all the time, hopefully, at focusing more on what matters to me (us), and not always so much on what matters to everyone else.