After my complaining last week, I took a personal day. I told Advisor that I needed a day off to just… do nothing or everything. He said that he understood and that he didn’t care. So, I took Thursday off. It was lovely.
I dropped Kiddo off at daycare, came home, got coffee, got back into bed, and just slacked. I read a magazine from cover-to-cover in one sitting, watched 2 episodes of Doctor Who (the last from season 6! Squee!), napped, and stared off into space. I woke up Friday in a much better mood and that has continued throughout this week.
I didn’t realize how much I needed some time where there were absolutely no demands on me. Time to just breathe and not worry about anything.
What follows is a lot of navel-gazing and just my rambling thoughts. So, feel free to click away.
(I always feel sheepish when I write these kind of posts. I feel that everything I post should be.. something… I can’t quite come up with the right word or words. Each post should be, well, maybe not profound, but not about something as mundane as my inner monologue. At least I should have a reason other than just sorting out my thoughts. In the end, though, apparently, my sheepish-ness does not outweigh my desire to sift through the detritus in my brain because I’m posting this anyhow. But I digress. A lot.)
The thinking I did on Thursday made me realize that a lot of my frustration comes from too high expectations for myself. I thought that at ~8.5 months into this parenting thing I’d be much better at doing it all. I figured that I’d be tired, but, eh, it wouldn’t be that bad. My expectations were that I’d be productive in the lab everyday and have an adequate routine at home to get everything done by a reasonable hour. Right now I manage to be semi-productive in lab through my sleep-deprived haze and I get a lot of things done, but not by a reasonable hour.
However, I have decided that my expectations were unreasonable. I’m not one that does well with little sleep (well, in undergrad I was a rockstar at that, but I think it has caught up with me). Also, Kiddo is only 8.5 months old. Taking care of a baby is hard. (Insert usual caveat here about it being amazing, wonderful, etc.) Kiddo’s needs are ever changing. So my routine is ever changing to accommodate him. Dr. Man has been largely out of commission the past month (but is now on the mend– and I do want to emphasize that he has done probably more than I would have if I had a broken bone), so that has made things extra challenging. I just never adjusted my expectations to fit the realities of the situation. Now, I’ve just got to figure out what are reasonable expectations.