100 Days of Wonder – #11
Ah Deadlines. Let’s ignore for a second that I look ridiculous and talk about deadlines. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I struggle to take academic deadlines seriously. Generally, if it is research related, I am likely to be late and if it is anything else, what I would call a real deadline with real consequences of not doing it on time, I am likely to be very last minute. Often that’s because I am overcommitted because I can’t say no. It’s not actually because I like the whooshing noise they make as they go past (sorry Douglas Adams). But Walt Disney wasn’t wrong. If I didn’t have a deadline I would faff forever. I need a deadline to get things done and focus the mind. I have accepted this as a way of working that sort of works for me. I faff around, I stop and start and never really get into it, I have ideas, I might even map them out, I procrastinate and then, with the deadline looming (or having arrived), I snap out of it and get shit done. It’s not pretty, sometimes it’s way more stressful than it needs to be but it’s how I have been getting stuff done all my life. I marvel at people who are organised, have an accurate sense of time and how long things might take and seem to be able to glide through life with a distinct lack of chaos. Deadlines can’t do that for me but they can at least ensure that I keep building my dreams – even if rarely on time.
100 Days of Wonder – #10
Perspective is a funny thing isn’t it. I like spending time at the Animal Kingdom, lots of time. I like the way taking time to watch the animals can flip the perspective. Who is watching and who is being watched? And I like the way the animals can also inspire stories in interesting ways, either because we can watch them from our very human perspectives, full of assumptions and preconceived ideas about life and the world, or for the opposite reason. What can we learn by watching if we try not to make any assumptions about what is happening? I spent ages watching the hippo half swim half walk a few laps on the bottom of their ‘lake’ before settling down as we see it in the picture. Almost immediately the bird came and used the hippo as a convenient perch in the water. What the picture doesn’t capture is how most adults didn’t see the hippo and most smaller children didn’t see the bird. Everyone was just looking at their eye level not bothering to look up or down. That’s what made me take the picture – I wanted a reminder that we rarely see the whole picture and if we want to get closer to doing so, we need to consciously deviate from our normal eye line. We might be surprised by what we see.
100 Days of Wonder – #9
As I recover from Covid and try and pick up my training for the 2025 Dopey Challenge again, I am reflecting on running and what it has taught me, what it means to me and where I am with it now. There’s lots more about my running on my running blog including a write up of this particular run. I loved this run. That’s rare. I am still not entirely convinced I actually like running. But it means a lot to me because it has taught me a lot about myself. I have always been pretty good at everything I do but that’s simply because I just don’t do things I am not good at. Running is the exception. Running has taught me to stick at something, that doing something just because is a good enough reason to do it, that not being good at it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. I am more patient with myself and others because of running, I struggle less with the inevitable failures of academia because running taught me I don’t have to excel at everything and it’s ok to have a bad run (a classic reviewer 2, a not perfect teaching session, a not so great meeting). I have (mostly) let go of the competitive streak in me because the world didn’t end when I came last in a race. Running has also taught me to celebrate and ‘bank’ the wins, the glorious runs – like this 5k – where everything feels right, the sense of achievement when you cross a finish line, run a new distance, go faster than you ever have or have recently or the wonder of kingfishers, herons, kites, deer and all sorts of other wildlife you stumble across on early morning trails. I try and note and enjoy the joyful teaching moments, the ‘your paper has now been accepted’ emails, the invites to go talk to interesting people about cool stuff because there will always be another long ploddy run in the cold rain and its academic equivalents – they need doing, they help make the magic happen but having a memory bank of of what the magic feels like definitely helps!
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