99 Days of Something #6 – Academic Travel to think better
I haven’t been in a writing mood today. I haven’t updated my running blog (I haven’t run but I have cycled) and I haven’t written anything else either. I had basically given up getting anything down today. Some days are just not for writing it seems. Although I always feel better when I do write. But then I was scrolling through social media and saw posts from people I know heading to or having fun in San Francisco for one of the big Law conferences. I don’t want to write about conferences as such but it did make me think about all the places work has taken me that I might never have gone to otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, when I look back, a tiny fraction of conference trips were funded by work, most of them I paid for myself and even the ones where I did get funding, that mostly only covered part of the cost – so this isn’t about seeing the world and having fun on public money, in fact academics are the only group of people I know who routinely pay out of pocket to do parts of their job. And actually conferences are really hard work! Anyway, maybe more about actual conferencing another day.
I have been to some pretty amazing places to conferences, for fieldwork and for fellowships etc over the last 20 years. I got to spend time in Hamburg early on in my career which meant I got to spend lots of time with my Dad (because I stayed with him throughout the fellowship) and my Oma who loved me coming round for breakfast several times a week. I also got to see bits of Bulgaria and Poland as well as cities in Germany I had never been to during fieldwork. I have been to conferences and events in Warsaw, Salzburg, Oslo, Freiburg, Berlin, Brussels, Lund, Paris, Barcelona, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Mexico City, Brisbane and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. In many of these locations, particularly those outside Europe, I have always tried to add a holiday to make it worth going that far. But even when I have only done the conference, I have always made time to see at least a little bit of the place. It’s a perk of the job in some ways because sometimes conferences give access to places you don’t otherwise get. For smaller events that might just be seeing the inside of the university hosting the event – but I love that. I love getting a sense of universities in other countries, the way they feel, what they show to the public and what you can glean from being behind the scenes a little, wandering corridors, reading noticeboards (where notice boards still exist) or looking at what pictures (if any) they choose to hang on their walls. Bigger events sometimes get you access to things historic buildings for drinks receptions or dinner, or special tours like the Supreme Court in Washington DC. It can also give you a very warped sense of a place though if you just stay in your conference bubble. There were a whole load of people who missed out on amazing street food in Mexico City because they never really ventured out from the conference hotel or recommended restaurants.
The overseas trips are of course often the ones that stick in your mind. The Brisbane conference was epic partly because it fell right in the middle of a 4 week Australia adventure that we designed around the conference. I had won a best paper prize which meant that the conference fee was waived and I received some money towards travel which basically paid for my flight. Anyway, most of my conferences and events have actually been UK based. I disproportionate number of them in London but UK travel has also seen my visit Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle, York, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham, Worcester, Stratford, Reading, Bath, Norwich, Brighton, and probably lots more I can’t think of now. I don’t tend to stay longer for UK events but I do often still try and see a bit of the place – that might be with a little tourist run or a walk. In some ways it is a great way to see little bits of a place which then means you can decide if you want to go back and actually spend some time there. I have a soft spot for Leicester because I was a student there. I’d never go there as a tourist but I will always jump at an opportunity to visit for work. Same for Birmingham. I would like to spend more time in Bath – good incentive to get on with the DBA, maybe a summer graduation with a day or two either side would be a nice way to spend a few days.
Anyway, what’s the point of writing this. Well, partly it just popped into my head that I have been to a lot of interesting places because of work and partly because it is a really good reminder that it’s not all about spreadsheets. Occasionally it can and must also be about exchanging interesting, exciting and complex and challenging ideas with other people who are interested in similar things, who can share their perspective and challenge your own. It’s about being asked and asking questions that make you re-think, tweak or abandon arguments, it’s about pushing each other to think differently and articulate more clearly. Not every conference achieves that but those that do go some way to rewiring the brain and changing the world for the better. For me that level of thinking, challenge, re-thinking and that level of clarity and focus is something I can rarely achieve when at home and doing the day job. It is something I know I struggle to achieve when attending events online. There is something about being in a physical space away from home and sharing that space with others and giving in to the intensity of the conversations and just rolling with it all in spite of imposter syndrome, in spite of sometimes not really understanding and in spite of always being completely over-peopled that makes my brain fire up. It’s where the magic happens. It’s where I am pushed to think better.
I hope all colleagues in San Francisco have an amazing time and come home buzzing with ideas and I wish the same to everyone else out there who has conferences or events coming up to challenge you to be better. Let’s accept that challenge and see where it takes us.
99 Days of Something – #4: More About Rest
Ah well, yes – I didn’t get very far with the 99 Days of Something series did I. But I do miss the discipline of writing daily and I do need a kick up the backside to get some writing bits finished and writing helps with balance and rest. So the aim is to write something every day and record it here. Sometimes that might be writing for work, sometimes that might be some creative writing and sometimes it might just be the blog. But write I will. When I did the 100 Days of Wonder series, I structured the post around photos and that seemed to work really well – so maybe I start there to see how it goes.
I took this picture of Storm this morning. I like it for all sorts of reasons – the blue sky, her looking into the distance seemingly ignoring me completely, the tree in the background. I also like it because it was a very brief moment in the middle of chaos – she was being a parkour cat round the garden and paused to catch her breath before bouncing out of the greenhouse guttering onto the glass roof that covers our patio and then running across the other side of the greenhouse and jumping from there to the summer house roof and disappearing across the fence at the back of our garden. And then she appeared again doing some sort of variation of that loop. Now she’s fast asleep.
That, and scrolling through the blog and seeing some of the 100 Days of Wonder posts and realising that I feel more rested after this weekend than I did when I had a whole week off, made me reflect on my last post and on rest. Storm is good at resting. Like most cats really. She goes bonkers, she eats well, she plays, she takes care of herself and then she sleeps. When she was running around the garden and bouncing off buildings she seemed so joyful. She was just having fun. And she was just doing her thing. The other cats stayed out of her way, watching her with a mix of fear, admiration and disdain. She doesn’t care.
So as I sat in the sun, tidying up one of our little alpine tubs and watching a tiny little bee on a heuchera flower, I thought about what was different this weekend. I had assumed I would be more tired. I didn’t sleep well all week. Stress levels were high, emotional energy was drained and I was frustrated about my calf still being niggly. I almost expected to feel worse. But I didn’t. So what’s different. Well I suspect the weather helps. It’s warm and sunny and has been all weekend. Sunlight helps. The second things is that I have actually done some stuff that feels productive in a none work way. I deep cleaned the kitchen on Saturday. While somehow cleaning the kitchen always feels future because it almost immediately needs it again, the deep clean was well overdue and it does look and feel much better now. On Sunday we went out for breakfast and had a walk round Harlow Carr gardens and bought some plants. We also did a fair bit of life admin organising ourselves a bit and that felt good. I did yoga and moved a little testing out the calf and just doing what feels good. I have drunk lots more water. I always have been terrible at drinking enough but over the last few days I have really tried and I do actually feel better. I went to the gym this morning, I pottered in the garden a bit and I have made plans for an outrageous LEGO purchase that will be silly fun. I have paused and noticed things, the variety of bees, the colours outside, the difference in temperature between the front and back garden… I have watched the cats play and lounge. I have done what Storm did in condensed form this morning – I moved, I had yummy food, I have played and been silly, I have looked after myself and I have slept better. This long weekend so far has been much more about balance, about doing and being in ways that support each other. No ‘all or nothing’ in sight. Less scrolling for no reason, more deliberate breathing and noticing.
I had coffee in the shady bit of our garden when I had finished the alpine tubs and realised how much I have got out of the habit of doing nothing at all. Just sitting and sipping my coffee almost felt alien. I, like so many of us, usually have my phone out when I am just sitting. That’s not doing nothing. That doesn’t let the brain drift and do its thing. Sitting watching, sipping, listening, breathing for 10 minutes was so much more restful than any amount of time scrolling could ever be. And I’m not saying there isn’t a place for scrolling, sometimes I find it helpful to stop myself fixating on one thing or to switch tasks but the trick is not to get stuck scrolling. It takes effort.
So what is actually different? Maybe it is really simple, I feel more present, more connected to myself (I don’t quite know what I mean either but that’s the closes I can come with words) and more open to seeing the joy and wonder in the every day and that leads me to a better balance and better prioritisation between all the things that make up this rollercoaster we call life. Let’s see how I manage balance when I also have to work. Achieving it during a long weekend seems a little like cheating but I have to start somewhere!
What does Rest Actually Look Like?
I realised this week that I have clearly forgotten how to rest. I know the answer to the question posed will be very different for us all but I have been thinking a lot about rest this week, partly because I am really struggling to rest constructively. I am on annual leave so that might be why it has come into focus now but actually, I have been thinking about rest and what that actually means for a while. I have been thinking about rest and recovery in running (for how that is or isn’t going, pop over to my running blog), about rest during busy work days and weeks and rest during periods of annual leave or even just weekends. The thing is, I am incredibly good at doing nothing but awful at resting. I sleep a lot, that’s probably a good thing for rest but that’s where the positives end really. I am trying to remember when I last felt properly rested and I can’t really remember. I am as prone to doom scrolling as the best of us and I can loose hours doing absolutely nothing in a pretty mindless way. I can be a bit all or nothing with pretty much everything. Running is a good example lately – back to back days, going all in for a few days or weeks and then nothing for a while. Same with yoga, the gym, strength training. It’s also the same with writing for example – lots all at once with focus that makes time vanish and then nothing…I can work long hours and then crash out. And some of this is just how I work. I like intensity and then down time, I work better in bursts, I feel sharper, more focused and frankly just better at what I do when I do it in intense bursts. The problem isn’t intensity, or the peaks and troughs. The problem is that in an academic role, in the current state of the sector, that intensity never gives. My nervous system has learned to stay at the intensity, the bursts aren’t bursts, they’re constant and the peaks aren’t followed by troughs, there’s just another peak. Downtime has all but vanished. I have forgotten how to properly rest. Maybe we all have collectively. And by rest I absolutely do not mean crashing out in front of the TV or scrolling through endless reels that tell us how to get our life back on track after a workday filled with adding more things to the to do list than you ticked off it.
So what does rest actually look like for me? Can I remember? Let’s start with running and the physical rest needed to run well. The all or nothing approach to exercise obviously doesn’t work. I used to not only know this but also understand it in a way that allowed me to listen to my body much more than I do now. Through marathon training, and particularly through the 2019 Dopey Challenge training, I really understood the difference between good tired and dangerous tired. I knew when to rest and the rest was intentional, mindful and constructive. It was build into the plan so my initial cues came from the plan but I also quickly adapted to being ok with extra rest days, shortening distances or splitting them over two runs, adjusting weights if I didn’t feel strong or doing some additional yoga if it felt good, adding some time on feet if I felt fresh. In addition, the training, even the really long miles, felt like a rest from work. The physical effort provided the counterbalance to the brain effort of work, the movement the anti-dote to sitting most of the day. I appreciate that as I am getting older and now that I am far less fit, I need to adjust the training, I need longer to recover in-between workouts, I can’t run hard on back to back days and expect to feel great. But I am struggling to settle into a rhythm that works because nothing feels quite balanced and because I don’t, on any level, feel rested. Physical rest and mental rest are so linked for me (and probably all of us) that when I am not mentally rested, I can be as physically rested as is possible but I will still feel tired, grumpy and unable to commit to the exercise. Tired for me is rarely physical – but when it is regularly, everything is better. So I think the first thing to note about rest, is that I feel most rested when I am settled into a rhythm that somehow balances work, exercise, the outdoors, whimsical play and silliness and some sort of creative outlet which could be writing or could be reading or listening to music or whatever. That balance is hard to achieve and sometimes achieving that balance feels like another thing to do which then makes it not a balance at all but a chore.
During this week off, we have been trying to sort some photos so that we might eventually catch up a bit with photo books. We have mainly been looking at the Disney photos from 2023 and 2025. What strikes me looking back at those pictures is how tired we look in both sets. In 2023 we were so tired that we didn’t start the marathon. We were dangerous tired. In 2025 we didn’t start the marathon either but we had completed the first 3 days of the Dopey Challenge. Of course for both we were under-trained but that wasn’t the main reason for not starting those races. We were not properly rested. We were dangerous tired and most of that tiredness was mental. As it happens I did injure my knee during the half in 2025. Probably not a coincidence. Anyway, on both occasions, we came back a little more rested but not re-set. On both occasions we didn’t really break the intensity cycle. I contrast that with earlier trips and maybe particularly the 2019 trip. Physically I am not sure I have ever been as tired as I was during serious Dopey training. But it was good tired. It was tired that could be slept away. It was the sort of tired that was directly linked to physical activity, not the sort of tired that just is. Of course we were physically tired after running 48.6 miles in 4 days but at the end of the trip, I also felt more rested than I probably have since then. Mentally we went into the trip far less tired and we came back rested. I think even further back to our Australia trip in 2018. We took all of July and we saw lots, experienced lots, did lots, and came home glowing and rested and happy.
Today, Friday and the last day of my week off (I am working an applicant visit day tomorrow) and I finally feel like my mind is not constantly being pulled back to work related things. Given the state of my un-rest (deliberate choice of the word here), I don’t think a week at home is enough to re-set and actually get to rest. I am still in the shutting down apps phase before you even get to full log off never mind re-start. Things that have helped me this week have been LEGO builds, focusing on being present with the cats, morning coffee outside breathing in the cool spring air and some gentle exercise. I thought I would write and read a lot more but I didn’t want to. I didn’t feel like I had the concentration. I also thought I would scroll less and play more, be more whimsical but somehow, I don’t feel like I really got there, like I really came down from the intensity of the world for that to happen. I stayed, mostly, in serious mode. A week is not enough for a system re-set. But a week is what I have had. So I do need to think about what rest looks like in the day to day. Of course that includes longer periods of not working but if I go into those, like I have into this week and so many trips over the last few years, on high alert, exhausted and stuck in intensity mode, they are not going to be enough to establish and keep a balance. It can’t be all or nothing because that’s not rest, that’s a crash. And we’ve done the burn out and crash thing a couple of times now – not fun, not something I want to repeat.
So what might rest actually look like day to day. My job is not going to get any less intense. I could of course just leave the job – and actually, I really could but bizarrely, despite everything, I don’t actually want to. I actually like quite a big proportion of my job. So if the job won’t get less intense, I need to learn to rest within that intensity. I need to look back at the things that used to work for me and re-learn them. The first is maybe to limit work to it’s place. It’s just a job. I can both care deeply about it and still see it as just a job. I am an academic. It’s part of my identity and who I am but it is not everything. I am really good at my job, sometimes maybe it’s ok to say no, to not people please and to let opportunities whoosh past in the way that generally declines do now. I think I will put a new post-it note on my computer to remind me that it is just a job. If I can contain work better, I create space for the other restful things: Having an exercise plan that is built around constructive rest (yes I know how that sounds but it works) and not giving work my best time are two obvious ones. I like early mornings, I want to spend them sipping coffee in the sun with the cats roaming around. I do not need to be at my computer at 7am. Other things I sort of reserve for days off when there really is no need. I like the play and type of concentration required by building LEGO sets. I like the whimsy of arranging the built sets in our house. We have so many large scale sets, why not have one on the go and do a little bit each day (again, it does not have to be all or nothing, I don’t have to build everything in a day!). I love how regular yoga makes me feel, so why not get on the mat every day instead of scrolling. I miss reading for pleasure. Maybe I need to buy more trashy novels to just get lost in terrible stories and accept that not every book I read has to do anything intellectual. Maybe sometimes my brain needs flawed story telling that is easy to read and requires no thought. All easily said and easily written down. Not always easy to do. A tired mind full of un-rest easily lies to us, I am easily convinced that the best place is the sofa – it probably rarely is.
To answer the question I started with, I don’t think I know what rest looks like for me at the moment. I don’t really understand the whims of this perimenopausal body, it’s energy fluctuations, random aches and pains and non existent temperature regulation. So figuring out physical rest around exercise is going to take a little time. As for mental rest and feeling rested, I need to unlearn some bad habits and re-learn some good ones. I was better at the ebbs and flows of academic life – I think maybe partly because there were ebbs and flows in the job where there are none now. But I was good at taking time back, thriving in intense periods and slowing down, being more playful in others and I did that in much shorter and sustainable cycles. Maybe it was easier in more junior and teaching focused roles than it is now, maybe the sector has got worse but the basics should still work. The intensity of the job hasn’t dropped at all since last summer, and it won’t. But mine has to. Maybe saying that out loud, putting it down here is step one to taking one little step at a time to real constructive rest that involves far less doing nothing and much more mindful and deliberate being in the doing of whimsical, playful and ultimately restful activities. The pictures dotted throughout this blog, show some of the things that made me smile and pause this week. They are the things that matter.
How do you rest? Help me learn again.
My Conversations 