So suffice to say that the blog got abandoned as a low
priority task. But new year, new
me! ;)
New Year’s resolutions? Well I am
one of those types who like making New Year resolutions … though I can’t say I
always keep them! My fantastic sister of
ultimate willpower managed to give up chocolate for a whole year but alas I
wish I had her willpower! But it’s nice
to have goals… even if they hang over you like a dark cloud & say ‘look
what you’re not achieving’, leaving you with that continuous guilt feeling (not
selling it well am I?) ;)
So New Year’s resolutions to try this year: well I always start with a fitness one. This year I will run a half marathon (and do
the training for it). I attempted this
one last year, and did fantastically for the first 3 months training (I was
very chuffed with myself for keeping it up… though I was on maternity leave… so
no work commitments), but then I sprained my ankle so badly that I was out of
action for 6 months (how I did this is another story altogether – one involving
remote walks with toddlers on my own on the Yorkshire Moors, an ambulance and
very kind strangers).
Sad to say the rest of my New Year’s resolutions are work
based. Now that both girls are settling
relatively easily each evening now, my primary New Year’s resolution is to work
weekday evenings. This is a sad but true
necessity of being an academic… working 3 days a week during the office hours
is simply not enough to keep up with an academic career. There is a never-ending pile of work to do,
and alas since I have returned to work from maternity leave in June I have not
managed to write one new paper, simply because I’m fire fighting everything
else & haven’t managed to put in the extra time for a variety of reasons. So… evening working here I come… yippee! (?)
Onto my next New Year’s resolution: to write at least 3 new
first author papers (& submit!) within 2013. Hoping this is reasonable at 3 days a week… I
have one started (more analysis to do), another one analysis in progress but no
paper outline as yet, and one is an idea un-started & data looking at me
and taunting me (looking forward to it but need to get the other two out of the
way first!). It’s on my blog so I’m committed now ;)
The other work New Year’s resolution is to raise my work
profile J Will keep up the tweeting (I am a twitter
addict now, I don’t think this will be a problem!) & blogging, adding in
some ‘fascinating science’ themed blogs.
But also I will try to combat my fear of raising my profile & sign
up to The Women’s Room. The
Women’s Room is trying to re-balance the media bias towards men as expert representatives
in their fields, by providing a central resource of women experts in their
fields. I have shied away from the media
in the past because I have always felt like I would say the wrong thing. Always
afraid that I will say something that is completely wrong, and have fellow
experts in the field gaffaw and write me off as a scientist. Basically in the words of Alienor Chauvenet in her blog post I suffer from imposter syndrome. So I’m going to fluff up my
feathers like a bird preparing for a battle, and get out there and be confident
& shout about myself ;) Ok maybe not
quite that bold, but I will try to be better at self-promotion – through
Twitter, my blog, and use many of the other tools out there to raise my profile
online (linkedIn, ResearcherID, etc.)… and not shy away from media coverage.
A new category for me this year is a ‘green’ New Year’s
resolution was prompted by @HuffPostGreen to have a green eco-friendly NewYear’s resolution for 2013. I ummed and
ahhhed over this one… ‘eat less meat’ was a good idea but as ex-vegetarians we
still eat very little meat, ‘have shorter showers’ was one option for saving
more water, but I was a bit reluctant to have shorter showers – one of my few
luxuries as a parent is my quiet time in the shower ;) And anyway a couple of years ago I decided
I’d rather have fewer showers than shorter ones (call me grubby if you
like!). So I settled on ‘consume less
& only buy essential items’. This
was prompted by another @HuffPostGreen post about consuming less. We consume resources at too high a rate for
it to be sustainable, and I believe it is our addiction to consumption & ‘growth’
that is the real problem behind climate change, the wobbly economy, etc. So the article echoed the thoughts I have had for years. We, as individuals, and as
a society need to learn to survive on a LOT less. And to be honest I don’t believe we need to
buy so much to be happy. Live simple, be
happy J
So this year I will try to consume less only buy ‘necessary’ items (or things
that have a smaller impact on the environment).
I’m not sure it’ll be as easy as it sounds… we are already thinking of a
new sofa because ours is lumpy & looks like something out of a student
house, and replace the bed with a sofa-bed to make more space in our spare
bedroom. When really we have a perfectly
functional sofa & bed! Hmmm. Will keep you posted on progress ;)
My final resolution is just simply plagiarised from
@rachnp89’s New Year’s resolution (check out her blog post here) – to ‘maintain
a sense of wonder’. It is so easy to
just get bogged down in endless work, keeping up with demanding toddlers,
keeping up with chores, that it is easy to lose perspective and feel a bit lost
and bewildered (& stressed) by life.
In work life it is easy to lose sight of why you chose the career in the
first place: a love of the subject… for me biology. When I started out in biology I had a sense
of wonder about every new thing I learnt… who knew that mychorrizal fungi
formed a network of interactions between trees in a forest providing the trees
with nutrients and gaining food in return – how cool is that? I was
continuously amazed and excited by the new world I was delving into. Darwin’s finches were a revelation, I even
loved learning about molecular pathways in molecular biology, it was biological
mathematics… fun! These days I can feel
that wonder less because it’s easy to get bogged down in too much detail. I am going to plagiarise Rachael’s blog again
here by quoting her quote from David Foster Wallace:
Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what's going on in front of me...
... the real value of a real education ... has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water.""This is water."
So this year I am going to remember to take delight in the
small things… in my science, but also in the everyday things – little moments
of joy from being a parent (like my daughter running away from the waves on the
beach yesterday… not just the delight on her face but the wonderful misty
drizzle over the sea giving the landscape a mystical calm feel), smiles from
strangers on the street, and just to delight in nature like I used to – hearing
birds sing, jumping in puddles, watching snails explore...
Which New Year’s resolution am I most looking forward to? Definitely this last one, it’s a great
counterbalance against a hectic life, especially one where we are continuously
bombarded by bad news.
