Since everyone's posting either end-of-the-year memes, themes (here , resolutions (here and here), or no resolutions, here's mine:
It's just one, and I had thought about this one even before Profgrrrrl wrote about it in a more elegant post than this one: mindfulness. Instead of a resolution, I'd like to call it a theme or maybe even (so as not to jinx it) a suggestion.
Mindfulness means a lot of things. It means paying attention to what I eat instead of eating out of stress or work avoidance.
It means distinguishing between what really needs to get done, what I need to do, and what someone else wants me to do. Their wishes do not have to become my to-do list, and their wish for an immediate response to something that isn't important doesn't need to push that item to the top of my to-do list.
It means making time for the things I need to do, not being on campus just because people like to see me in my office in case they happen to want something. Chief among those things I need to do is making time for writing.
It means wasting less time on news sites and checking email, because, all dreams aside, I'd rather let Obama handle the anxieties of managing this country and, as my experiments with turning off the internet have shown me, email can almost always wait.
It means treating reading blogs as an after-dinner dessert instead of something to snack on all day.
In short, mindfulness means paying the same amount of attention to my own life and priorities that I routinely pay to those of others.
4 comments:
This is great--thanks! I need to work on the blog-reading/email/being in the office things myself....
Here's to a year of responsible self-awareness! Put that way, though, boy is it unsexy. Eh. "Mindfulness" is better.
There are a lot of us, this year, it seems.
What is it about academe that makes one, improbably, mindless?
heu mihi--I agree. Too bad there isn't an even more exciting word than "mindfulness," though if there were, someone would have slapped a trademark sign on it.
Moria--oh, my. "Academe makes us mindless because ..."-- well, let me count the ways!
OK, good post, I'll join the program. With a modification: blog writing must be finished by 8 AM, no blog reading at night although this *may* be done for 30 minutes sometime between 4 PM and dinner.
What else: I will more seriously limit consumption of meat, coffee, and alcohol - all are expensive and some are fattening. I will have in my possession a greater variety of higher quality tea.
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