(1) Being more aware of the “work addiction” mindset I easily slip into, especially with a new school year coming. My ADHD puts me at risk of addiction. My addictions haven’t really manifested themselves as what I considered to be the well-known ones: drugs and alcohol.
Instead, an addiction I trend towards–one that is pretty acceptable if not encouraged in society’s eyes–is my work addiction.
When a new semester starts, it’s never too busy at first, so I often get lulled into overcommitting myself, becoming overwhelmed, etc.
To try to help with this, a question I’ve been asking myself, is, “How am I going to address this going into this new semester?” A bit of this is solved by the fact that I’m going into my third year as a PhD student. My class commitment is far less, and I’m beginning to design my own independent studies to help prepare to write my dissertation proposal. I also benefit from a lot of privilege as a PhD student because I am lucky enough to be funded through a research assistantship. For those outside of academia, I’m kind of in the privileged “one percent.” This affords me me extra time not spent being a teaching assistant, a privilege many of peers are not given.
Beyond these sort of “built in” mechanisms though, I want to cultivate mental boundaries that help me from slipping into a work tornado.
I’m going to be thinking about what this will look like more, but right now I’ve been using a visual timer to help limit the time I spend on a task (and to help with focus on the task). I’ve also been using self-talk for when I might be spiraling into a work-nado. I try to talk to myself like I’d talk to a friend, which is very hard, but it might sound something like this, “Hey Kate, you’ve looked at this spreadsheet for 30 minutes, and there’s really nothing more you need to do. You put your major tasks in your calendar. You can look at it again next week. Close it out.” I don’t always think to do it, and it doesn’t always work, but sometimes, it does.
(2) Getting to see the ocean again. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed water. Maybe this isn’t surprising considering my love of swimming, but as much as I do love swimming, I’ve never really considered myself a “beach person.” Usually it’s too hot and sandy for me to enjoy. But while I lived in New England, I started to really appreciate the beach during all times of year, especially during cooler months.
So being landlocked now in Dallas, I hadn’t quite realized how much not seeing, smelling, hearing, and feeling the ocean had affected me. I was lucky enough to get to take a trip with my partner this month to Seattle, where we traveled to Olympic National Park and got to see the pebble covered beach at sunset.
(3) Re-remembering how clothes can be art. Like every millennial growing up in the time of “Project Runway,” at one point I dreamed of a life as a fashion designer. I was adventurous with my clothing choices, I liked playing around with color and form and design in my wardrobe. I had parents who encouraged my creativity and didn’t make fun of me for ridiculous wardrobe and makeup choices. (I can’t say the same for other adults, including one who shamed me for wearing lipstick when I was four…that’ll be another post).
I drifted away from my love of clothes for a variety of reasons, but one reason was that I didn’t have the time as a working person to think about my daily outfit. I also worked with toddlers, often on the floor, so spending the energy crafting a good outfit didn’t make much sense to me.
Instead, I began shifting into a very practical mindset, wearing the same kind of black pants, shirt, and shoes daily.
The most I might add to my bland uniform was a bold necklace because as a a pediatric speech-language pathologist, it could be fun conversation starter for hard-to-engage children (learned that in grad school from a great clinician and mentor). I even wrote just a couple months ago about how a chosen daily uniform is something I gravitate to, now.
But something has sort of shifted in me in the last few months. And while I think many reasons are at play, one reason I think is that I started an SSRI. And–remarkably somehow–one of the effects I’ve noticed is that I love color more than I ever have before, and I want to wear more of it. I’ve found myself coming back to this love of fashion.
It’s been a joy to realize how much incorporating bold and varied colors into my daily outfits brings me happiness.
The Lazy PhD 