2006-11-01 - 7:30 a.m.

sense of humor failure..

Obviously, I went through a wee bit of a sense of humor failure yesterday.... I guess occasionally one needs to cry out loud (or in this case through fingers). It helped a little bit. I re-organized the file on my laptop a bit, and then came home. K had fixed some dinner, and then we had a pleasant evening with our landlords as the last of the trick-or-treaters braved their way up the stairs to our haunted house.

The landlords really do go all out! tombstones, skeletons, cobwebs, crows, candles, body parts in jars (fake), powerpoint presentation of cemeteries from around the world... I was impressed. And special note for Elgan: the landlady is originally from Quebec....

Thanks to you who sent sympathetic notes. As usually happens, the light of a new day brings perspective, or at least determination to tackle unhappiness and work deficiencies in a more constructive manner than flying off the handle.

I think the sense of being overwhelmed comes from viewing your life as if it were a piece of pointilism art - stand too close and your mind gives equal weight to every point, and you lose its sense of beauty. This morning I will try to stand back a bit, put together a list of short-term and long-term things 'to-do.' I am hoping that this will give me a sense of priority, and allow me to break large overwhelming tasks into manageable chunks. Stop feeling like a cat in a storm of blowing leaves.

When I visited my colleague Genevieve in Norwich last month, she reminded me that academics have a never-ceasing workload, and can never accomplish everything that needs to get done. It is an important lesson to remember if you wish to avoid feeling like a constant failure.

So now off I go, to prioritize before my flight.