It is a beautiful spring day!! I have had a productive 4 hour stint in a sunny coffee shop and I am departing shortly. I have been prepping for my presentation at next week’s colloquium. I have refined the deck so that it is more succinct. The presentation is also explicit about the areas where I am especially keen to receive feedback. Best defence is offence!! I will do a verbal run through to when I get home to ensure that I can deliver it in 20 minutes and make final tweaks as appropriate. I am out of town for work next week, but will do a bit of reading in the evenings. My focus will be to review my recent papers – Research Proposal and Pilot etc.- so that I am in the right “head space” with my research. I feel a bit disconnected because I have been juggling lots between work and “life”!
Speaking of work life balance, it has become quite challenging of late. I have been out of town 2-3 days/week for work for the last 4 month, and have another 3 weeks of this schedule. I am finding it difficult to make time for important relationships, domestic duties, exercise and general life “stuff”. Thankfully I was able to submit my tax return documents this morning and I am now off to Home Dept to get some gardening stuff. I am looking forward to spending some time outside and prepping the garden with my partner. Hope that he is up for it!! Also, I need to do some groceries and figure out some dinner menus, I haven’t cooked in ages!! It feels a bit odd to be writing about this on my blog, but it highlights a core challenge of doing a DBA –finding and maintaining life balance!