Putting It Off

I've been meaning to get a header for this newsletter for ages however I have only just got around to actually doing it. This is despite the fact that Andy recommended Canva months ago... Doesn't it look fancy!

The email header is a symptom of a wider problem really, I am a champion procrastinator at the moment. I've always been prone to procrastination, the sort of person who works to a deadline well but is very rarely to be found doing any kind of work in advance of when it's due. I'm aware this isn't unique as pretty much every academic I have ever worked with also does this so maybe it's an unshakeable part of the human psyche! But this trait combines poorly with my tendency to set unrealistic expectations of what I can achieve in any given day/week/month/year. It's basically a recipe for disaster: I set myself ridiculous goals, realise I can't achieve them, avoid doing anything at all, then wind up feeling like a failure because I haven't even tried.

Take my various athletic pursuits as an example: in 2017 I decided that it was completely sensible to try and train for a marathon, take on an open water swimming challenge, and finish off the year by doing my first ever olympic triathlon. This was of course a disaster - I ran the marathon but completely failed at both the swimming and triathloning. And instead of working sensibly towards one of the goals of either open water swimming or an olympic triathlon, both of which would require me to just swim a bit more often, I've been completely paralysed by inaction and have done little to no swimming in the past year. It's become this bizarre mental block that I can't seem to get past. Part of my brain is saying: "just enter a ridiculous race - then you'll have to do some swimming, won't you?!" however that doesn't seem like the most sensible or mentally healthy way of overcoming this particular barrier. What I need to do of course is set myself an achievable goal - for example, go swimming once a week - then work from there. However I have not yet managed to do this.

Am I completely bananas or does this happen to other people too? And if you have any tips for digging yourself out of a procrastination-induced hole please send them my way!

Things I've Been:

Watching:
Bizarrely I seem to have missed out this segment in the last few newsletters - not sure why/how... Anyway, I've been loving the new series of Doctor Who which started on BBC One last month - Jodie Whittaker is fantastic as the Doctor and I really can't wait to see what she does with the character as they start to move on from introducing the new Doctor, new companions, new TARDIS etc. The storylines have been a bit of a mixed bag but I thought the third episode "Rosa" which co-written by Malorie Blackman and was about Rosa Parkes was an astonishingly good piece of television. It tackled racism and white supremacy in a head-on, honest way - something that's needed more than ever in 2018. The new series is also a great jumping in point for new or lapsed Doctor Who viewers - the new team have taken the opportunity to reboot the show a little bit which means you don't necessarily have to have watched any of the previous series to understand what's happening.

Listening To:
I'm subscribed to too many podcasts and I don't know when I'll ever have time to listen to them all! I'm currently trying to catch up on the latest few episodes of The West Wing Weekly which is an episode-by-episode recap/discussion podcast about well, The West Wing. I only actually got around to watching The West Wing for the first time a few years ago and so it was fairly fresh in my mind when the podcast started. It's co-hosted by Hrishi Hirway who is a West Wing fan and West Wing cast member Joshua Malina so you not only get a discussion of the episodes but good insight into the all the behind the scenes activity that goes into making a television show. There's also an incredibly high standard of guest stars - I think most of the main cast, directing team, and writers (including Aaron Sorkin) have been on the podcast at some point now. Despite the transition into the TV show's "difficult" fifth series (after Aaron Sorkin left) the podcast continues to be excellent and draws interesting parallels between the issues explored in the show and current events. The latest episode I listened to was "The Supremes" which is about a Supreme Court nomination process and which was recorded with episode writer Debora Cahn on the day of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate hearing a few weeks ago.

Reading:
I'm currently reading Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas which is the seventh and final book in the Throne of Glass series. Maas tends to be pegged as a "Young Adult" author but it's a bit of misnomer as her books, particularly the Throne of Glass series, tend to deal with pretty adult themes like abuse, trauma, and grief. I suspect that if Maas was not a woman writing about women's stories and experiences this would be called an epic fantasy series instead but that's the patriarchy for you. I've had a love-hate relationship with Throne of Glass - I found the first book particularly frustrating as it tries to hide a lot about the protagonist, Celaena, and in doing so makes her very two-dimensional. However once you get into the series Celaena becomes a much more complex and interesting character and Maas develops an interesting set of other protagonists, all of whom are complicated and nuanced in very different ways. If you like your heroines strong but conflicted and your fantasy dark and epic then this is definitely a series that's worth a read - although my opinion on this may change if the last book fails to live up to expectations!

Doing:
Amazingly, I've been on the phone! Following my wistful look back at phone conversations in the last newsletter one of my lovely university friends got in touch and said that she'd also been missing phonecalls. So we had a really lovely chat last Sunday and I'm now convinced that my nostalgia was at the very least accurate! And also that phonecalls might be better than mindless twitter scrolling, who knew?!

My parents came to stay this weekend and we took a fun and educational trip to Foxton Locks which are apparently the longest and steepest staircase locks in England. It's very pretty, has a surprisingly high number of places to eat and drink, and is definitely worth a visit if you're ever at a loose end in Leicestershire.

I'm off to contemplate my to do list and see if I can locate the motivation to do of the things that are on it... Until next time! Cx