Getting in my own way

      One of the things I like best about self-reflection around a particular experience is the opportunity to see both where I am engaging well and where I am either avoiding or getting in my own way.  This week's frenzy prompted some exploration of all three things; lo and behold, I found ways to increase mobility.  Funny how that works (and it works best if you are willing to be honest with yourself about both the pretty things and the ones that feel icky). 
      I am happy with the emphasis I am keeping on my kids and my friendships.  The kids are a no brainer, and parenting them is easily what I love best about my life.  It helps that they are bright, fun, reasonably balanced, and well rounded youngsters; and I was afraid teenagers would be horrible!  My friends are also important.  Having grown up in a family that moved frequently, it became easy to not get too close to others or to not let them know you are going to miss them; proximity was always a temporary thing.  Being older, and having a few friends who have been around long enough to be historians in my life has impacted that perspective.  I have always valued my friendships and I will always hate goodbyes, but that doesn't stop me from connecting with people.  I feel the pressure of leaving soon, and my initial reaction is to pull back and just be busy (I wouldn't even have to fake it).  Instead I am leaning into those connections, choosing not to disengage from folks, and acknowledging that there will be a feeling of loss because there was relationship.  I like that in the sense that connection does not end when proximity changes; those we are closest to remain present in our thoughts and hearts (and on our phones and facebook). 
     OK, so I am happy with that, but what about the rest of the stuff?  Well, I made progress there as well.  It took looking seriously at what I was avoiding and why to solve my dilemma.  I cannot make my kids not get sick, so in reality I will miss school and work sometimes.  But there is more to it than that.  I have been stuck in the hell of screwball archival data for several weeks without progress.  I was stymied and had not received much from my chair (its his data set).  I knew he needed to take care of some things that were outside my ability to fix, and he had not yet done that.  And he needed to merge the files and find the missing data from one of the sets.  And we talked about before Thanksgiving, at the end of the semester, and via e-mail over break.  OK, enter avoidance.  I was avoiding talking to him about it again.  I hate confrontation, I hate nagging, and I completely identify with competing demands so I don't like to pressure people.  But I REALLY need this stuff fixed so I can do the first phase of analysis for my dissertation, select the target cases for the second phase, and go collect my own data set to wrap it all up.  Did I mention that the semester ends in 13 weeks and that means I will no longer have any undergraduate research assistants to help with transcription and coding after mid May?  My challenge to myself on Wednesday was to talk with my advisor, while looking at the data set together so I could show him exactly what I needed.  In the process of identifying exactly what I needed to make clear to him and how I intended to do that I solved my IRB trimming issue as well (phase 1 will be IRB exempt which saves me from writing about 2 hypotheses in the "500 word only" description section).  Once I got over my avoidance and spoke with my chair, he was on it.  I have one set of tasks he demonstrated how to address; he set himself a deadline of next Tuesday for the other work.
     Now comes the hardest part; admitting where I am getting in my own way.  In addition to working on (or trying to work on) my dissertation, I was doing some extra work for the agency where my dissertation research is housed.  They had data to collect, inventory, correct, clean, and enter, but they were short handed because a colleague was on maternity leave.  I was offered a comfortable hourly rate to help fill the gap, so I did.  I do have 2 teenagers, a tween, and a $1200 per month grocery bill after all.  But it was not leaving me enough time to work on my material.  I had to talk with my chair (as he was the one who wanted me on this other project) and tell him the ways in which my time was being spent and the ways that choice was contributing to my dissertation situation.  Until my own data collection is done, I just cannot spare the time to work on this other project.  It is disappointing for my chair.  It is disappointing to me as this means tightening my belt a bit more, but I need to get as far on my dissertation as possible in the next 13 weeks.  I needed to adjust my expectations and priorities to stop getting in the way of my progress by being over committed, even if the overcommitment developed for good reasons. 
      So its onward and upward, I guess (or maybe forward or sideways)?  I am sure there will be plenty of other opportunities for self reflection as I hiccup my way through this project and the rest of my crazy, busy, joyful life.  Hopefully each time will yield similar results that help me keep it all together and mobile while retaining some semblance of sanity  :-)