A memory

I have a memory from last summer which has recently been coming back to me:

I am sitting in a taxi. I'd just spent the day running errands which were to do with my own little creative business project (so I was excited, had had a fun day, felt like I was going somewhere with everything I was doing). I'd made a start on a lasagne, and then I had to get changed, grab the gift I'd bought for my friend, and run out of the house and hurry to my friend's party. (I had hoped to stay at home for an extra hour, cooking and dithering in a lovely way, savouring some alone-time, when she texted me and made it clear that she wanted me at the party NOW. I allowed myself the unusual luxury of calling a taxi - I don't normally do this - and there it was, arriving to pick me up, and there I was, nice dress and the comfy/pretty shoes and gift in a bag, and we were off.)

I remember that I was wearing my favourite dark green dress and a slick of fuchsia lipstick. It was summer, a sunny early evening, and I had a light trench coat thrown over my outfit, and I was in a taxi. Little things, but luxuries to me, and I felt like a million dollars.

The taxi driver and I got chatting - wish I could remember how it started, and exactly what was said - and somehow, we got talking about 'success'. And I mentioned to him - you know, I sometimes don't feel successful. I don't have the traditional, normal 'things' that define 'success'. And yet if someone were to look at me, it's not like they'd think that about me. I look like the very image of success.

The taxi driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror - a young woman, healthy, dress, lipstick, all bright colours and youth and shiny hair - and he said something like, really, just look at you - you've got everything you could possibly want - you are rich (he didn't exactly say the following words, but the conversation was along the lines of: you are rich in terms of health, you are rich in terms of youth, you have absolutely every thing you might need; you have absolutely won the lottery of all things to do with luck. I remember that thing I read in various 'self-help' books: you are enough. You are perfectly fine just as you are. You have everything you need.)

I remember that gorgeous summer's evening, being chauffered from one nice part of my Saturday to the next, green dress and lipstick, friends waiting for me, and a conversation with this driver, and everything being OK in the here and now. It keeps coming back to me, this memory. (I'm not sure if it's happy or sad. I think it's happy.) I must not let it go.

Mornings - continued

This morning I woke up at 6:35.

And then I got up. And I turned off my alarm. And then I went in the other room (and not back to the warm, warm bed). And then I did the thing I wanted to carve out the extra little bit of time to be able to do.

(You see, recently I've been living the sort of life that a 'normal person' might lead: getting up in the morning, EARLY, and trying to piece myself together and heading out to work. I've been missing out on my beloved morning ritual of 'morning pages' (cf. The Artist's Way), and I've been feeling quite sad about it. But the thought of getting up EVEN EARLIER than EARLY was just ridiculous.

Then last night I was looking at this podcast (I say 'looking at', because I couldn't be bothered to listen to the podcast, but I just scrolled down and was lazy and skim-read the transcript instead) and what caught my eye is that this writer, who was being interviewed, talked about how he managed to train himself to get up at 5 every morning, precisely to try some of those life-enhancing type practices that I've been going on about in one of my previous posts.

So he tells you how he managed to make himself get up, and get out of bed, early. And I loved this thing he said:

'That was the morning my entire life changed, and this is kind of where I’ll wrap up the story, is I woke up the next morning at 5:00 AM, which if you ask anyone that knew me back then, I wouldn’t be caught dead waking up at five unless I had to catch an early flight, right? Never. I only woke up when I had to wake up, which is what most of us do, right?
Look at your schedule. You’ll go, “When’s the last possible minute that I could wake up and not get fired, divorced, have my children taken away from me?” Right? [...].'

And I love that because that resonates. No one has ever put it quite like that before. The reason we fail to get up 'earlier than early' in the mornings, when already life demands a pretty 'early' start from us, is because it's normal to want to get as much sleep as possible, to stay in the warm bed (instead of exchanging it for the arctic circles of the waking world) and to want to put off getting up until you absolutely HAVE to.

But this guy managed to motivate himself to get up. He offers two tips: one of them I've already tried doing, the other is amazing and it helped me make the first one work.

His tips for getting up at 5 are:

- set an alarm and move your alarm clock to the other side of the room, so that you physically have to get out of bed and walk over to turn it off.

(I already sometimes do this. The trouble is how to have the courage to NOT go straight back to bed afterwards. To the warm bed, with the pillows and duvet, and sleeping lover, and all the wonderful things...)

And his other tip, which I think is the best tip, is,

- create a visualization, before you fall asleep, of how this getting-out-of-bed thing will actually work; say to yourself 'Tomorrow morning I will wake up refreshed and full of energy, and I will go and [do the things I want to do]'.

So I tried it. I set my alarm for earlier than I'd like to (absolute latest time to get up - 7:30; a good 'early'  time to get up - 7; my 'earlier than early' goal for today - 6:35). And I said to myself in my head: 'Tomorrow I am going to wake up refreshed and full of energy; I am going to... turn off the alarm clock, put on my slippers, go to the room next door where it's warm; make myself a glass of hot water with lemon; and I'm going to write my morning pages.'

It took me forever to drop off to sleep (this due to a bad night's sleep the previous night) but I just kept thinking - I'm going to wake up refreshed and full of energy.

I woke up when the alarm went off; fuzzy, groggy, sleepy, not quite right after a not-quite-finished sleep. But, would you believe it, I turned off that damn alarm clock, and I put on those slippers, and I went into the next room.

And I did my lovely morning writing, and I felt powerful and energized (even if I did feel quite dopey, and did wonder how I was going to get through my day, and did spend my walk to work planning multiple possible naps in various nooks and crannies of the building).

And the guy says,

'Number two is, you got to set your intentions before you fall asleep about what the morning is going to be like. Specifically, those first few moments. Before I go to bed, I tell myself, no matter how many hours of sleep I get, I’m going to wake up feeling rested, energized, rejuvenated, and I’m going to jump out of bed, and I’m going to keep moving forward, right?
Whether you visualize that, or I have a bed time affirmation that you can — that’s available online if you Google “miracle morning bedtime affirmation,” I’m sure you can find it. Bedtime affirmation that I read it before bed, and it’s essentially programming my subconscious mind for how to respond when the alarm clock goes off. I’m not deciding in the moment, that moment of waking up, and not in my REM, or in the middle of my REM cycle or whatever. I’m not deciding in the moment in the morning. I decided the night before I went to bed, I had my intentions, rock solid commitment was made before I opened my eyes in the morning, and then when I open my eyes, I just live out what I visualized or affirmed before I went to bed.'

And also (when asked if he wakes up 'refreshed' no matter how much sleep he had - does he wake up as productive when he's slept for three hours as when he's slept for eight hours, or whatever) :

'[...] there’s a lot of great books on sleep. But there’s also a lot of differing opinions. So I tell people look, here’s what I experimented with. I tried getting eight hours, or seven hours, six hours, five hours, four hours, and here was the difference.

This goes back to one of the tips I gave earlier about setting your intentions before bed. I tried all of those durations, but I tried all of them, each one. I literally did multiple nights at eight hours, telling myself I was going to be exhausted in the morning, and every time, if I set those intentions of being exhausted in the morning, that’s how I felt. I also felt exhausted if I got six, five, or four hours if I told myself I’d feel exhausted. I flipped it over and I went, I’m going to try eight hours, seven hours, six, five, and four, telling myself I’m going to wake up, and it’s a very intentional affirmation that I just have.

It really comes on the belief of the mind/body connection, you know?'

The guy got my attention.

So here I am. I got up at 6:35. (I just had a little nap in the armchair just over there in the corner.) I did that thing that I'm never, ever able to do if I have to be at work first thing in the morning, that thing I love to do for myself, and which really helps me. And I feel like I've reaffirmed my commitment to all the things I've learnt from The Procrastination Bible, and all the other motivational bibles which have got me through my PhD: the power of positive thinking, of affirmations, of visualizing success - they all matter... (I've been letting them slide in the last few days, feeling a bit blue, grappling with unwelcome life changes and circumstances, feeling helpless and powerless and 'not good enough'. Feeling like crying a little bit every day, asking myself 'what the hell am I doing with my life', 'how can I do all the positive thinking when the reality is THIS'. And now I'm seeing that you have to do those things no matter what, and stick with them, and imagine the bestest possible outcomes, and decide what you are committed to doing, and do it; and create positive expectations for what you would like to happen, and hold on to them.

'I heard [...] a quote that I’ll share right now, because this quote literally was the catalyst for turning my life around faster than I ever thought possible. It really was what gave birth to the concept that is now The Miracle Morning.
The quote is from Jim Rohn [...]. He said, “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development,” and he went on to say, “because success is something you attract by the person you become.” In that moment, I stopped running, and I replayed it, and I thought, “I’m not dedicating time every day to my personal development. Therefore, I am not becoming the person that I need to be to create the success I want in my life and sustain that success.”'

You can view the transcript, or listen to that podcast, here:

https://goinswriter.com/hal-elrod?inf_contact_key=419b78cca7ca7801da13236f9d9fa7328291b9151a46692c197e8294be92f0fa

(I listened to it properly on my walk to work this morning.)

Have a great day, everybody!...

Contact Me

Dear Readers of this blog,

For some time now I have been wondering what to do when people ask me for details of my other blogs, and other projects, and I have also been wondering what to do when there is someone on THIS blog that I'd like to contact, and perhaps thank him or her - thank for visiting, or for encouraging me in a particular way, or for otherwise showing their support.

The weird thing is that I want to be friends with ALL OF YOU, and I want to tell you ALL about all the cool things I'm planning to do with my life, my extensive knowledge of self-help books, and my general itch to do creative and silly things. On the other hand, I don't really want to give up this privileged position of anonymity. Not just yet.

Writing this blog anonymously has allowed for two things in particular to happen: 1) for me to be able to come here, especially in the early days, and VENT, totally honestly, about the things that I felt were wrong in my life (mostly PhDs, obvs). I'm not sure the venting would have been quite so honest, nor so heartfelt, if I had been writing as 'me'. Also, no-one wants to risk being 'found' by colleagues and professional contacts, to be known as that academic who really, really hated her PhD.

And so the other thing that this anonymity enabled was, of course, a genuine connection with people sharing the same experience. If I hadn't written anonymously, I'm not sure my posts would have been as relatable as they were to some people who read them. They would have been sugar-coated with a veneer of professional 'readability': [yes, but what if someone SERIOUS stops by?... I'd better temper my outburst about missed deadlines, and instead cite something appropriate for grown-ups. I wonder if there's anything suitable in Plato.]

But at the same time, I would love to be able to share with some of you some of my upcoming thoughts, and dreams, and projects - and I would also love to have a place where people can write to me and say things, and ask questions, which maybe they don't want to say publicly here.

So I've created an email address - NEW! From Cloud Nine! - and if you are a regular reader of the blog, or if you are a fan, or if you have advice or feedback to give (or even you have already given it and I've already thanked you), or if you'd like to be on a special mailing list which will receive details of my next creative venture - or any, or all of the above - I want to hear from you, and you can write to me at hatemyphd 'at' yahoo.com (the unorthodox 'at' is to stop spam bots crawling all over my site).


So now there are some ways you can write to me:

Email hatemyphd 'at' yahoo.com

OR post your own email address in the comments below, and I'll note it down and delete the comment.


Lots of love,

Cloud Nine xx

Mornings

I keep meaning to write something on this blog. Every time September-October comes round (aka ‘deadline time’, I want to write a cheery post: go on! You’re nearly there! You can do it!... I want to write something every time crazy political events happen, and the world feels like it’s been knocked out of kilter. I want to write something every time … well, just every time I think of this blog, and remember all the nice comments from all the nice people on here, which helped me so much. In a corner of the library, somewhere, a bound copy of my PhD slumbers on a shelf, and in it, in the Acknowledgments section, if you ever find your way to it, there is a brief dedication to all of you…

Now and again, the idea for a coherent post comes to me. If I don’t seize hold of it, and write it down, it floats away. Here are some incoherent bits of such posts.

*

The list of things I am supposed to be doing every day keeps growing longer by the minute. Sometime last year, a kind friend emailed me a nice article: a list of things we should all be doing before 8 a.m., to help us have a great start to the day and be more effective in our everyday lives. It’s meant to help us all be better people.

It included things like:

-       have a cold shower

-       eat some protein (an egg is best, apparently. YUM. I’m into that)

-       meditate (I have the Headspace app on my phone, with ten free meditations, which you can just listen to as much as you like. It’s supposed to help you carry that calm, meditate-y feeling around with you for the rest of the day)

-       (and other things, which I’ve obviously not been doing, and which I’ve forgotten)

My own personal morning to-do list, refined over the years through self-help-book reading, and which is meant to help me become more effective in my everyday life, goes something like this:

-       Every morning, first thing, write. (This is called ‘morning pages’. You do a sort of brain dump, writing freely for three pages or so, to offload your inhibitions and negative thoughts and stuff, to free you up to be unashamedly creative. Source: Becoming an Artist. Good for: writers, arty types, PhDs…)

(This is also good for when you need to write something extra one day, like an article, and you don’t have time for it; you’ve created a practice of getting up and writing every day, and so you can just naturally slip it into that time…)

-       Every day, do some wrist exercises, or wrist yoga, to look after wrist. (Note to self: must see chiropractor. I keep putting this off, because to see the chiropractor costs forty pounds.)

-       Every day, do some singing exercises. (These are special singing exercises, for, erm, snorers.)

-       Every day, play a bit of guitar or piano?... (My self-professed raison d’être since I was a kid, music is getting lost by the wayside somehow. I never make time for it anymore.)

-       Every day, do something for my business. (I am a businesswoman. I’ve started a business. Most of the time I forget I’m actually doing this, and instead get tangled in a mire of looking at job adverts and wondering ‘shouldn’t I get a steady job with a pension’.)

-       Every day, go swimming or do some yoga, because it makes me feel better.

-       Every week (so, on some days), do some exercises from the current self-help book of choice (because you’re actually meant to do them, not just read them, nod sagely, and think how useful they would be.)

(And then there’s the stuff from the Money self-help book, which I should be doing every day, because it is important: )

-       Every day, read something about money (note to self: must get better at understanding my finances, doing things like filling in claims forms immediately, and generally valuing myself more)

-       Every day, do some affirmations. (Affirmations, as in positive statements that you’re using to try and re-wire your brain. So you’re trying to go from thinking thoughts like ‘I am useless with money’ to ‘I like money and I appreciate what it does for me’. ‘I am very optimistic about my financial future.’)

-       Every day, I’m meant to be writing down what I spend. (I forget to do this, obviously.)

Thing is, if you’ve read more than, like, one self-help book, the lists of things ‘to do every day’ just gets a bit insane. I have this vision of myself spending all morning meditating and writing, exercising and affirming, having cold showers and cooking lovely eggs for breakfast, and of course this is all great, though it assumes you don’t actually need to be anywhere before, like, 11 a.m.). Not to mention that the whole system falls apart on any day when your job requires you to be up at daybreak to travel somewhere (I am doing the Grotty Job again, by the way), or on days when you have a job interview the next day and you’re sitting around in your pyjamas trying to prepare for it (like today).

Well. Today, at least, I am reasonably successful. I am up and about, have cancelled all Grotty Jobs and University-related activities, and I’m sitting here, porridge heating gently in the kitchen, and I’ve written this. Let this blog be today’s ‘morning pages.’

Have a good day, everybody!.....

*

Helping Hands

I love it when someone writes things to help other people be successful.

Some very useful advice on how to sell your PhD experience on job application forms (especially non-academic ones) : or, how to avoid using the words 'student' and 'PhD' altogether. Sensible advice, as far as I'm concerned (having previously been told, in post-interview feedback, that I 'talked about my PhD too much',where no-one cares about it; and having been on the receiving end of the confused interviewer's glare: 'But you're an academic, aren't you?... So why do you want this job?')

http://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/09/21/avoid-using-the-words-student-and-school-outside-of-academia/

I'm writing a job application as we speak, and I have banished all woolly statements and replaced them with the more dynamic-sounding examples the article suggests (in the words of a careers counsellor I once saw: 'words like "helped" and "supported" are banned'; and 'the point of these bullet points is to provide dated proof that you can do things'.)

We'll see how it goes.

Good luck everyone!

CN xx

Working Hours

I’m sure the nice administrator in the university department where I work thinks I am an idiot. Today: some confusion over how much I should be paid for the hours of Masters student supervision I did for them this summer. I submitted a claim for [a number of] hours; the nice administrator came back to me, telling me that I can only claim [less hours than that] per student, which came in at about a third less than what I thought I was getting paid. Cue much polite protesting and ‘querying’ from me, and much copy-and-pasting and brandishing of email written by boss at the start of the summer, which clearly says how much I am to be paid, and which clearly says that I am, indeed, right. (And not an idiot).

Alas, I am actually wrong, despite being right. Apparently the boss ‘jumped the gun a bit’ in stating the said figure in the email in which she invited me to do the work; University regulations have actually set my fee at less than that, and so that is how much I will be paid.

This is a bit of a pickle, because I have already done all the work, and have indeed gone to great lengths to ensure (I don’t know why) that the nice students have got exactly as much help out of me as this time allowed. Not that I worked super hard, or anything, but still, I did the work. (Cue much apologizing from course convenor, and much promising that we will sort it out, somehow.)

This is not the first time I have had a run-in with the nice administrator over my pay – and it always seems that the fault is mine, for thinking that I am supposed to be getting paid more than I actually am. Previous run-in went something like this. Me: ‘Hi, I got your email. Um, I’m not supposed to be getting paid [5p] for this work. I’m supposed to be getting paid [10p]. Look, here and here is dated proof that I am getting paid [10p].

Nice administrator: ‘No, you’re meant to be getting paid [5p].’

Me: ‘Ummm…’ [leaves in polite confusion; thinks for a long time, counts on fingers; realizes with sinking heart that I am, indeed, going to get paid 5p.]*

Makes me feel nostalgic for that 9-to-5 admin job I had recently (which was temporary and which, alas, finished; and I wasn’t upset about that, to be honest, because it wasn’t really all that. But it did pay you for all the hours that you sat with your little bottom in that office chair… and it even offered the delightful possibility of spending a few hours every week actually sitting in the office and getting paid whilst filling out those additional hours claims forms. A really lovely ‘I’m-getting-paid-twice-right-now’ sort of feeling).

I love my few little hours of university teaching a week, I really do. I chose to do them, I willingly chose this life, I didn’t exactly fight tooth and nail to get into, like, a job in finance or something. Because I like this – I like the part-time lifestyle, and I like the feeling you get when students understand something and you know you’ve opened their minds, and yours.

And it is thanks to my links to this university that I managed, at one point, to get a whole load of money to write a book. And that was pretty special.

But note to self: maybe it’s time to move on. As lovely as this job is, earning [5p] is getting a bit boring. Arguing over ridiculously tiny sums of money is boring. Note to self: stop doing this lovely charity work for a university, and move on. Creative business beckons. Commissions slowly start coming. Step up the creative business. Start leaving the ‘underpaid lecturer’ business.

A student asked me once after class if she could come to my office hour to discuss some work, and we walked down to the office together. We chatted; she told me how much she was enjoying the course. I asked her what she might do after university.

‘This might sound silly – but before, I thought I might like to be a [insert cool-sounding job title here]; but now, since I’ve been doing this course, you’ve, like, really inspired me, and I think I want to do what YOU do!’

You’ve really inspired me; I want to do what YOU do. I basked in those lovely words, happy as pie, ignoring the thought that came to me, and only later did I really feel the pang of conscience; she thinks I have a real career where you get paid! I should have told her the truth! I should have said RUN, DON’T WALK, CHOOSE THE COOL JOB, DON’T DO WHAT I DO!... Instead, I sort of compromised and gave her the nice spiel about how she should keep both interests going, blah blah, because you never know where the jobs will be in a few years’ time, and who knows, perhaps she’ll do [cool job] first and then one day try academia.

You see, I seem to have this thing where I sort of pretend to my students that I am ‘better’ than I am. I might wear a suit jacket to class, to give them the idea that they are being taught by a proper grown-up (the suit jackets are actually hand-me-downs from my Mum; I realize that wearing them makes it seem like I could actually afford to buy lots of them myself). I prepare well. I try to give the impression that I am a ‘real’ lecturer. (Maybe I’m just giving MYSELF that impression.)

But maybe sometimes, like that one time, I should actually say: You know that I’m a part-time lecturer paid by the hour, right?... It’s a lovely life and I chose it, and I have a great time teaching you and I never wanted a full-time academic job, but you should know that I don’t earn a proper salary from doing this. I have to do a whole load of other things on the side to be able to do this.

I hope her other career really takes off, and she only thinks of academia nostalgically, when she is a bona fide [cool person], on holiday somewhere nice, swilling her glass of wine and telling her cool friends that she used to like writing essays and what a shame she never stayed on to do more; safely protected from my own fate by a devastating wall of ‘I wish’, and ‘if only’.

Hell, I might get her to hire ME one day.

*

Disclaimer: This is not a rant against academia in general, and should not be read as such. Like I say, I don’t want a full-time academic job, I’m certainly not doing the things that would get me one of those, and so if I am indeed earning 5p an hour,* this is by my own choice. (I might just make a different choice soon, that’s all.) Although it is a shame that universities have figured out at some point that you don't need to pay hourly academics properly and they'll still work hard to do a good job. That bit was our downfall.

*About that 5p thing: obviously, I exaggerate the small size of my paycheck for comic effect. However, this number does adequately convey my frustration at having spent my morning arguing over a relatively small sum of money, after previously negotiating that small sum and then being told that I won’t even get paid that. Think I might start valuing myself more. Might even ask for 20p in my next job.

Finding a Job You Love

Was excited to come across the following article in The New Yorker: 'The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love'.

(Yes, I am *still* looking for work. No, I haven't found that permanent job yet. And yes, I'm still optimistic.)

I like it where it says that the key to finding interesting work and getting paid for it is to become an expert at something - and the best way to do that is pick something you can actually stand:

'The psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his co-authors have estimated that many thousands of hours of difficult practice are required for true expertise at any task. That’s why my first response when students seek advice on how to succeed is to ask whether any activity has ever absorbed them completely. Most answer affirmatively. I then suggest that they prepare themselves for a career that entails tasks as similar as possible to that activity, even if it doesn’t normally lead to high financial rewards. I tell them not to worry about the money.'

'My point is that becoming an expert is so challenging that you are unlikely to expend the necessary effort unless the task is one that you love for its own sake. [...]'

'The happiness literature has identified one of the most deeply satisfying human psychological states to be one called “flow.” It occurs when you are so immersed in an activity that you lose track of the passage of time. If you can land a job that enables you to experience substantial periods of flow, you will be among the most fortunate people on the planet.'

... Remember 'flow'? Remember all that stuff we learned from the Procrastination Bible, how we tried to manufacture a flow state to get some work done on our PhDs?... When I first went to see my lovely therapist, she ended our first session by asking me what I am doing when I am really concentrating, when I am working effortlessly. I found myself telling her excitedly about my more creative, unpaid, fun projects. She thus sent me away from that first conversation with my head filled with thoughts of activities which I am good at, and which make me really, really effortlessly concentrate. It was a very clever trick which meant I left ever so slightly cheered up (see, I am good at some things.... Just not PhDs... )

*

I had once heard a friend tell me that, when she was setting off to go to university for the first time, she mentioned to a family member that she might try and sit in on some 'classes in economics' - 'because then I can get a good job'.

He asked her, 'Do you WANT a job for which you need to know economics?...'

And she replied 'No...'

And then he told her, 'Just do whatever it is that you want to do, and give it 100% - and you will succeed.'

*

... Alas, whilst one is figuring out what it is one wants to do and succeed at, and learning how to do it, one does still need to pay bills. I came across a picture of a cushion on Pinterest the other day, and the slogan on the cushion said

"I do many things well, none of which generate income"

Was a bit relieved to think, guess I'm not alone.

CN xx