Greetings,
Today we have something new.
We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
—Robert M Pirsig
✏️ Working in Seasons
After a few hard months of balancing work, research, TAing, and my PhD Comps examination — I was spent. Most people have experienced the feeling: for me, it looks like tired mornings, very late nights to make up for an inefficient daytime, and poor adherence to my exercise and healthy eating plans.
I don’t think burnout is a bad thing at all — it can be a great teacher. You learn what your limits are. How far you can push your mind and body. What a lifestyle that is truly sustainable looks like for you. Especially when you’re young, I think it a good idea to test your capacities in such a way — when the physical costs and other risks are not so high.
It also teaches you how to work in seasons.
As an academic and aspiring professor, one of the most important metrics of success is publication. It also happens to be one of my weak points (at least from a quantitative perspective). Until I fell in love with creativity as a research question I did not care for research. I was only fortunate to have people in my life who knew its importance and got me involved in a few publications throughout my undergraduate degree, else I’d have even less.
Now, as I try to build out my own research program, I’m hungry for them. So any time I’m not writing for publication for a prolonged period of time, I get antsy. This is further compounded by the fact that writing, both for publication and leisure, is by far the task I find most enjoyable. It is a holy feeling to see the truth within a manuscript manifest.
I have learned however, that it’s okay to go through seasons of paucity. It probably makes things more sustainable too; you can’t be firing at 100% in every area of life, every month, all the time. Now, I appreciate the necessity of periods where I focus on non-writing tasks — working out, writing exams, teaching and supervising — all which are valuable and important in their own right. Just as spring brings new life and new possibilities, the time for writing will come.
veritas.
truth.
💡 Food for Thought
read, write, walk, work, workout
happiness is not easy, but it is simple
🔗 Sunday Best
Giada De Laurentiis Makes Lentil Soup | Everyday Italian | Food Network
I tried this yesterday and sort of butchered it…but a couple more tries and I think I’ll have it down
Giada's hearty lentil soup is perfect for a cozy winter night.
Top 3 Hikes Near Cortina d'Ampezzo | Dolomites Travel Guide
I’m going here in June and am looking forward to it greatly.
In this video we'll guide you through the top 3 hikes near the beautiful town of Cortina d'Ampezzo! We start at the famous Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen), then Cadini di Misurina where you find the "Towers of Mordor", and end with Lago di Sorapis with its unique blue waters.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Prose | A Close Reading of "Nature"
This video is no longer searchable on YouTube, and is one of the best analyses of Emerson’s prose. You’re welcome.
I’m reading a biography of Emerson right now. It’s excellent.
OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.
Now is no time to think about what you not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
—Ernest Hemingway
See you next week!
AT