The Current Schedule

Today I must pack my bags and head up to Cambridge for the week. This is the new schedule. Like Mr. Miyagi I am week-on, week-off. This is better than the old schedule which was half-week, half-week. With that schedule I felt perpetually lost and it really took it's toll. Instead of feeling as though I were half in London and half in Cambridge I felt as though I were neither in London nor in Cambridge. This new schedule is much better.

And yet it's always awful to leave my home. I like my home. I like London. I like my life here. It's true, there is another life with other people waiting for me just north of here. A life I also enjoy and yet it does not feel as complete as the one here. Probably because of my house and my things. I am on a visitor there, but my base is here.

And I hate leaving it. Every time I have to contemplate packing my panniers and getting on the train I just feel the weight of it dragging my feet down. I haven't done enough this week. I didn't do enough laundry. I didn't run enough errands. I still have food that will go off in the fridge but I can't easily take with me. It's all excuses, I know. This schedule is so much better than before.

Still, today is a travel day and the ennui is already setting in even though I'm supposed to go up early in order to go to a barbecue at my supervisor's house along with a number of other friends up there. It should be good fun, and once I am there I will be happy, it's just all the more running around and not feeling settled. And leaving my life here behind, for the week.

Over the next couple of months it gets a bit messy. I'm house sitting for my supervisor for a week which is the wrong week, ie, a London week. So that throws things out. My cousin is coming to visit during a Cambridge week and so I will need to be in London so that throws things out. Then I'm going camping for a week in August for my birthday during a London week, so that throws things out as well. By September it should settle back into something normal perhaps. Although I'm considering trying to take on some supervisions for the next academic year. I need to discuss this with my supervisor because I don't think she'll agree to it at the moment although it's what I really need to do for my longer term goals. It's just that I've fallen so far behind this year already, I know she'll balk at my taking on extra work.

And if I were to do so, I would also be committing myself to going up to Cambridge once a week during my London weeks just to see students. I could do this, and the extra money from the teaching would certainly cover the extra ticket, but it's all time and extra. I don't know. I need to speak with her about this. I need to get going on my own work so that it seems less of an issue. I don't know if there's any time to balance these things out. I think probably not.

Well, I have two years to go, so I suppose there is always the year after. But I would prefer to start sooner. That is, assuming they even accept me to do it which is not at all a guarantee. I would love to be able to get my schedule under control and be more manageable but it seems like it's just not going to happen. At least the current schedule is ostensibly better than the old schedule. For now.