Ebbs and Flows

I try to write blogs Mondays and Tuesdays on my personal site and then on Fridays for a work related blog. However, as you may have noticed Monday and Tuesday came and went this week without anything from this blog.

I had a bit of a rough weekend where I was trying to help a loved one and Monday arrived quickly without much rest happening and the addition of a head cold care of being in a germ-riddled environment for hours on end. It’s difficult to write, as you may know, when you are in lack of sleep and under the weather. I also feel pulled in a few different directions which doesn’t allow for time to think or string words together.

So today’s post is going to be short and is basically just a good way to remind me that I can still string sentences together. As a result there’s going to be a lot of point form disjointed thoughts about things that I have been wrestling with.

1. Our health care system is upsetting. Whenever I go to emergency I always feel less settled than I felt getting there. I often feel doctors don’t really know what’s wrong with folk and diagnoses are wrong or slow to come. I know there are plenty who work in healthcare who do good work, I just wish I knew where those folk were because they aren’t the ones taking care of me and my loved ones.

2. Complacency is getting me down. I had to read through some information lately and I’m super saddened how few seem to care about the important issues that we face in higher ed. When given an opportunity to talk about these issues people don’t take it. Now maybe it’s because we are pitching these opportunities to the wrong crowd (probably) or that the built-in barriers such as cost and access prevent people from participating (very likely)- but I’m so disappointed right now. If this was a one off I would understand but this is at least the second time I’ve tried to get this particular group to engage without success. I really have to rethink my strategy.

3. Where does the time go? I’ve been trying to do laundry for the past 10 days without success and I’m getting frustrated. However, the only person I should be frustrated with is myself because I have pretty much prioritized every single thing and person over myself over the past week and a half. I have been navigating the past 3 months thinking I have this infinite time when I get home from work and that is simply not the case. I see colleagues from the States having well deserved time off for Thanksgiving and I realize I won’t have a stretch off like that for another month. Time, well quantitative time, is always chasing us. I need to try to embrace a more qualitative time; to live in the ebbs and flows instead of outside them.