I’ve been feeling a bit funky lately. No, not that kind of funk. I seem to have been in a bit of a funk. And I want to give up the funk.
You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t been writing so often. I’ve been really tired, and pulled in lots of directions. The result is that I’ve felt a bit like hiding away in a cave.
The good news is that several of the big deadlines are now behind me, and that most of them involved getting the planned tasks done. Data was collected, annotated, and analyzed. Abstracts were submitted for one conference. An accepted paper was revised and re-submitted for another conference. The class I’m teaching is rolling along, for better or worse. (Some days are better, some days are worse.) There are some more big work deadlines approaching, but they are not as oppressively immediately pressing, so I feel like I can relax a bit for a few days.
I ended up largely (or perhaps completely) flaking on the computational linguistics chapter presentation I had said I’d do. I don’t like flaking, and I felt pretty crappy about it. But by the time the abstracts were done Friday night, I had very little left in me. I still had hopes of throwing together a handout Saturday morning, but Phoebe would have none of it. She made herself quite needy that morning, and didn’t allow me to take my attention from her. So we (John, Phoebe and I) went to the group without a presentation. People had read the chapter anyhow, and of the other 6 people there, 5 of them knew more about the topic than I did. So as John points out, any sort of formal presentation would have been largely wasted. We all worked on the exercises from the chapter, which I think worked out better. But I still feel unhappy about the whole thing. I’m usually someone who somehow manages to do everything I commit to, even if I wear myself out in the process. I just have to realize that I’m not always in control of my time anymore, and I can’t go volunteering to do extra things. Or at least so many extra things.
I did end up getting some time to be a vegetable. By the time Phoebe was in bed Saturday night, I was too tired to focus on the paper revisions. So, I got to watch the two first episodes of the new Terminator TV show (“The Sarah Connor Chronicles”), which John had downloaded. I enjoyed the episodes, and now have another show to add to my kick-ass women list. (Last night we watched the third episode, too.)
Anyhow, I’m hoping to come crawling out of my cave now.
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(Oh, and by the way. I did update the Phoebe blog a bit. I decided to just publish the whole thing, even though it included unfinished drafts.)
collecting tokens 
Glad you got out from under your clump of commitments, even if you had to flake on the last one. I’ve missed your posts, but it’s clear you’ve been wicked busy. Hope you get some more good vegging in before it gets hectic again!
I hope the funk passes quickly
i actually find that when I am in a funk, and little dose of70s funk cheers me up. May i recommend to you 2 CDs – the soundtrack to Muppets from Space and Millenium Funk. If they don’t get you dancing, nothing will.
oh. and prince. always with the prince.
i relate to the funk. i am dating the funk.
funk that.
man, i feel ya (as the funksters say). work is a grind, people flake out of *my* class, i don’t want to blog about what i had for breakfast…
and i’m with jen there, i think i’m dating the funk, too (his schedule is INSANE, so we at most get to see each other twice a week, even though we only live 20 minutes apart).
here’s to everyone’s life 1)smoothing out and then 2)becoming exciting in a good way.
I know where that cave is. I’ve spent time there, too.
sorry about the funk. it is january, don’t forget.
here’s to less work, more fun.
It is funky right now, isn’t it? I think there is a bit of it making the rounds.
I’m glad you got some downtime in. I’ve been feeling funky, too. It’s January.
You flaked out on computorial linguistics?
It could be so much worse.
You could flake out on dumb people stuff, like I do. You know, like PowerPoint.
So chin up! Tits out! And have a margarita, Sister!
Too much, time to rest and be more vegetable-like. I’m actually thoroughly enjoying my lassitude. Only doing a sliver of work but rediscovering the world of nonwork-related reading. (when I’m not reading the back of my eyelids or bfeeding, which is admittedly not much time at all)
Let’s call to each other from our funky little caves and hope the echoes draw us a little closer to the sunlight.
May you soon leave the cave and the funk behind, then :o)
Having a second child and health woes hit…it forced me to begin thinking differently of myself. I admit, I wasn’t terribly graceful about it. More like a tantrumming toddler resisting transition. What I mean to say by this is I understand the feeling.
Hang in there.
Ah. This is going around. Is there room in the cave for one more?
Fuck the Funk honey! Get your cute self over for a little black dress quiz … and lots of hugs.