Today’s post is a page from my journal with a question/challenge for readers…

I am about to hunker down in a big creating/making/writing/configuring whirlwind for the next 48 hours or so…

Academia suits my work style – where I can keep going until a job is finished and I am on a roll.

It doesn’t quite suit my leisure style, which involves actually having some.

This new gig involves three 10 week teaching periods in a row, with about a week inbetween to prepare for the next teaching period, so I KNOW it is atypical, and that I will not be skipping weekends and sleep after September. It comes with being new and setting things up. Never, ever, ever again will I have such a merging of work and me-time.

All the things students need from me are due this Monday, so I am working through this weekend right until the last minute.

Today’s blog post is just a snap I took on my beach walk this morning.

For BlogJune 2021 so far, I have posted a picture of the rainbow succulents at my door. And of fairy mushrooms. And the ocean.

Today, life presented me with this mashup – a succulent garden with a fairy mushroom next to the ocean…

So, the federal government has announced that AstraZeneca vaccine is now recommended only for those over 60.

And I am under 60. And had an AstraZeneca vaccination last Friday. And the extremely rare blood clots typically occur 4 to 30 days after vaccination.

How do I feel right now? Disproportionately anxious. Calm and accepting of both my decision to be vaccinated and of any outcomes.

The anxiety is caused partly by being just another person in the middle of a pandemic with all the history we have all had, although having got off more lightly than most. Partly caused by a personal history with hospitals and medications that have harmed people I love, where I noticed things the medical staff did not. Things that changed outcomes. Medicines later withdrawn from the market.

Back then, I was left hypervigilant for months afterward, disproportionately alert and feeling like if I let my guard down, if I stopped trying to make sure everything was OK, then I could not trust that there were systems in place to take up the gap I left.

How do I know this? Because I held a one-person workshop at 3am a couple of nights ago, trying to work through why I was awake instead of resting. I would not even be posting about this now, because it was kind of embarrassing to be awake like that – not worrying, not really ruminating, just awake … if it wasn’t that the safety advice about something I had just put into my body changed yesterday.

At my most dramatic yesterday, I was thinking of this period, for the next month, as though I have a timebomb inside me. Is there something happening in my body of which I am unaware, that I should be aware about? Should I be watching? Monitoring? What? If you have ever gestated a baby, one who you cannot really feel in those early weeks, then watched the squiggly little human inside you on the ultrasound, you will know how huge changes and activity can happen in your body while you are totally oblivious.

So, I have visceral pre-programmed anxiety about this that I really just need to ride through. I am not, however, going round the bend in any way. Yes, there is a background, physical and chemical flight-or-flight response happening. I am just watching and accepting that there is some monkey business that my brain wants to do, but I am generally in a calm place and very much OK with my decision to have been vaccinated.

Why?

Take just one minute to watch this, then come back.

Episode 2 of “Tick F***ing Tock” , at 49:00 to 50:38, broadcast on ABCTV 9 October 2018. https://iview.abc.net.au/video/DO1718H002S00

If you are geo-blocked, or want me to explain, it is a monologue by Tim Ferguson at the end of a two part documentary about touring a comedy show throughout Australia and to the Edinburgh Festival with Paul McDermott and Paul Livingston. Tim has Multiple Sclerosis, has been dealing with the symptoms since he was 19. The show is about disability, mortality and about confronting and reconciling it.

He points out that when the audience leaves, somebody who was in the room will be the first to die. He jokes that it will probably be him, but someone will be the second one. And this is reason enough to change your life, do what you always wanted to do, because the clock is running on all of us.

Any timebomb from vaccination is really no different than the mortality I have lived with since birth.

I will bet that all the other 50+ year olds who were recently vaccinated were not cowering or ruminating about whether they would be in a car accident on their way there. I wasn’t. I am not sitting in my front room trembling about whether I will be struck by lightning if I go outside. When I used to fly, I was aware of DVTs, and made sure I walked around the cabin. I eat carefully, but really am not too concerned about choking. All these things are far, far more likely than me having a fatal blood clot from last Friday’s vaccination.

But, what about the long term risks being unknown? Shouldn’t I worry that there is a timebomb sitting there that may impact in 5, 10 years?

COVID-19 changed all our lives. We’re not going back. Whatever happens in my body as a result of vaccination is just one of the consequences of a pandemic we are living through and adapting to. I don’t know the long-term outcomes of having COVID, or whether there will be new and different pandemics to face. If we keep our eye off the ball with climate change for too long, I DO know that a timebomb ticking under our noses will go off in our faces.

What I do know is that Long-Haul Covid exists. It impacts people for months afterward, disproportionately to the severity of the initial infection. My vaccination makes it less likely that other people will get that.

COVID mutates when it spreads quickly through a population. My vaccination makes it less likely that it will have a chance to do this. It buys time for science to work toward combating variants.

Yes, for the next month, every little sign of gas will be greeted with disproportionate terror “Oh my goodness, is THIS abdominal pain? Is it a blood clot symptom?”, but if you will excuse me, I have a very scary bowl of muesli that I am off to try to swallow without choking…

Low bloggage in the next few days as I complete course outlines and online sites for three different courses.

Below is what my hallway has become. Ten giant post-it pages, one for each teaching week. One colour of post-it notes for each course. All topics and Zoom sessions and assessment submissions and assessment return dates with their own note, stuck on a week. Then moved. Then moved back. Then screwed up. Then re-instated.

The idea of Learning Styles – a learner’s preference for auditory, visual, reading/writing or kinesthetic methods to understand new material translating to more successful outcomes if they have a chance to apply that modality – has been very firmly debunked.

None-the-less, I like to involve my body when I think and work. It’s why I use the pen on my iPad so very, very much throughout my day, constantly transferring documents from PC to PDF and scribbling all over them in virtual ink. If you have done a workshop with me, you know that you have spent at least some of your time out of your seat, very likely moving from one spot to another.

I was getting frustrated and stuck using Excel to try to map things out, so moved to the wall. And it involved stationery. I like stationery.

I found this a far more effective way of reconciling clashes and smoothing out busy periods during the semester. I *may* have also been muttering and narrating what I was doing as I moved paper about. Definitely a process to do in the privacy of one’s own home and not in the office.

That is the kinesthesia from the title of the blog post. The synesthesia (a tangling of sensory input so something coming in on one channel, like music, is also perceived on another, like taste)?

All semester I have used colour-coding in my calendar to mark events associated with different courses. BUT, I kept getting tangled up because the one I allocated pink simply.was.not.a.pink.course. At all. But another one… that was definitely, absolutely pink. I toughed it out for half the year because, well, it seemed a little embarrassing that my own arbitrary colour-assignment felt wrong according to some unnamed and unverifiable criteria that did not make any sense.

Today, however, I needed to choose colours for post-it notes associated with each course and I could stand it no more. I went into my calendar and changed the colours of all my appointments for each course (it was done by changing titles on colour categories, nothing more drastic). Then I changed the background shading on the Excel charts I use to keep track of each course. THEN – when I did my muttery, moving, stationery-rich hallway chart, I did it completely undisturbed by the mismatch of colours.

(Maybe working at the office would have been just a little more orthodox today).

Walking along the jetty this morning I drafted a lovely post in my head about voice in university teaching – the loud and domineering voice of the lecturer, making room for other voices in course material, and supporting students to find their own voices.

By “voice”, I mean the way one shares what ones knows and also shares the way one understands and applies that knowledge, while taking up space and communicating other bits of oneself as one does it.

But, I have just finished a Zoom meeting with my marvellous and generous marking team and am still at work, way after dinner time.

So, here is a picture of the jetty this morning where I thought my thoughts before sunrise… and I hope to actually gel them together and .. find my voice.. soon..

Imagine coffee in mug, gloved hands, muffler, hat, snowboots, snow jacket, gym clothes underneath and shivvery knees to go with it….

So, I was missing a spot to think and read and write.

Because …. I live with an animal who responds to unfamiliarity and stress by marking soft furnishings in her environment. Preferably soft furnishings that smell like me. So they then smell like the worst smelling fluid a cat body can make.

This is what happened to the the big grey beanbag I bought as a thinking spot when I moved here.

On Friday I scoured a couple of local shops looking for a replacement…and ….my,oh,my… I found!

I ended up in a big shed piled high with furniture rejected from Kath ‘n’ Kim’s bungalow, other pieces that used to be in the Lesser Hall of a small country town, clocks and fripperies from my grandmother’s house, old tins, pews, birdcages, kitchenettes, pith helmets, dressmaker’s dolls, hat pins, horsehair rugs… all tangled up together in random aisles. It felt like the proprietor loves the thrill of the chase, finding the most unusual and quirky furniture possible, then loses interest in repairing them or polishing them up or putting like with like.

The Chesterfield wingback chair had come in the night before. It has a small hole in leather in the front. But … the legs have been replaced with coasters, making it the perfect height for me. When I read I usually slouch across the chair with my legs dangling over one arm, and in this chair the back wing cradles my head perfectly. It’s like sitting in a big, firm hug.

It cost me less than a single new cane chair at the furniture shop in the nearby high street.

When I got home, I worked out from the label that it is over 30 years old and was made by one of the last Chesterfield master craftsmen in Australia. And these things have specially bowed birch frames. And the metal studs are handcrafted through a ridiculously esoteric process. The leather specially processed … hand rubbed, whatever that is…

For some reason the proprietor, who I have no doubt knew exactly what he had sold me, had more or less given it to me as a gift. Maybe it has…a past….

It’s in my front room now, and I think I now have a happy spot that will travel with me wherever I live in the future.

Last post I talked about the weekend I just spent on the couch, binge-watching and crocheting, as I took it very easy in case of a vaccination reaction. I said it reminded me of the last time I did something similar, when I was off on stress leave, about 8 years ago.

It was a combination of an awful round of redundancies, really disorganised implementation of change by the university, work overload, impossible timetabling – and – it turned out, calculated understanding on the part of the employer that a number of us would crumble in the environment being created.

While on summer holiday I had been contacted and told to apply for my own job again, along with every other academic in my school, because the entire university academic workforce was in a process of – I kid you not – “re-shaping”. We knew something was about to happen, but no-one at my level was really prepared for what, when or the timeline.

When the axe finally fell, about 1/3 of academic staff finished up the Thursday before first semester started. Those of us left needed extra help for our teaching load, but by the third week of semester, all the contracts for extra staff were still “stuck on X’s desk”.

This was after weeks of people not knowing whether they had jobs, rumours of the excellent people who were being dumped, and the hunger-games competitions between academics vying for the single available position in the department where they were already employed. Those of us who had jobs by the end were slack-jawed with disbelief and survivor guilt, looking around at empty seats of excellent colleagues.

I was told the Friday before unit outlines were due that I was teaching an extra unit and had to prepare material for that, and work out how to balance it with my already over-capacity workload. I was away at an interstate conference at the time, and had to complete this in between attending sessions and meeting up with colleagues, even though I had double-checked with my head of department that there was nothing more I needed to do to prepare for the semester before I left Perth.

Timetabling refused to move my on campus teaching times, so every Tuesday morning I delivered a lecture in one unit at 10am, ran to another building to give a lecture in a unit scheduled immediately after that at 11am, then ran back to the first building to take a two hour tute at midday in the first subject.

By about Week 3, I stood in front of the second class and gave a well-researched, informative and structured lecture. At the end, one lovely and polite student raised their hand and told me that it was actually NEXT week’s material.

Then the newly-installed TurnItIn software stopped all students from checking their first assessment pre-submission and they were really, really upset and barraging me with email…. and the first marking deadline happened, with over 100 students and no marker contract approved yet… I just crumpled. I came into work one day, sat in my office, and kept crying. The more I tried to do anything, the harder I cried.

A lovely colleague walked me to the campus counselling service. There I was given a lot of useful advice and – THIS is the bit that still strikes me about the situation – a pre-prepared booklet for academics who had gone through the same process and had the same reaction. The university EXPECTED that some of us would end up in this state, and had a glossy brochure prepared.

The worst part was knowing that my colleagues, who were also under the same stress, would have to pick up for me when I dropped my bundle. I was unsure what to do, but knew I needed time out, so just went to my GP to get a sick note, made sure I had an appointment with a psychologist, and then headed home and gave myself timeout on the sofa, binge watching Downton Abbey for a week. The idea was just to circuit-break and stop thinking about work, and rest. I ended up taking a second week off because I was still too shaky to go back to work, and spent some time alone at a Bed and Breakfast in the hills, bushwalking and exploring the township.

I also had a lot happening in my family life that stretched my coping skills beyond what was in the tank anyhow, so part of my problem was that I knew I was already doing everything I could to deal with stress – good diet, sleep, exercise regime. There was no wriggle room to change or improve what I was doing, I just had to accept taking time out.

Since then, I have done my academic job differently, and been very, very careful about taking breaks and time out to recharge. I have always exercised most days. Without being so very physically active I think I would come undone far more easily when things get stressful. Academia comes with periods of intense engagement and workload that peaks during teaching, and there is little that can be done about that. It is not a 9-5 job, cannot be treated as one, but I learned that it is up to me to work out how to thrive within those parameters.

So – fast forward to 2021. I have just worked so hard for the last two study periods, settling in to a new academic job. The last study period ended on Friday. I have this weekend off, then a week to get three course sites and outlines set up before the next ten week study period teaching three courses.

I am working in a totally different academic culture. Despite the pandemic and an opportunistic government dumping the sector in the poo, at my new university I feel more supported, like there is more certainty and more transparency than I have in the other three universities I have worked for over the last 20 years.

I timed my vaccination because I could afford to be sick if I had a reaction, but I think a bit more is going on here. I think I have chosen to pre-emptively burrow down a bit and go dormant to re-group, sending myself to the resting couch for a weekend, to avoid being forced there because I simply will not slow down.

I cleared all decks for a couple of days in case I had a bit of a reaction to vaccination.

Yesterday I stayed on the couch and binge-watched all of Why Women Kill, which became better and better as it progressed and developed. I had a mild headache when I woke, so took paracetamol. No idea whether it would have become worse.

I also took up again my first-ever crochet project, a rainbow beanie that I started and paused in December last year. Since Winter began in Adelaide I have far more experience with beanies, and realised that I had not made my fabric wide enough.

So, yesterday I crocheted three quarters of a rainbow scarf.

Today I slept until 10am. I usually wake before 6am. After a bit of pottering about, I lay down for a 20 minute nap around 2pm. Three hours later I was woken by hungry animals demanding to be fed.

Last time I did anything like this was an enforced fortnight watching Downton Abbey while on stress leave, around eight years or so ago. Then, I was mentally and emotionally burnt out from some pretty serious job stress. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

I am vaguely looking at the housing market in Adelaide. In some ways it makes more sense for me to buy than rent here.

I found a house where the street number is the same as my birth day, and the street name the same as my birth month. I really would love to have that as my address. It made me realise how very, very much the name and number combo sways me.

Is it just me, or does the street name really, really influence where you would be happy living? Does that mean I should TRY to find something that sounds a bit yukky, because people would be less likely to want to live there?

Top of my “no go” list are names that sound violent or have violent associations. I am sure that Kilburn is a lovely suburb, but I just could not bring myself to say I lived there. Likewise, Military Road, or Hunter Street or Pearce Street.

I gifted myself a year of living within walking distance to the beach, in a very comfy house. It’s my substitute for not being able to take some of my redundancy payment to travel for a month or so to work out where to next. A year of feeling like I am on holiday, even while I work hard.

Well, that and because in December’s overheated rental market, I had to persuade a landlord that even though I had not seen their property and even though I had two cats, I was the best tenant. I really had to accept whatever I could get. Coming from Perth, where rents were far higher, I applied for places far more upmarket than my usual frugal, make-do budgeting style would dictate. The week I arrived, the neighbour across the street described the long queue outside during the viewing, and I realised how lucky I had been.

If we had not spent the last year in rolling lockdowns, I would probably have chosen something tiny, smack-bang in the middle of the city, walking distance to the art gallery, museum, state library and so much green space. One of my selection criteria, however, was that I needed to be able to happily quarantine for a fortnight, and not be driven nutty because it was too small or surrounded by neighbours if everyone was home again.

I am loving the neighbourhood, and the process of working out just how much space I need and what is important in where I live. I had been in the house I built in Fremantle for 20 years, and chose the location and size to raise a family. Now, I am taking a year out to find out more about what type of house I need when I just please myself. Interesting times.

Now, with added quality control…