Good Morning

It is morning here on Island State. I know some of you are eating lunch and thinking this chick needs to get up earlier, but it is only 8:15. I need to catch a 9:00 bus to school, and then it will be a day full of work.

I am having trouble fitting my own writing into my day or even my week. With the dissertation is was easier. It was more like a do-or-die scenario, so I wrote whenever I could sacrificing whatever I needed to. Now I'm trying to have a sustainable routine, but my job values my teaching above all other work. They say they want scholarship and I have to do it, but with a 4/4 load and no regular source of funding (all application based and limited)*, the support just isn't there. Also, I'd like to have a life outside of my dissertation now. So I need advice. How do you make your work your priority?

And write first thing in the morning doesn't work for me. I am not a morning person. I need 9 hours of sleep and an hour of zombie time before I'm functional. I teach mid-morning and mid-day classes because of that. We're not a big enough department for me to do late-afternoon and evening classes either (besides, that cuts out all of my lit options). And it's not just a matter of retraining my body. When I have to be places before 9:30am I have IBS (makes air travel the best). My body literally doesn't function properly under a morning rush.

I know that lots of people are in the same type of position I am in, so what did you do to transition out of dissertation scheduling to sustainable scheduling, and what do you do to make sure you write and research?


*But it's better than some of my colleagues with regular funding. I've been awarded everything I've ever applied for, which is basically two conferences fully funded per year. Now I'm applying for reassigned time for next year too. So I am happy with the money itself, but the whole system is structured in a way that discourages people from applying and thus doing scholarship.