People who know me well know I go through phases where I find myself craving alone time … generally it happens when I’m stressed to the max, have been really busy (or traveling), or am in some other respect overwhelmed by my life. So when I found myself with a rare night alone last night, I was more than happy to pop an unseen chick flick into the DVD player and distractedly watch it while tap-tap-tapping away on my laptop (for work — not fun — I feel compelled to clarify).
In general, the last month or so I’ve noticed a dramatic decline in my generally dependable behavior of seeking out the company of others. I can’t remember the last time I went to lunch with my galpals at work — instead, when I’m actually *in* the office, I’ve just been opting for lunch at my desk or a quiet hour at a restaurant with a book. I always worry that I’m sending the wrong vibe when I don’t ask people at work to join me for lunch, but sometimes I’d really just rather have a little oasis of time to myself in the middle of the day.
Because I’ve been on the road so much the last month, I’ve generally been finding myself working a very random schedule. I worry that people in my office are starting to think of me as a class-A slacker because I’ve been gone so much — traveling, as well as random other things (doctors’ appointments, UTD orientation yesterday, etc.) … but at the same time, I swear, I’ve never worked harder or longer hours at my job than I have in the last 30 days. It’s because I’m constantly squeezing in 15 minutes of work here, (two hours of hardcore HTML cleanup work last night on the couch), wherever and whenever I can, precisely because I *haven’t* been at my desk much. What little time I’ve been on campus for the purposes of working have largely been spent catching up on my “housecalls” to the hoardes of people who’ve sent out distress signals in the last month.
I knew ahead of time that July was going to be a weird, busy month, and now that it’s very nearly over, I can look back on the last 29 days and say, “Yep. That was weird. And busy.” But good, you understand.
And, as I figured would be the case, I’m now elated that the next few months will see a downturn in my travels and an upswing in school-related activities. In fact, yesterday afternoon I attended UTD‘s graduate student orientation to gear up for starting school Aug. 20th. And I have to say, while the event last night wasn’t the exciting wealth of information and camaraderie I might have hoped it would be, the bookstore had no book information for me, and I wasn’t able to get my new “Comet card” (student ID), I was impressed with some of the people who presented ten-minute introductions to their offices. Financial aid and the ID office were very well represented by unusually helpful personalities (I generally find those two offices have the least customer-service oriented people working in them). They seem to have a very nurturing environment at UTD, even with all the computer geeks and engineers running around. Even the public safety officer was warm — and Lord knows, even where I work (where we practically invented the notion of a nurturing academic environment), the police officers are anything but warm.
So… school starts in three weeks for me. (Yes, I’m counting.) I’m equal parts excited and mortified. Hopefully it will turn out that I have good reason for the former and no reason at all for the latter.