Progress

In terms of work, I’ve managed to accomplish a few things these last few days despite the exhaustion and general craziness.  Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much, but each step is one step closer to getting the dissertation – the biggest project in my life right now – finished.  Most recently I’ve managed to get my dissertation surveys reevaluated and rewritten.  They’re now much stronger, and I feel far more confident in them than I did before.

But there are other recent victories as well, victories that come from not wanting to put my life on hold, and from realizing that I have dreams of a life beyond the PhD and all of what that usually entails.  I don’t know that I’m in a position to have everything that I want right now.  That’s okay, really.  But I want to start taking these small steps towards the life that I really want, and start remodeling the life that I have now into something that more closely matches what I’d like to have someday down the road.

I’ve been spending more time recently thinking about little ways I can make changes, bit by bit.  There’s a tendency to start off trying to do too much, but making small changes is far more sustainable from a personal standpoint.  Even focusing on small changes, a fair amount has been accomplished over here.  In the last few days, I’ve worked my way through:

– Perfecting yummy homemade potato and pasta salads (rather than buying them from the store)

– Learning to make proper homemade fried rice, shrimp with broccoli, salmon burgers and sweet potato fries (so good to know exactly what’s in what I’m eating, and saving us the cost of take-out)

– Creating homemade iced tea and sugar syrup (to give The Boy something other than the high-fructose corn syrup laden stuff from the grocery store)

– Planting basil (and soon other herbs) to use in my kitchen

– Shorter showers at cooler temperatures

– Decluttering the apartment further (need to make room for The Boy, and also my much-hoped-for solar oven, fiddle, and futon)

– Riding my bike around town for errands rather than taking the bus

– Getting a sourdough starter ready for breadmaking

– Picking up my guitar again, and spending time playing it in the evening

In some ways these seem like small victories, but in some ways they don’t.  They’re small steps, sure, but they’re small steps all in one direction – toward a more sustainable life right now, and towards the life that I want.

Next up?  More recipe experiments, a worm composter, and a bike trip to the new farmer’s market this Friday to check out local options for tasty things.