Making Something Out of a Difficult Year
It has been an exceptionally active year for me, and I think I understand why.
It has also been a hard year.
I could have responded to that in any number of ways. Instead, I seem to have turned towards the things I know how to do: thinking, writing, researching, and creating.
Intellectualisation and sublimation, perhaps.
I have spent much of this year working in the evenings and on weekends too. Today, for example, I spent hours working through the copy edits of a recently accepted article. That part is now done, but ethics amendments and PhD work are still ahead of me — and it is only midday.
The result has been a great deal of research work, a few questions that others might one day be able to answer, and a return to an old way of making sense of the world: writing children’s stories.
These projects have given me something meaningful to put my energy into during a difficult year.
I am aware that this pace is not necessarily sustainable, and I would not present it as an ideal. But it is what I have managed to do with this particular year.
I am still learning how to do research. I am still learning how to write. And I have no idea where some of these projects will eventually lead.
But I have made something out of a difficult year.
And I think I have done my best.
Now, I’m curious to see what next year brings. 🙂
