Day 42: Just another day at the office (already?)

Day 42 (16 Jan) While we don't have classes timetabled, we can take advantage of not getting to work quite as early as usual but I can't break habits and stay in bed. Got up at the usual time and noted the bike was still on the deck. We've been experiencing warm nights so it didn't seem appropriate to be exercising at this stage.  I am one, however, for certainty in breakfast and that's is what I was doing right then at 6.12am. 

Blueberries and yoghurt,
in a Tobe ceramic cup, via Matsuyama...
at 6.12am 

Blueberries at reasonable prices at the moment mean a nice variation with the yoghurt for breakfast. I was also tossing up about the virtues of getting to work on time to attend a lecture by a visiting specialist, or actually spend the time continuing to catch up on work. There was a pressing deadline for course outlines after all. The lecture was about opportunities and expectations for obtaining research grants ... I opted for the course outline deadlines in the end. 

The federal research grants are by and large about the big dollar projects and right now, my work on 19th Japanese nation-building and political influences on contemporary international relations was, frankly, not going to cut it. Can't understand why not. A number of my performing arts friends remind themselves to 'never read the reviews'... academia can be a bit like that. Your work can keep getting rejected but you've just got to keep ploughing on regardless. It is in that bit of a rut at the moment. 

Mind you, at work, one's determination to lock oneself away and work tends to get a bit derailed at the office. I used to try and shut my door, switch off lights, fake absence really, but one rarely succeeds. You do need to surface from time to time to get coffee, to say the least. Those darn emails find you too, regardless of efforts to ignore them. 

Working away, course revision, at 6.12pm

It was thus the reason I found myself still aiming to meet a deadline at 6.12pm, working away on the revised course outline...it's my course about Japan and so it's always exciting to revise the course with the new material I've come across in Japan...some extra good shots for the lecture on the Russo-Japanese War and Soseki and Japanese literature for another week. 

So much to do, so little time to do it. But 612ABC is still there at 6.12pm as I work away for another couple of hours. Peace, at last.