I’m feeling quite tired today, so I thought I’d save the blogging I had meant to do earlier this week for the weekend. It’s already been a few days, so what’s another day or two, right?
Then, as I was cooking fried rice for dinner, I realised that today is Friday – it’s not just the end of the working week, but also the last day before the university breaks up for a month for Easter. So I thought I’d mark it with a post.
I don’t usually teach on Fridays but because we’ve moved teaching online using mostly asynchronous methods, I check in on the student forum discussions and respond to teaching-related emails on a daily basis so that no one gets ignored or left out. I have students who are still in government-imposed quarantine in some countries, so they are alone and struggling a bit so I want to be accessible where possible.
Teaching aside, this week has been pretty full-on now that I think about it. Midweek, I managed to scratch the last item on the “urgent” to do list I had put up on my living room wall over a week ago. Yesterday, I made a new list and happy to announce that I have scratched-off another half by this evening!
I hope that this means that I’m more adjusted to not just working from home, but also less stressed and anxious about the circumstances we’re all in. I suspect having three video calls this week alone with my family (which was what I wanted to blog about earlier in the week) and several with my close friend Steve helped.
Speaking of working from home, my neck and back has been killing me the past two weeks because I don’t actually have a proper table and chair for long-term working. So a couple of days ago, I set up a standing desk using all the different boxes from kitchenware I had purchased in 2015 when I moved in but for some reason, never threw out.
It’s not very stable, but I hope it’ll last!
Anyway, I’m going to try to take the weekend off as much as possible just to unwind and to make the days different from work days at home. The weather is meant to be lovely on Sunday (19 degrees!) so I’m going to try to get outside for some exercise.