Focus

My mom and sister came to visit when I was in a highly productive mode. I was a little distraught about perfecting the intro and discussion sections of the chapter I was finishing up but I was sitting at my desk and working, i.e. trying, hard. However, mom and sister, broke up this focus. Their first full day of visiting I woke up early and got some work done in the morning and then later around lunch I made them sit and watch a movie so I could work another two hours. Then for the rest of the week (Thurs-Sat) I didn't get any work done. There were a few evening when we would sit around and read our respective books (we dont' own a TV-movie was watched on huge computer screen) and I thought hey I should get some work done now, but the work I needed to do (finish chapter) wasn't easy and I felt it needed full focus and I was tired from the days activities. If I had some data processing to do, or maybe grading, I can spend hour chunks of time doing that, or evening writing a methods or results section would be ok for a short period of time, but a discussion section tacks my brain so much more. I feel I need a lot of time to first, refresh myself with what I have written and usually dive back into the literature-all that would take at least an hour and then I would need to actually write more. It was at these points, sitting and reading and not wanting to work for a short period of time, I thought-hell, my life is going to be difficult once I have children and if I stay in academics, to get work done efficiently if I can't work for short chunks of time.

But now my family have left, which brings me to the main topic of this post, and I still can't focus. I may have written about this before, how I tend to go in waves, like a sin function, in terms of productivity and focus. When ever I settle down to evaluate why I haven't been productive I always notice that I am coming to the end of my "women" cycle and the blood should start flowing soon. This always pisses me off. I get so made at myself that my hormones get the best of me. During this time of the month all I want to do is eat bad food and watch online TV. I don't remember this being a huge problem when I had an office to go to, but I think working from home doesn't have that extra incentive to be productive when my body and mind refuse to be.

To top it off my husband has "lab" time again so he won't be home until Thursday after 8pm, and then I have a flight back to home state Friday at 9am for my mom's mom's 70's bday party.

It's so much easier to be depressed when one is alone.