Thank you for sharing in this vulnerable post, Robert! Acknowledging, as you are doing, the magnitude of change you are currently undergoing is important for calibrating your response to the upheaval. This isn't "normal" academia, it's huge life upheaval. It won't always be like this.
I noticed that the part of your post that you emphasize the most is "seek out help," but whereas you elucidated your other points with illustrative personal details (the bed frame, the band), this one felt like you were saying it from a great distance. Are you reaching out for help? In this public forum you get to choose how much personal detail to reveal, of course, but it did strike me that you gave the advice without offering an example from your own life of how you're doing it. Just something to note.
Again, thank you for your candor. It is helpful, in a way, to have read your previous posts while overwhelmed with my own academic work and think "this guy really has his sh*t together, why can't I do it?" Thanks for showing that everyone can get overwhelmed sometimes.
Thanks Jayme. I am slowly assembling a new support network here, and this includes mental health support. That's just a part of the story that for now, I prefer to keep more private than others. But, asking if I am getting the help I need, is itself a form of helping, so I truly appreciate it.
As a life-long, hard-core insomniac myself (who also can't handle sleep deprivation at all), I feel this so much, along with so much of the rest. Know that this post is helping lift readers everywhere out of many, many ditches. And each day you're slugging it out at work is lifting faculty who really need it out of ditches both deep and shallow, or keeping them from falling in in the first place. Keep being really good to yourself and thanks for the reminder that we should all do the same.
Thank you for sharing in this vulnerable post, Robert! Acknowledging, as you are doing, the magnitude of change you are currently undergoing is important for calibrating your response to the upheaval. This isn't "normal" academia, it's huge life upheaval. It won't always be like this.
I noticed that the part of your post that you emphasize the most is "seek out help," but whereas you elucidated your other points with illustrative personal details (the bed frame, the band), this one felt like you were saying it from a great distance. Are you reaching out for help? In this public forum you get to choose how much personal detail to reveal, of course, but it did strike me that you gave the advice without offering an example from your own life of how you're doing it. Just something to note.
Again, thank you for your candor. It is helpful, in a way, to have read your previous posts while overwhelmed with my own academic work and think "this guy really has his sh*t together, why can't I do it?" Thanks for showing that everyone can get overwhelmed sometimes.
Thanks Jayme. I am slowly assembling a new support network here, and this includes mental health support. That's just a part of the story that for now, I prefer to keep more private than others. But, asking if I am getting the help I need, is itself a form of helping, so I truly appreciate it.
As a life-long, hard-core insomniac myself (who also can't handle sleep deprivation at all), I feel this so much, along with so much of the rest. Know that this post is helping lift readers everywhere out of many, many ditches. And each day you're slugging it out at work is lifting faculty who really need it out of ditches both deep and shallow, or keeping them from falling in in the first place. Keep being really good to yourself and thanks for the reminder that we should all do the same.