Routines

Unless something spectacular happens in my life, there won't be much for me to blog about. From now on and until mid-April all my days will be the same. I get up between eight and nine, which is a luxury. I try to get up at eight so that I can have a quiet breakfast and still be at my desk by nine. I check my work email quickly. It is set to Auto-Response, but people haven't realised it yet, so there are emails still coming in. I try to reply at once and keep the number of inbox messages under 25. I don't open my private email, my Facebook or my Blogger.

It takes me about an hour to read through what I had written the day before, by which time I am ready for another cup of coffee. Then I write until lunch. Then I write a bit more. Then I go for a walk, unless the weather is really awful. Then I write a bit more. By four in the afternoon I am too tired to be creative, but still capable of other work, such as writing recommendation letters and reading PhD theses. I have managed to keep the list of urgent tasks below 10. I am not taking on any new urgent tasks, but I cannot refuse to write a recommendation letter for a colleague or student.

At this point I also check my private email and read Facebook. I read my colleagues' interesting links, so it takes some time. I skip all status updates about what people had for lunch and what their pet did and what weather they are having. I skip all witty quotations and jokes. Occasionally, a colleague catches me on FB, and we have a conversation, and sometimes people Skype me when they see I am online.

My wonderful husband cooks dinner. After dinner we sometimes watch a movie, most often a nature documentary. At other times I play with my dollhouses - no, sorry, I make miniatures in 1:12 scale. I go to bed at ten and read non-work-related books for a couple of hours.

In the predictable future, there is very little that can disrupt this routine.