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What a year!

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There is still over a month left of 2020, but oh what a year it has been. There has been plenty of bad, but there has also been some good this year. My family has a lot to be thankful for this year.

What color have you been spending most of your time in?

I wish I could say that I have been living in the green zone from the above chart, but to be honest, I think I hover between yellow and orange. We have been in semi-quarantine since March. But oh so much has happened since that last day in the office…which I am pretty sure was a Friday the 13th!

In March, we had my husband’s SSDI hearing via phone conference. Our lawyer thought we should wait and reschedule for June, but my husband didn’t want to put it off any longer. There were technical difficulties which did not make the start any easier. It was about thirty minutes and it didn’t seem like the judge had many questions other than my husband’s income for 2017. He had started a new job that year, so the six months that he did work were equal to the previous year of part-time work and it really confused the judge that my husband had not been back to work since June 2017. When we were done, we didn’t know what to think, but out lawyer had a good feeling. About three weeks later our lawyer called me to say that they were approving the disability date. Honestly, for these past couple of months, I have been in shock that that journey was now over. I still didn’t believe it until the first monthly payment in July and was still nervous until we finally got the three years of retroactive payments for the three years that my husband had been going through the process of applying for disability. It is a very odd feeling to finally be able to pay off bills without a worry.

The SSDI journey is not the only one that concluded this year. Last week, I defended my dissertation for my doctorate. It was a success! I am officially a doctor (but not that kind of doctor)! I have a doctorate in Educational Leadership & Management with a concentration in Creativity and Innovation. I know this blog has been pretty silent lately and part of that is because I have been burnt out trying to conclude that chapter of my life. I kept telling people I would be a doctor by Christmas, I just wasn’t expecting before thanksgiving.

So what is next? I asked my son that question and he said I should take a break. He said no more classes or book deadlines. My husband doesn’t think I will sit still though. He thinks I will go for another degree. My professor thinks I should turn the dissertation into a book. One of my committee members told me that it is not the time to be humble and that I should strive to put myself out there (If you remember, one of my previous posts was about imposter syndrome).

My answer for what I would do was sleep. That is the only thing that I can think of right now. It has been a crazy couple of months and it feels like everything has been nonstop even working from home instead of commuting to the office. I took the last two days off and honestly, that is what I have been doing— sleeping! Maybe I will get to cleaning the house or baking cookies this weekend, but for now, I need to reset.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that my family is safe and healthy. I am thankful that our long journeys are over and it is time to turn to a fresh new page. I don’t know what the future will hold, but it can wait for another day.

Apple Cranberry Sauce in the Instant Pot

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I am the only one in my house who likes cranberry sauce. So last year I attempted to make a keto friendly sauce for my father-in-law who was joining us for Thanksgiving. It was so good, I plan on making a version of it again this year just for me. According to him, apples are not keto friendly. So this version is not, but I love apples with cranberries.

Materials:

Ingredients:

  • 12 whole fresh cranberries
  • 1/2 cup apple cider
  • 1-2 diced Apple (Granny Smith or similar preferred)
  • 1/4 cup Agave Syrup
  • Zest and juice of 1 orange

Procedure:

  1. Combine all your prepped ingredients together in your Instant Pot. Stir.
  2. Place lid on IP and close the vent. Switch to Pressure Cook on High on Manual for 5minutes.
  3. Let NPR for 10 minutes.
  4. Serve hot or chill.

Update from Self-Quarantine —lost count what day…

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Today, despite suffering from a flare of my TMJ due to concentrating too much this week (I grit my teeth when I am focused on a task), I am in a good mood. The summer term is over for my university teaching and my grading is done. I also received feedback on my dissertation draft and it is not as bad as I thought it would be. I still have to add some information to make it more cohesive, but four out of the five chapters are good. I seem to have gotten out of my slump when it came to being productive (don’t look at the laundry baskets waiting to be folded in the kitchen!).

So when my son asked if I wanted to make something in the kitchen, I thought why not? We experimented with baking a pie with filling from scratch. Sorry no recipe because we used two frozen deep dish pie crusts from Walmart and followed the directions for cook time from that. Everything else was a little of this and a little of that. We used the apples from my Misfits Market order…we had a lot of apples this time. The pie came out actually looking like a pie which I think is a first for us when it is not a Sara Lee frozen pie.

 



My house smells like Fall because of the pie and it has me thinking a lot about what the next couple of months will be like. It is way too humid out right now to enjoy the porch or the deck, so I am looking forward to cooler weather with the leaves changing. It is looking like we will still be social distancing. School will continue to be virtual, but my son will be a freshman…he will actually be driving in a couple of months. Scary!

While I would like to return to a semblance of normal, I don’t think we will ever return to the way things were before. Supermarkets gave me anxiety before the pandemic and now it is even worse. So I am thankful for Instacart and Walmart Grocery pickup. I have even setup some of non perishable things I routinely buy to automatically reorder every month from Amazon Prime.

As you know from reading previous posts, I love the concept of Hygge which is appreciating the joy that comes from life’s moments. I take more naps now, cook more at home, listen to music, play with the dogs, and spend time with my family. This is a time of reset and I appreciate that. Now I am going to grab a slice of pie!

Fight Feeling Like a Fraud!

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I have been teleworking from home since March 16, 2020 due to COVID quarantines. It has been a bumpy process because at the same time, my son was also virtual learning. As you know from earlier posts, my husband also was going through the process of fighting for social security disability. He won his case, but we are still waiting on the backpay (we are at three months now and have been fighting for three years!). Oh, yeah, and there is the little matter of my dissertation too.

This is my mom’s list of who may enter (this is edited from someone else!). I’ll just take the puppies!

I have been battling internally for a couple months with the idea that I am not working hard enough. I am busier than ever, but I feel like I am getting nothing done. My days are filled with Zoom meetings, emails, and research on how I can turn my face to face workshops into virtual sessions. Oh, and there are also the committees and tasks forces I am a part of as well. And that is just my library job. I am also teaching, working on my dissertation, being a wife, parenting, keeping track of the household stuff, and so so much more. Yay, me!

Part of my struggle with my productivity is probably related to the feeling of Imposter Syndrome. I have had a couple of heart to hearts with my supervisor since March because my anxiety keeps telling me lies. The truth is that many of us feel like we don’t belong or have nothing interesting or worthwhile to share.

It is not the first time I have felt like that. On top of my regular office job, I teach a graduate level library science course about integrating STEM into libraries collections and programs. I am pretty sure by now you all know what STEM stands for, but just in case, it stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. A couple of terms ago, I had a student who had already received her PhD in Astrophysics. She was a Rocket Scientist! So here I was trying to teach a Rocket Scientist about STEM. Can you imagine? A librarian teaching a rocket scientist? What did I have to teach her that she didn’t already know? But that wasn’t the point of the course. I wasn’t there to teach STEM concepts, I was there really to teach about program planning, collection development, and, well, libraries. I was there to show the connection of how STEM fit into all of that. That is where I was the expert, so why did I feel like the biggest fraud there was?

A couple of weeks after the term was over, I received an email from another student in the course. He was thanking me for sharing my personal experiences and said that I had inspired him. That made me feel like all the other stuff didn’t matter. Here I had made an impact with at least one student and that was all I really needed. It was wonderful to hear back from this student that I had made a difference for him. But that feeling still lingered in my mind that I didn’t really deserve to be there teaching the course.

What causes us to have these feelings like we don’t belong?

We are living in a culture where we are told to be humble, that we shouldn’t talk about our accomplishments because it will come off as bragging or egotistical. So we downplay our accomplishments and it shocks us when other people point out them out and perhaps even makes us a little uncomfortable. I first heard the term Imposter Syndrome in Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In. Apparently, this happens to a lot of people where we feel like we don’t deserve a seat at the table. This feeling of being an imposter chips away at our confidence. We feel anxious, stressed, and experience moments of self-doubt. Just like in my experience teaching my course, we feel like we have nothing of value to impart. Heck, even the COO of Facebook feels this way sometimes.

I like to joke that every time I create my monthly report at work, I am reminded of all the things that kept me busy that month. Let’s just say that it was eight pages long last month! But that monthly report is only a small snapshot of everything I do. Keeping a record like that can actually be pretty helpful when it comes to battling Imposter Syndrome.

A few months ago, I had to update my curriculum vita, which is basically an academics version of a resume. In case my boss is reading, don’t worry, I was not applying for a new job. I needed it as part of an application process for a research project related to my dissertation. It had been two years since I had last updated it. I’m a librarian, so one of the things I do when I have a task is to research it. As I looked up things to include in my CV, I realized I needed to add some sections. Things like committees and statewide projects I served on. Awards or grants I had received. As I added these things to my CV, I started to think to myself, why did I feel like a fraud? Right here on paper was a list of everything I had accomplished in my career. And I have to say it was a lot of stuff. Great stuff. Interesting stuff. Inspiring stuff. Publications and committees. International conferences. I had pages stating right there in black and white of all that I had accomplished. There was my reminder that I have value in my career and I deserved to be where I am.

This process of writing down a list of your accomplishments is actually a form of writing therapy that is used for people who might be suffering from forms of Imposter Syndrome. It is easy to dismiss our accomplishments, but much harder to do so when we have a written record showing that they exist in reality. I am sure that many of you have these same feelings like you don’t belong or that you are a fraud. In fact almost 70% of people worldwide suffer from these feelings.

We can wait for those moments when someone will say thank you or job well done. But while we are waiting, that feeling of being an imposter will continue to chip away at us. We need to tell ourselves that we are interesting. That we deserve to be where we are. That we deserve to strive towards our best potential. So I challenge you, create that list. It doesn’t have to be something as formal as a resume or a CV. Just simply take some time to list out everything you do. Then look at that list any time you feel like you don’t belong. You might be surprised at what you find.

Oh, yeah, I finished my completed draft of my dissertation this week. I am still waiting for the feedback from my supervising professor before the final draft and the defense, but I am feeling a little less like an imposter now. Here is to Dr. Jen in 2020!

Update from Self-Quarantine -Day 48

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I saw this online this morning and the feels…

Via https://www.newyorker.com/humor

If you have been following along this month, you know I only made it to the letter “I” in the alphabet for the A-Z challenge. The reason for this is that it began to feel more like a chore than something I was excited about. Plus the stats were the same as when I was not posting. So I felt a little adrift in figuring out where to go from there. That is of course not to say I have not been busy.

We officially heard on Monday that my husband has finally been acknowledged by the Social Security Administration as being disabled. Surprisingly, he was approved not for his Sjogren’s Syndrome (which is a blue book listing), but rather because of a combination of health problems not the least of which is migraines. I plan to have another post with full details because it has been a three year battle and I have found that not many people talk about what happens after…

I have a meeting with my dissertation chair tonight. I had joined a group on Facebook that was hosting a challenge to get the dissertation written, but nothing has happened in the two weeks since my last group meeting with my chair. Again, it is that feeling of being adrift. I know I need to get more motivated and I should feel like I have all this time now to work on the paper, but I feel like I am busier than ever while still being at the least productive I have ever been. Anyone else feel like that? I tried describing the feeling to my husband, but he wasn’t understanding what I was getting at.

I am an introvert at heart, so I am not bothered by the fact that a month and a half has gone by since we began self-quarantine. I enjoy my coffee on the deck in the mornings. I keep up with my emails, and I am still teleworking for my full time job which means lots of virtual meetings and conference calls. Plus, I am prepping for the Summer quarter of the online graduate course I teach to begin. My family is healthy (well, healthy-ish). I may not feel like I am getting much done, but I know that I really am. I just need to stop comparing myself to what others are doing.

If you also find yourself adrift in this time of uncertainty, it is okay. Don’t let those with their baking, their house cleaning, their craft projects, and their sheer productiveness get you down. Remember that social media is only showing us a glimpse of what is happening in the background and everyone handles stress differently (mine seems to be by buying bulk snacks via Amazon). We are not quite superhuman, no matter how much we may try to be. So hang in there!