Busy busy

[liv]

So I've been in my new job a month, and not at all coincidentally haven't made any DW posts since I started.

The job is everything I hoped for, it's really interesting and enjoyable and I get on well with my colleagues and I love the atmosphere of the genome campus. I'm increasingly thinking that this is what I was born for, I get to make the world a better place by using my exact combination of skills and interests, it feels like I've found my ikigai.

The downside is that the commute is very incompatible with ever doing any exercise ever, and somewhat incompatible with managing both an online and an in person social life. I get home between 6:30 and 7, and if I'm not actually in bed and asleep by 10 I get into sleep dep very quickly. I can't easily go into town on my way home from work because if I do that, I am stranded in town with no bike to get home, so either I leave an evening social at half past eight, or I get to bed late. I think I need to find a way to use my commuting time for spodding or learning; it's difficult on a crowded coach but I need to claw back those two hours per day.

So anyway, in the past several weeks, I ran Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur services in Stoke, read Torah twice and wardened twice, for the highly complex services of Succot and Simchat Torah, in Cambridge, on top of starting a new job at the start of Succot. I celebrated fifth anniversaries (separately) with both of my non-spouse significant others, and my mother's seventy-second birthday with all my siblings. Oh, and Halloween, aka still in the EU day, which mostly jack organized, when I dressed up as my role-playing character.

I've sort of mostly kept up with one of my online courses, on Maimonides, but not really with the one I was most excited about on Jews, Christians and Muslims, and I haven't done any real Torah lishmah. Teaching is going well, but I have two Sunday school classes and one Monday evening bar mitzvah class and that's a big proportion of my potentially free time.

I might talk about some of these things, or I might talk about politics, or I might talk about some other topics I've been meaning to post about. Or more likely I'll still have no free time for the next several weeks. But anyway, here is an update. I'm keeping up with reading, at least, and I just need to find a way to write too, even if it's posting from my phone.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Yay you.

[nou]

Glad to hear the new job is making you happy!

[princessofgeeks]

So glad you love your job! That is such a bonus.

[ewt]

I'm glad to hear that the job is going well!

I wonder if podcasts/audio courses would be good use of some of your on the coach time.

[doseybat]

Yay! Any possibility of some working from home days? I would have serious trouble getting through my commuting life without those

[doseybat]

Almost all of my feeling awake commute is work email on the smartphone. But then more half of my work seems to be comms nowadays. An extra two hours of work probably is not what you are looking for though

[ceb]

That sounds fantastic! I hope you get to feeling less knackered; I always find the first few weeks of a new job wipe me out. Where physically is your job?

[lilacsigil]

Like ceb I always find the first 4-6 weeks of a routine change extremely tiring, so I hope you get a bit more energy soon! But it sounds like the perfect job for you otherwise.

[naath]

If you can take in material by listening you could get podcasts or audio books, which I find more compatible with the bus than reading (and much more compatible with cycling...). If you desire exercise it is 13ish miles onna bike (6ish if you pay for the train) [it's not too bad, an unpleasant crossing of the A505 is the worst bit]; the bike parking is good enough IMO to leave the bike overnight if you wish to bus home and bike home the following day and there are showers in several places on campus.

[silveradept]

Thank you for the update. It sounds like things are going very well, if exhausting.

[azurelunatic]

That's an exhausting commute. I second the recommendation for audio media if that works for you, with headphones which have play/pause controls on the headphone or cord, such that one can pause the thing the instant someone starts to ask for directions or some other reason to pause occurs. For me it was the difference between being perpetually spacy and bewildered and rewinding, and being aware and relaxed.

[sfred]

*waves hello*
I'm really glad you're enjoying it. I hope you find a way to fit in everything you need.