Second week at Recurse Center

While I’m settling into the new exciting pace of being at the Recurse Center, a lot of my feelings this week have been around trying to juggle all the other things in my life outside of RC and finding a way to feel at peace with those things. Working as a freelancer means that there are always things to follow up on and continue to mentally juggle even when work is not happening (which is important to know for people who are thinking of jumping into this line of work – you really can’t underestimate the amount of work that you will have to do that you don’t get paid to do, and will happen before and after the time period in which you are actively working). So I worked hard to minimize work, and that isn’t a problem, but there are some unanticipated THINGS to deal with that are a lot less fun than what I’d rather be doing.

Also, next week I will be taking a one-day trip to DC to teach a workshop with my dear friend Julia at the Society for Imaging Science and Technology Archiving 2018: Digitization, Preservation, and Access conference (what - a - mouthful) on “Digital Audiovisual File Formats: Identification, Validation, Specification Verification” (also a mouthful, I’m sorry). This will be a lot of fun, but I will be happy when I can get back to focusing purely on RC and I’m not looking forward to spending 7 hours on a train in one very long day.

I have been able to keep up with friends and important people in my life, so I am glad for that.

All week I’ve had that kind of itchy feeling like I mentioned last week – when you have a problem that you really want to solve, but other things are in the way and you can’t get back to spending time just thinking about that thing, which is causing a little bit of internal grumpiness. I have been pretty good at learning how to be more patient and how to say “no” to things even though they sound interesting because they will take away from my focus, but this week has tested these life skills more than usual. I’ve been really frustrated at myself and feeling like I’m moving way too slowly.

Something I’ve really had to learn this week is that I need to not just immediately jump into trying to do something. I have to force myself to take the time to read about it instead of immediately trying to implement or think I already understand it.