After earning a scholarship back in May and decided to devote my fifth and final year to my PhD, I looked at my reflection in the mirror, took a step back and let myself breathe. I let myself breathe and focused on my breath for the first time since this journey began in 2018. I've never shied away from speaking about the terrible situations PhD candidates have to go through in Greece: little to no funding, lack of realistic timeframes, lack of support from universities and institutes for mental health, and a load of side projects that have nothing to do with the PhD itself. And don't get me wrong, this isn't a situation exclusive to Greece. It's what's wrong with academia everywhere - except for the funding part, funding is existent in most cases in other countries.
In case it isn't obvious, financial insecurity is a huge deal if you have bills to pay. And for the last 3 or 4 years I've been taking part-time projects that didn't pay much, in addition to teaching and whatnot, while writing my novel and several short stories, and running multiple social media platforms at the same time. All while doing a PhD, which in and of itself consists of the research itself, writing the thesis, attending conferences, writing research papers and publishing in high-impact magazines, and attending summer schools because they look good on your CV. Today... I couldn't care less about my CV. I want peace.
The scholarship I applied to was Deus ex machina. Literally. It appeared out of nowhere and saved me (till then there hadn't been one scholarship available for my class). And since then, I've been ridding myself of anything that has nothing to do with my PhD and my health (obviously I'm not letting go of meal prep and late-night Netflix chill, I'm not a robot). I don't advocate for getting rid of everything entirely, as I've written previously in My advice to new PhD students.
When I was left with my PhD only it felt awkward. I would set a timeframe for myself, or a number of tasks I needed to do in a week, and when they were done, I would just sit there staring at my screen, refreshing my emails, like, what am I supposed to do now that my schedule is free? No emails in days, no recurring meetings, no last-minute deliverable submission. What am I going to do with the rest of my day?
After my summer away from Athens, I refused to force myself to work. I had a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish each day, and in October, I even tried a no to-do list approach which I wrote about here. Through the ages I've tried plenty of productivity hacks, but now, for the first time, I didn't want to do any of it. I didn't want to be "productive", I just wanted to get things done.
My focus as of lately has been entirely on my PhD and aside from that, I'm doing what I want whenever I feel like it. News flash, I've been getting much more work done this way. Now that I've stopped forcing myself to exercise, I show up more often at the gym. I've stopped forcing myself to write blog posts, but here I am, I'm still doing it; I'm just not doing it according to a very strict, inflexible, heavily blocked calendar-the kind of now-or-never calendar.
I went from "what am I going to do with my time?" to actually enjoying my time. And this week, without really pressing myself all that much, I managed to finish writing this one chapter of my PhD thesis I've been working on for two months. I went from having no spare time to spending my time wisely. My clarity improved, my energy, my health (even my stress-induced acne went away). My oh, so perfect time management skills are something I don't want to think about anymore. And now, I sleep when I'm tired and I eat when I'm hungry. Not when my Google calendar notifications tell me I should.
This post was supposed to be about letting things happen: how I eventually got to be where I am by not trying, and how forcing myself to do things was bad for my productivity and my health. Instead, it turned into whatever this post is about. I was writing one word after the other, following my thoughts, not knowing what I was writing about, because I don't plan my blog posts anymore. Maybe I should, but I don't want to. Maybe my next post will be more structured. Who knows? Subscribe to my blog to find out. Click here to subscribe and get notified for new posts. They go up on Fridays. Thank You (:
This post was about finding peace, and healing. Perhaps moving away from our busy lives occasionally is the only remedy we need. Waking up peacefully instead of stressed is what I might call being happy. Am I happy now? Was I not happy last year? That's a whole different topic. For now, let's just say I've found peace in my day-to-day life.
Thank you for staying till the end. Have a great weekend!
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