Better frame of mind.

I’ve been trying to get in a better frame of mind about my Ph.D. program.

Instead of focusing on the negatives, I try to recognize how fortunate I am that I like what I do each day for work, mostly.

The other day after a day of six-and-a-half hours of one-on-one student meetings, instead of dwelling on how tired I was, I thought about how enjoyable that was that I could do that for my job and get paid for it.

When I read books, too, I try not to look at the clock and figure out how many pages I’m finishing per hour, but rather enjoy the book...

When I did that the other day, the time and two chapters from a well-written academic biography just flew by.

Several days later, I was reading a short literary memoir from a Caribbean author for my freshman writing class at several bars while I pregamed for a party later that evening, and when I didn’t focus on how many pages I had read or were left, the next thing I know, I finish the book.

Whenever I work from home on weekdays, too, I read Biblical Hebrew for like 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half over breakfast, and like three weeks ago that got tedious – until I started thinking, “Look at me, I can sleep in a bit, work in my pajamas, and make my own schedule where I read Hebrew till I poop out over vocabulary, that’s great.”

I need to stop feeling so sorry for myself.