5 weeks into my new postdoc

0. Good news! I got a paper accepted, after two rejections. The impact factor for the current journal is actually higher than the second journal I sent it to.

1. A commenter remarked on the importance of seeing other people, and oh my gosh, that's so right! Yesterday I left my office in the middle of the day for the first time in ages --- I headed to the gym around 3 pm, passing hundreds of people through hallways and streets, and it literally felt weird to be seeing more than a dozen people at a time. Wonderfully weird! I am going to try to work more often in common areas. Groups of people don't make loneliness go away, but wow it helps a lot.

2. Dating is wonderful beyond my wildest imagination. That's another post so the academically-inclined can skip it, but it definitely helps my mood.

3. Boice's Tips for New Faculty Members is a life-saver. I have not been very productive, but I am following his advice to do something every day, even if it feels small, and I am making progress on projects where previously I had no progress at all. It is incredibly difficult to just sit there, not doing anything other than thinking mindfully before starting work, but it reassured me that he says it's okay if it's a struggle.

4. Knowing to expect a struggle makes work easier. I remember from the memorial service a couple years ago for a famous academic in my field, someone said that he kept a list of his projects and their current status on a notepad. Right away, I made such a list, which was not short, and to my embarrassment, so little about the list changed over a one year period that it was clear that the list was completely pointless. Perhaps a famous academic was not a reasonable model for me. Part of me wants to keep up with my list. Making progress on multiple items seems theoretically possible, and yet I've never done it. So I am taking a small step every day on just one project, and only working on two projects concurrently. I'm trying not to look too far into the future or think about the fact that the two projects I am working on are still from my dissertation, and nothing new from here.

5. Knowing to expect a struggle makes practicalities easier too. After a month here, I know my regular routes well enough that I'm surprised that I still need to spend time with a map each time I go to a new place, even just on campus. The gym took me 20 minutes to locate. It turns out it is accessible only through an unmarked series of tunnels under scaffolding. Of course!