It's that time in the semester when I have no idea how all the work is going to get done. I have a half-day meeting to organize for next week, classes to teach, papers to grade, an article to revise for publication, exams to write and eventually to grade.
I'm going to be seeing a lot of the very wee hours between now and December 27, when final grades are due (at 6 a.m. -- are you kidding me?!?), and there's a good chance I'll end up pulling at least one all-nighter. And let me tell you, it takes a lot longer to recover from staying up all night working when you're pushing fifty than when you're barely out of your teens.
Unfortunately, the time crunch means my environmental commitments slip.
Yesterday, breakfast home fries came in a styrofoam container; the coffee to go with it was definitely not fair trade. My lunch? beans and rice on a paper plate, but salad in a plastic bowl; both got thrown away as soon as I was finished eating.
In the afternoon, I was flagging after getting only four hours of sleep. I bought a Hershey bar at the student commissary for some extra energy, despite the fact that Hershey refuses to stop using child labor to pick cocoa beans.
When I got home last night, I made a commitment to try harder. This morning, I fixed myself coffee and breakfast. Still ate both lunch and dinner out of plastic take-out containers, but since it was a 12-hour work day, I'll cut myself a break for now, and try again to do better tomorrow.
I'm also going to do some better planning and shopping this weekend to give myself better options for packing meals to take to work.
Anyone have any good ideas for me?
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Don't beat yourself up over it. If there's ever a time to kill a tree, it's when you're so sleep-deprived and stressed out that the alternative is killing a person! Do what you can, not what you can't.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you can do is ask others to step in and do some of the work for you. E.g., have the Mate pack your lunches for the next month, so you don't have to. Instead of doing the grocery planning and shopping, sit down with *him* to plan out the needs for the entire month. Cook in big batches and freeze (burritos, chili, soups, etc) so that you don't have to cook so often.
One thing that helps is to create a LONG list of possible meals, so you don't have to engage your brain on the issue of what to eat each week.