Robbing Peter to pay Paul...

...and sometimes Mary. I often feel like I'm doing this as a faculty member. Perhaps everyone feels this way. The last meeting with the collaborating faculty group reminded me of faculty's constant state of "insufficient time" as I watched Pete fall asleep in the meeting and heard Nina talk about waking at an early hour for her health.

I have a colleague at a university on the east coast who says: "Career, family and self...you can never have more than two of the three." I know this has been true for me, yet I've really been trying to see how it is that I'm creating this condition.


Time and I have always had a very strained relationship. I think it doesn't help that I think of time as finite and of fixed size. I remember Liz saying one time that sometimes moments can seem like and eternity and hours can seem like moments--it depends on what is happening. Of course, I've also experienced "productivity" as being very non-finite or of a fixed rate. Sometimes I accomplish a great deal in almost no time at all and other times I simply spin my wheels.

One of the things that I am hoping to both learn and achieve in the collaboration with my colleagues is an experience of abundance. ...an abundance of well-being, of time, of both doing and being enough.