Today feels like a new day - figuratively speaking - of course it's literally a new day.
I woke up starting to feel better. I don't feel 100%. I'm more congested and my nose goes from stuffy to pouring in the blink of an eye, but my head feels a bit clearer and my throat is improving. I'll take it! Honestly, I can handle a sore throat and stuffiness much better than I can when my head hurts or just feels cloudy. That's when I really shut down.
I woke up naturally at about 7:30, but I let myself have a slow roll into the morning. I laid in bed reading for a bit before I got up to shower and get moving. Coming in to Bangkok I decided to give myself a day to get comfortable in my living space with the goal of finding a work space in which I felt like I could be focused and productive within the first week. Ideally that would have happened on my first full day, but I was a bit more realistic than that. I tried my apartment first, but that worked about as well as it does at home, which is not very well at all. Then I had a few days of not feeling well so I gave myself some grace there. Yesterday in a few short moments of feeling perky I tried to work in my apartment and in a common space on the floor with the pool and the gym.
Aside from the distractions of a comfy couch and Netflix the downfall of my apartment is that while there are two desktop-type spaces that should be great for work, they both have corresponding stools. In theory a stool would be great because it would help me maintain my posture by not giving me an option for lazing back. I like to think that when I'm typing in my work office I sit with fairly good posture, but I know for sure that when I'm talking with students or my coworkers I list to the side and compromise my spinal alignment. Not being able to work comfortably AND having distractions are not a great combo for me, particularly when I'm not motivated to work on research to being with. I thought the common space would work really well, but it wasn't great. I can handle heat better than a lot of people, but 85-95 degree temperature without air con or even so much a breeze wasn't working for me. Once I got into the room I also realized that there were gorgeous leather couches and chairs with end tables and coffee tables, but there wasn't a work space that wouldn't require me to bend over or work off my lap. There's a conference room that's across the hall from the common space and I could use that, but it is reservable so access to that room is limited. While it had space and quite, I didn't think it was air conditioned either and who wants to be stuck in a small conference room day in and day out. I'm can't recall if it even had any windows. Talk about depressing!
I decided to give a coffee shop a try this morning. There is a little shop on the first floor of my building that has a sign in the window advertising their food and beverage options as well as free wifi and co-working space. The food and beverage options seem a bit limited, but I was willing to give it a try. I was realllly hoping it offered chai lattes. I was pleased to see that they were really popular in Australia. It seemed like every time I turned around there was a coffee shop with chai lattes, but that makes sense because Australia has a HUGE cafe culture. I had no idea they were such coffee snobs. On my walking tour in Sydney I learned that McDonald's started their McCafe branding in Australia because they knew that Australians wouldn't embrace their coffees if it wasn't cafe-esque. Anyway, sadly I have not seen any chai lattes in Thailand so far. They do, however, offer lots of different types of tea. This morning I tried a Thai tea latte. I have no idea what's in it, but it was pretty decent. I don't think I'll ever love it, but it will hold me over and give me an option of something to buy when I want to work in this space. The cafe itself seems to be perfect for me. There's lot of natural light and there are really great work tables. I feel like I can stake a claim at a table and sit here for as long as I want without there being an issue. Hopefully it will work out for me to come down here each more and really push through some work.
One of the things I did this morning was set my professional and personal goals for the rest of my sabbatical. I had way more to write down on the paper than I expected. I'm a little freaked out by it, but I need to remember that I wrote down all that I *can* pursue, not necessarily what I think I actually will pursue. Ultimately my plan has been to write a textbook, but the reality is that if I can't find a publisher who can publish the book at a reasonable price for students then I won't write the text. The goals that I wrote down included contingency plans. It's overwhelming if I look at it all together, but if I take one at a time, piece by piece it feels much more manageable. With respect to doing work, my goal is to work on writing and research three to four hours every day, with the minimum really being three solid hours. Initially I thought I'd set an alarm to get my day started and give myself that sort of structure every day, but I think it's best if I don't care what time I wake up. I don't need to be so rigid as getting up at 6:00 or 7:00 every morning, but I do need a work time requirement or I'll find excuses to do everything else. If I'm tired and want to sleep late, cool - but I still need to put in my three to four hours of writing time. It's the priority. I've also decided that unless there's something really special that I want to see or do, work comes first in my day. Once work is done for the day I can do whatever else I want whether it be sightseeing, swimming, reading, or napping.
I also spent some of this morning setting up a financial plan for myself because after Australia I felt like I was spiraling out of control. I spent a lot of money truly vacationing in Australia and freaked myself out a bit, even though I knew to prepare myself for that before I embarked on this trip. As many of you I'm sure know, it's a real challenge to spend hard and then roll it back pretty abruptly, even if you had a plan to do so. Preparation for that is one thing, but putting it into practice is another. Budgeting has never been my strong suit, especially when it comes to adhering to that budget, but I'm really trying to be better at it by being realistic about my resources, my needs, my wants, and my goals. I felt really productive because instead of having that vacation mentality of "I'll deal with it when I get home," I paid my bills, ran into a few problems that I need to figure out (Spectrum - gah!, RG&E - what??) and came up with a plan for myself along with a visual aid to help me track my progress.
The rest of my day is going to be spent looking at what I want to do while I'm in Thailand, both directly in Bangkok and beyond. If I can get it sorted out I also need to try to get my visa extended so I can stay in the country beyond a month. I'm not sure that I'll try to stay in Bangkok; I think I'd like to see more of the country - the islands for sure - but I need to have a plan beyond my time in this apartment. A few friends have suggested that they might come visit me too and if I hope for that to happen at all, I need a longer vision for where I'm spending my time and what I'm doing than I currently have.
I'd like to wrap up now by thanking everyone who checked to see if I was ok in light of the shooting at the shopping mall in Korat. So many world events happen that we don't know about or pay attention to in the States, but the news of the shooting in the mall here in Thailand reached many of you. I also fully recognize that keeping up with where I am in the world and what I'm doing is not a priority for, well, pretty much anyone. I appreciate everyone who was concerned about me and looking to see if I was safe. I am! Thanks for checking in!
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