A few days ago, I had to cancel my attendance at a conference - which is ongoing right now - where I was one of the invited keynote speakers. Long thread ... have to get this off my chest. (1/15)
I am suffering at the moment from repetitive stress injury (RSI) in my left hand due to too much computer work. I have been taking ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation and trying to keep my use of the hand to a minimum. (2/15)
I am also using voice recognition software to write emails (and these tweets), which is at least as painful, just for other reasons, as dealing with RSI itself ... but that's a topic for another day. (3/15)
But I was still working. And when sitting in front of my computer, I was still using my left hand for the occasional keyboard shortcut. And programming using voice recognition is next to impossible (although check out this presentation: ). (4/15)
Also, try driving a stick shift car using for the most part only your right hand for the entire drive. Actually, doing so was starting to screw up my right shoulder because of many unnatural movements (e.g., setting the blinker). (5/15)
So things were just not getting better. I also still had to write my presentation. Of course, I always finish my presentation three weeks ahead of the conference ... <cough> ... but just this ONE time, I was delaying doing so, at least for good reason. (6/15)
Actually writing my presentation would have required a full day's of computer work and plenty of use of my left hand. My presentations are made with beamer/Sweave/Rmarkdown and hence require plenty of typing. I ain't got time for point-and-click type of work. (7/15)
Sure, I could have written that presentation. Just pop an extra ibu or two, get those cold packs ready for the evening, and the drive to the conference is only 2 hours. I'll get through that. After the conference, there will be plenty of time to recover ... (8/15)
... well, there IS that one paper that needs to be finished within the next week. There's also some teaching coming up. I also have this great idea for a new feature in this R package. Oh well, I guess I'll finish those things quickly as well. I can deal with that. (9/15)
And then I said: 'WTF are you doing? Stop putting work above your health.' And you know what? As insane as it sounds, that is fucking hard for somebody that has been shaped by the academic system for close to 25 years. (10/15)
Why are you relaxing? Reading a book for pleasure? Spending time with your family? You should be spending time with your family! But at the back of your head, there's still that one paper you should be working on. My mind is hardly ever away from work. (11/15)
Only because numerous people have told me to give work a bit of a rest, and maybe because I still have an ounce of common sense left, I decided not to attend the conference and hence also cancel my talk. That wasn't easy. I still feel shitty about it. Really shitty. (12/15)
Seeing tweets about the conference in my timeline also doesn't help. But you know what? That was the right decision. It takes some unlearning and some compassion for yourself to figure out when enough is enough. Do not put work above your health. (13/15)
If you need a break, for whatever reason, take it. And don't feel bad about it. If you are in academia, you have already decided that working hard for comparatively little pay is okay because you really love what you do. You have nothing left to prove. (14/15)
To end: I wish everybody at #ressyn2018 a great conference. My apologies to @prof_bosnjak for not being able to attend. Hopefully, I will be there next year. (15/15)
