As it turns out—at least for a pain in the a$$ such as myself—not doing things brings about more benefits to everyone involved than actually doing things.

• Not firing off most composed tweets because people on the web don’t need to be subject to my every thought; most of my thoughts, for that matter.

• Not firing off 50% of composed emails because people in meat space don’t need to be subject to my every thought; most of my thoughts, for that matter.

• Not sending an email to a collaborator in which I tell him to clean up after his student. 

  We are working on a manuscript. The collaborator and his student drafted it, then sent it around for comments. They said the paper was ready to go and gave everyone a week to respond. The paper is meant for a prestigious journal that takes letter (short) papers. Unfortunately, this ready-to-go paper looks like a headless chicken—freaky and hilarious, as it runs around aimlessly, hitting points at random. The writing is surprisingly bad (the colleague and the students are both American). Someone’s gonna break a neck after tripping on one of the many dangling participles. Overall, the paper is far, far from submittable.

  I sent in my extensive comments and the student is incorporating them. But that’s not enough. This is the student’s first paper and I don’t think he can do this by himself. He needs to be taught how to write a short manuscript for a prestigious journal. I wish my collaborator were more hands-on here. And maybe he will be, eventually. I wrote an email asking the collaborator to get more involved in the writing because so much is missing; that the student is too junior to do this on his own… And then deleted the email. I wouldn’t appreciate receiving such an email, in which someone’s telling me how to run my group, so I decided not to be an obnoxious prick for once, and keep my mouth shut.

• Not accepting to sit on an NSF panel (I was in a bit of an existential crisis refusing this one, but last year it was so much work and the then-current program manager was behaving shittily, so I said never again).

• Not accepting anything to review over the past month.

• Not accepting to sit on student defenses unless I am already familiar with the work.

• Not accepting to write any more lukewarm form letters of recommendation for random undergraduates.

Things I wish I could just not do, but have to do. Not doing them would make me happy, but the other people involved might feel differently.

• Review two PhD dissertations (for my own graduate students).

• Write three letters of recommendation (for my own group members).

• Respond to a major revision request for a paper that bores the hell out of me. They took twice as long to send us the referee reports, right before the holidays, and of course they now want major revisions immediately. Well, no. FU. I asked for an extension until the end of January.

• Edit and submit a paper from my group with a former student who left in the spring. (I am bored with that material, too.)

• Submit yet another proposal on an accelerated timeline because the staff member who is  supposed to click ‘submit’ is leaving for the holidays early.

Basically, I want to not do anything that’s not reading books or watching TV, and maybe working on some fiction.  I really hope that, for once, I won’t have to work between Xmas and New Year.

I need a vacation. A long one…but a paid one. And no one is allowed to come with me, except for some books, a laptop, and maybe a few Costco-sized bottles of Bailey’s.