Friends, family, fellow bike-commuters – please, try not to judge me for the news I am about to impart to you. Sadly, but with great conviction, I have decided to put bike-commuting on hiatus for the rest of the month of March. The following are the reasons for my decision, in order of importance:
1. A respected journal in my field put out a call for papers on a topic that is specifically relevant to my dissertation research. In order to accomplish the feat of writing and submitting an article for publication with this journal, I would have to have at the very least a very good draft completed by the end of the month. It would be a tremendous opportunity for me to submit a paper for this journal’s upcoming special issue because:
a. If my article is chosen for publication, my reputation and success as a scholar would increase significantly.
b. If my article is published, it would bolster my name in this emerging field and open future opportunities for me to eventually work at my “dream job” university, which is an academic leader in my small field.
c. Even if my article isn’t published, my work on this article will make a significant dent in the amount of writing I’ll have to do for my dissertation next year.
d. Regardless of whether this article is published, it’s a major boon for my dissertation work to continue thinking about it and writing during my internship year.
e. My supervisor will be impressed and happy with me for trying to do this on top of my internship and parenting duties.
2. I’ve already missed a large chunk of commuting days this month because of illness (first, my daughter’s respiratory infection, then my own stomach flu, leaving me to bike-commute only four days out of the last 10 work days). And remarkably, I’m still not fully recovered from my flu symptoms a full week later.
3. Taking a month off from bike-commuting might offer me a really good opportunity to provide an accurate price comparison of how much it costs to bike-commute versus car-commuting. Since I’ve never full-time car-commuted to the university, I have only been able to estimate what it might cost – so now I’ll have an accurate picture of that.
Ultimately, the main reason is that when the weather is mild and car traffic around the university decreases, driving to work saves me a lot of time. By driving instead of biking, I will save up to an extra hour every day that I can spend writing this article without having to take time away from my valued mommy-daughter time or my precious, rare, and intellectually-dead “me-time”. So, Mike the Bike, you can rest your weary spokes another day . . . another couple weeks, in fact. Because until April, I’m going to be working my ass off trying to get this article written and submitted for publication, and if I have to car-commute to do that – well, then, my friends, so it must be.
