Reader, I'm ashamed. Not so much because I haven't achieved anything. I've done a ton of good thinking and reading recently, inspired by great chats with friends and colleagues, that have really helped me solve problems, and bring certain ideas into clearer focus. The content is actually going really well, I'm starting to think that I can not only finish the damn thing, but that at least some of it might be fairly decent.
What I'm ashamed about, instead, is the way that, with the benefit of hindsight, my plans and proclamations about how long things are going to take are nothing short of delusional. 65 days ago I wrote that I was going to finish chapter three by the end of the week! What the fuck is wrong with me?!
I know at least part of it is that I deliberately set myself ambitious deadlines, out of the conviction that I'll get more done that way. I keep telling myself I should change this, because you set yourself up for a constant feeling of failure that way. And I don't have a firm enough line between implausible ambitions for myself and commitments I make to other people, so I'm constantly stressed, over-promising and letting people down. I always think I can fit more in than I can.
And actually on top of working on the book and doing my supervisions and my admin work and keeping up with my various projects, I've also kept up with mumming and taking the kids to do cool stuff during their holidays. I've even managed some running and some fun and felt like, at times, I had a reasonably balanced life and wasn't spending every waking hour on work. I even went skiing, can you believe it?!
I don't want to feel guilty, because there have been times in my life when over-work has cost me dear, and its a triumph if I can meet my obligations whilst also carving out enough time to do things that make me laugh, dance, play now and again. But it's hard, especially when you know of so many talented people who are slogging away in precarious roles. But it won't help them, nor the people who are paying my salary or who funded my research leave, if I push myself to exhaustion.
In the early months of my lectureship at Leeds, when I was still being woken multiple times in the night by my six month old, and trying to be available for my three year old who was feeling really unsettled in the wake of our move, and holding everything together while my Husband went away on work trips, at the same time as putting my first lecture courses together while teaching them........there wasn't any time for running. or sleeping. or laughing or dancing. At times I resorted to drinking Huel for lunch while pumping milk in my office and answering emails about the lectures I was giving on Feminist accounts of how work and marriage are stacked against women.
I don't know how I did it. In some ways I look back and wish I hadn't soldiered through it, wish I'd dropped all the balls and run off to join the circus instead. So its looking back and remembering how much that sucked that reminds me to take a walk in the park to look at the blossom. To drink that extra glass of wine when there is so much world to put to rights with your friend that the words don't stop and you have to cross your legs because its all far too important to pause for the loo. To put things off, and take my time, because the kids are growing up so fast and if I have to fail somewhere I wish it could be in my work.
And besides, I've got a manuscript that's now 86,000 words long, 86,000 good words. I've almost finished chapter three, the content is all there, I've just changed my mind about the structure of it a few times, and that's fine. I'm tinkering already with the conclusions and the preface and the references and whatnot. I've got one last chapter that's till a blank page, and I've got till August to get it done.
What I need, instead of guilt, is to learn to set better goals, more realistic goals that don't set me up for failure, that don't assume I have a 168 hour work week, zero obligations, zero needs. I need a work schedule that factors in set-backs, hangovers, sick days, admin, hesitation, self-care, the unexpected, and fun.
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