(or, another post brought to you by my hands-free pumping bra)
I find myself thinking of Dr. Gorgeous lately. Not in the post-infertility sort of way. In the early 40s working mama sort of way. See, it has occurred to me that I don't really have many role models. My female senior colleagues either don't have kids, or their kids are so much older (like, undergraduates and beyond) that we're not on the same planet. And my friends, well, they're as harried as I am or more so. Dr. Gorgeous--at least from an outsider's perspective--has her shit together. Like, she runs her own very successful practice in its multiple locations and lectures at the med school and has kids and a husband and runs races and manages to show up to work perfectly coiffed even for transfers at 7:30 in the morning (I mean, there was that one day her nail polish was chipped and I've seen her in exercise garb because she forgot her skirt, but you get the gist). Why can't I be like that? Or maybe, if you don't know me very well, do I look like that, too?
*
Yesterday was pretty awesome in that regard. I'd gone to bed early, using the motto that got me through my PhD comps ("if you're not working, you need to be sleeping"), got the kids out the door without any drama by 8:20, was seated at my desk just before 9:00; dealt with some email, made a handout for class; taught; pumped, dealt with various crises over email, ate lunch; noticed I was getting squirrely so took a walk around my building (which is large enough, with four "wings," that it feels like a fucking airport); came back, met with a couple students; taught my class; picked up kids, fed them dinner (that I'd cooked the night before), played with them, put them to bed; watched a bit of TV on Hulu and went to bed myself at 9:45. Woke with Tiny Boy at 12:00ish, 2:00ish, 5:00ish (was that really all?) and for the day at 7:15. Mama? Mama? MIL. (stage directions: baby flapping wildly in the crib)
*
I went back to my old therapist last week. Felt like I needed to check in. I made the appointment back in early December, when all the insanity with my sister went down and I was having major anxiety issues (which may or may not have been related to milk let down) and decided it was worth keeping it as a just-in-case. She said I need to be really efficient. She said it's all about balance. Like: writing this is not a bad use of my time. None of that is particularly earth-shattering, but it was nice to hear someone else say it.
*
I am keeping a mental list of the stuff I'm not doing that I "should" do or that I'd "like" to do and trying to figure out ways to accomplish (or not). (1) Decided, once I research it, I'm going to get someone to deep clean my house once a month or so; it's worth the money, at least for a short time. (2) Much as I should be exercising that's not really something that's going to happen right now, at least not in any sustained way but (3) doing a few yoga poses throughout the day is more than manageable. (4) I miss painting but I'm not going to carve out time to paint; I will, however, suggest it as an activity that LG and I do on our Fri/Sat time after the boy goes to bed, in lieu of Monopoly or, her favorite activity, "googling about" something, which is generally Harry Potter. (5) I adore one of my collaborators but there is no way I can talk to her on the phone on a weekly basis, as that's time I would rather be writing toward our project, not yapping about it. Again.
*
Dealing with random requests from students is my absolute least favorite part of my job. Because it shouldn't be a part of my job. Understand, I don't mean my ACTUAL students asking for my time, although I need to be more careful about how I spend it. I mean shit like random people who have NEVER TAKEN A CLASS WITH ME email to see if I'd "like" to give them feedback on their work. That's only slightly more annoying than my FORMER students emailing me PORN they'd like me to read (no, I'm not joking). If you want my time, come to my office hours. That's what they're for.
*
Okay, that 15 minutes is up. Must comment on the poems. Lots and lots of poems. Some of them make me want to poke my eyes out with a fork. Some of them, thankfully, make me feel like my job actually might mean something.
I find myself thinking of Dr. Gorgeous lately. Not in the post-infertility sort of way. In the early 40s working mama sort of way. See, it has occurred to me that I don't really have many role models. My female senior colleagues either don't have kids, or their kids are so much older (like, undergraduates and beyond) that we're not on the same planet. And my friends, well, they're as harried as I am or more so. Dr. Gorgeous--at least from an outsider's perspective--has her shit together. Like, she runs her own very successful practice in its multiple locations and lectures at the med school and has kids and a husband and runs races and manages to show up to work perfectly coiffed even for transfers at 7:30 in the morning (I mean, there was that one day her nail polish was chipped and I've seen her in exercise garb because she forgot her skirt, but you get the gist). Why can't I be like that? Or maybe, if you don't know me very well, do I look like that, too?
*
Yesterday was pretty awesome in that regard. I'd gone to bed early, using the motto that got me through my PhD comps ("if you're not working, you need to be sleeping"), got the kids out the door without any drama by 8:20, was seated at my desk just before 9:00; dealt with some email, made a handout for class; taught; pumped, dealt with various crises over email, ate lunch; noticed I was getting squirrely so took a walk around my building (which is large enough, with four "wings," that it feels like a fucking airport); came back, met with a couple students; taught my class; picked up kids, fed them dinner (that I'd cooked the night before), played with them, put them to bed; watched a bit of TV on Hulu and went to bed myself at 9:45. Woke with Tiny Boy at 12:00ish, 2:00ish, 5:00ish (was that really all?) and for the day at 7:15. Mama? Mama? MIL. (stage directions: baby flapping wildly in the crib)
*
I went back to my old therapist last week. Felt like I needed to check in. I made the appointment back in early December, when all the insanity with my sister went down and I was having major anxiety issues (which may or may not have been related to milk let down) and decided it was worth keeping it as a just-in-case. She said I need to be really efficient. She said it's all about balance. Like: writing this is not a bad use of my time. None of that is particularly earth-shattering, but it was nice to hear someone else say it.
*
I am keeping a mental list of the stuff I'm not doing that I "should" do or that I'd "like" to do and trying to figure out ways to accomplish (or not). (1) Decided, once I research it, I'm going to get someone to deep clean my house once a month or so; it's worth the money, at least for a short time. (2) Much as I should be exercising that's not really something that's going to happen right now, at least not in any sustained way but (3) doing a few yoga poses throughout the day is more than manageable. (4) I miss painting but I'm not going to carve out time to paint; I will, however, suggest it as an activity that LG and I do on our Fri/Sat time after the boy goes to bed, in lieu of Monopoly or, her favorite activity, "googling about" something, which is generally Harry Potter. (5) I adore one of my collaborators but there is no way I can talk to her on the phone on a weekly basis, as that's time I would rather be writing toward our project, not yapping about it. Again.
*
Dealing with random requests from students is my absolute least favorite part of my job. Because it shouldn't be a part of my job. Understand, I don't mean my ACTUAL students asking for my time, although I need to be more careful about how I spend it. I mean shit like random people who have NEVER TAKEN A CLASS WITH ME email to see if I'd "like" to give them feedback on their work. That's only slightly more annoying than my FORMER students emailing me PORN they'd like me to read (no, I'm not joking). If you want my time, come to my office hours. That's what they're for.
*
Okay, that 15 minutes is up. Must comment on the poems. Lots and lots of poems. Some of them make me want to poke my eyes out with a fork. Some of them, thankfully, make me feel like my job actually might mean something.
Yeah, we certainly all know you could teach time management to pretty much anyone. My husband said something the other day about it being unfair to compare your inside to someone's outside, which I thought was rather wise. I bet you do look like the superhero you are.
ReplyDeleteI find myself deleting a lot of requests from random students. Like today I got one that had clearly been sent to a lot of people saying "I think the work your lab does is really interesting and would like to work for you this summer". DELETE. I know, I'm a jerk, but you know what? SO ARE THEY FOR PULLING THIS SHIT. So yeah. Office hours.
It seems like you have it together from my perch. It's funny how you can measure what you think is productive vs. what people see as productive.
ReplyDeleteI have omitted "should" from my vocabulary. It implies guilt. I swap it with ought as a neat mind trick to keep me sane. Clean houses and projects are things I feel that ladies with tremendous stores of ambition accomplish. Because, sometimes doing nothing in just the right moment with those two babes of yours is probably pretty sweet indeed.