More notes from the Stepford academic

[lobelia321]

Well, I'm stepping forth into my second week of my life as a Stepford bitch. My SINK is still SHINY, my evening routine means that I always get to eat a nice breakfast and have two cups of coffee in semi-leisurely fashion and that the children toddle off with a packed lunch every single day, thus saving me money and them a dose of cholesterol-clogged school fry-up. Today I also dusted the dashboard of the Golf (111111111 -- say no more).

To respond to something that cathexys said in a tig:

Housework is never-ending. This is its bane. There is often no sense of achievement: you wash, you put away -- and the next morning there's a whole new heap of smelly underpants, and they're not Jude Law's! I am currently thinking that I must simply work with this fact. To tackle never-ending jobs you need a different approach from tackling ending-jobs. You need a routine that goes on auto-pilot and just does it. This is why the Stepford Club is so slyly effective: the act of SHINING THE SINK looks and feels, to all intents and purposes, like a one-off job with an end. Shine sink and bingo: achievement! This is perhaps the secret: to break the overall never-endingness down into little tasks that have an end and convey a sense of achievement.

Housework is not the only job that is never-ending. In bizarre ways, housework resembles academic work. Well, only in bizarre ways. Academic work comes in two parallel strands: research and institutional. Institutional is, in many ways (for me, at any rate) the easier. It is teaching, marking and admin. It has a beginning and an end. You set an essay question, you mark the essay, you hand the essay back: closure, achievement, the job is done. You write a lecture, you give the lecture: achievement! Research, on the other hand, is not at all that way. It goes on and on and on. It is self-driven (or, in my case, non-driven). It is lonely and isolated. The sense of achievement is rare. Even if I write a page, I am still plagued by feelings of inadequacy: what, only a page? Is it good enough to be published? Is it hopelessly ill-argued and not very well read? Is there a point at all? Who cares about this topic???

And you write one thing and get it published, but then the next day the dirty underpants of academia just haunt you yet again: well, that was one little thing but I need three more for the Research Assessment Exercise and I'm 42 and have hardly a handful of publications to my name and my last book was reviewed by a tiny number of journals that nobody reads and my last royalty cheque was eighteen pounds (hahahahahahha) and... and...

You can start to appreciate how SHINING THE SINK suddenly becomes a not-very-unattractive alternative option!

Housework is undervalued. This comes, in my experience, in two strands as well. Domesticity is housework, and domesticity (in my case) is also motherhood. Now, motherhood I can't do 24/7 but I can do it for quite a lot of the time and if I only had to do the motherhood thing without the household thing, I'd be laughing. It's the combination of the two activities (ah, to be genteel and rich and live in Jane Austen's day). Now, to return to the undervalued thing. Motherhood is ideologically overvalued out of all proportion but when it comes to the actual people who benefit from it, i.e. the children, I think they value it absolutely as it deserves. So I myself do not feel undervalued as a mother,on the contrary. (When I've been depressed I have often felt inadequate as a mother but that's a different issue.)

Now housework. I am in two minds here. On the one hand, yes, it is undervalued, if by that we mean invisible and underpaid. But then (and this is me) I believe it deserves to be valued fairly lowly. I don't think it's a wonderfully worthwhile activity and I find it faintly ludicrous to want the act of SINK SHINING to be 'valued'. It's simply a chore, and it's got to be done, and I'm just grateful to the Stepford Nags for nagging me into doing it (without the ideology, please). But on the other hand, it is not undervalued. In my house, at any rate, t'h is delighted if the kitchen counter is clear and the dishwasher emptied. So what if I've frittered away my day doing No Marking and No Writing of My Book? I've done SINK SHINING, hooray! He is much more dismayed if I confess to having LJ'ed for hours and to having written Dudley/Draco (well, I know a lot of you are dismayed by the Dudley/Draco but that's another point again, *gg*). So in that sense, housework is valued over porn writing. It is, at any rate, easier to defend doing housework to the world at large (i.e. the world outside of slashdom) than it is to defend writing fanfic. (Not to mention even defining fanfic to the world at large.)

Do you see my dilemma here?

This is what I want to work on next. I've conquered the housework guilt globe around my head (so far!!!); now for the fanfic guilt trip. And then on to the final frontier: how to conquer SHIRKING THE BOOK.

Bye for now, folks. Am actually in t'reference library. Have decided to copy Stepford Club's method of doing 15 or 10 or 5 minutes at a time for library activities, also. 30 minutes of marking, and then 20 minutes of LJ, and then 30 minutes for lunch, and then a bit more marking, and perhaps another foray into LJ...! Hah, maybe I'll even progress to fic this way. Do you think this method will work?

I've always believed that academic research is the one type of activity that can't be done in 15-minute bursts but perhaps I'm wrong there? Anyone out there who can say me nay or yay?

P.S. Had it out with t'h on the mobile (big apology fest on both sides) and am not angry any longer, in case you were wondering. :-) God, we are both such angstypoots; it's a wonder we were allowed to mate.

Comments

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

Hsst, ma'am... will be in Cambridge from 20th until night of 21st. If you're interested in meeting up perhaps maybe just for coffee or lunch or whatever, tell me when, where, and I shall be there. (Given my limited communications, it really is best if you just dictate, and I shall be obedient.) If it's not possible, then I shall understand. Cry, but understand.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Great! Do you have a mobile phone? Probably not. I have not got my diary handy (am in t'reference library!) so will reply to this and/or email tonight!!!

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

I had a mobile phone... it is a long and tragic and anguished story. But the short version is that I no longer have a mobile phone. Electronic communication best. Dictate away, ma'am. *G*

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

Meep. Probably not going to have access to email betwixt now and Cambridge! (Will check email first thing upon arrival in fair town if haven't heard anything.) My phone seems to be accepting text messages, so you could possibly dictate via that method. Fingers crossed. The number is +61 415 294 791.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Laz has my phone number! Get it off her!

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I have applied time-slot methodology to Paid Work (2 hours research for article, 1 hour LJ), Housework (15 mins menial Scrubbing, 15 mins LJ), Smut (1 hour smut, 5 mins housework) etc. Have to say I don't care for definite limit on writing-time, unless for a challenge, be it fiction or non: if I'm on a roll, it's a shame to lose that all-too-rare momentum. But setting myself a minimum time does help.

Don't know about academic research per se, but I did a lot of the research for my novel in 15-minute bursts -- either when I was online, Googling (in which case 15 mins is just about right, otherwise one gets into strange territories), or in narrow time-windows, e.g. on the train, passing through the library / bookstore, etc. 15 minutes is useless in terms of solid investigation, but you can scribble down enough notes to feed background thought during next splurge of mindless Stepfordian activity.

I'll go and clean the bath in a minute.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I like the background thought during mindless Stepfordism! Because it is true: about half of my fic ideas were hatched stacking the dishwasher. When bored, the mind will seek to entertain itself (see previous post somewhere). I also like the idea of minimum time for writing. What I admire about the way you do things is that you take the writing time seriously so that you allot it time.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

It's the worst thing about Paid Employment (from which, as you will deduce, I am temporarily free absent): the way that random creative explosions occur mid-filing, mid-meeting, mid-very-tedious-thing.

I've spent the vast majority of my life trying to 'be a writer' without taking it seriously enough to engage with my own voice (if that makes sense -- it's what writing slash and fanfiction have helped me to do) or to produce anything that I am genuinely happy with. Have to treat it seriously if I am not to mock myself for dilettantism.

Also, much more practically, once I started writing regularly, I found I was getting withdrawal symptoms when I stopped! Even the bare minimum 3-pages-of-association demanded by Julia Cameron (the Flylady of Writing!) helps, but writing *something* new every day feels very good. Even if it is a haiku scrawled on the bathroom wall with washable bath crayon.

Hmm, I like that notion of Julia Cameron as Flylady ...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Julia Cameron? I own about ten how-to-write books but not hers!

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

it's more how-to-be-creative than anything. Some of it drives me up the wall: I had to stop doing every chapter religiously for fear of going mad and destroying the book. But there are some splendid ideas in there, though I suspect -- comparable to experiences of Flylady -- the splendidness is very much a subjective matter. (E.g. I thrive on my three-pages-of-drivel first thing every morning; others hate it. I skip the 'artist dates' because I already spend a lot of time doing Ar(t)sy things: others swear by 'em.)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

heh, quick response 'cause i'm on my 20 minute morning lj limit--the housework vs. academic work is fascinating, hope i can come back and talk more, but generally as i was telling a friend:

My approach to life tasks (in any category) would be to have nice organized systems, start one, finish one (or as much as possible) in big chunks and then go on to next, me having total control over what when where and how.

LIFE does not cooperative.

I've had to learn to do stuff in small bursts juggling away, and this applies to housework and academic work (all strands), so i guess i'd better learn to enjoy it and just do it most of the time.

*sigh*

So I guess

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I like control. As a result, I procrastinate and sink into chaos. Maybe this control of just 5 minutes will work better.

Eep, was your tig cut off? *ogles your icon*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i think the analogy makes a lot of sense!!! and both frustrate me endlessly and are also have that same sense of never ending sisyphos labor that seems to appeal to my obsessive compulsive nature of infinite pleasure delay...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to think we (I) definitely need different strategies here, to cope with the ongoing neverendingness of tasks. Making lists and scheduling days simply won't work -- not for me, anyway.

The Stepford Club 15-minute-a-day thing plus SHINE YOUR SINK works!!!!! So I wonder what the academic equivalent to a SHINY SINK would be? Something menial that is easily achieved.

The problem is that housework is by definition menial and academic work by definition is not. Bugger.

There must be something. *racks brain for shininess*

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I've used the 15-minute rule (sometimes breaking it down into a 5-minute rule) on academic research and writing. It helps to include bookmarkers. And usually, all I need to get going is to promise myself that I can stop when the timer goes off. And once I'm on a role, all thoughts about time go out of my head.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I definitely need to buy myself a timer!! What's the best type? Digital with battery? Or traditional ring-ring? I bought an egg timer from Sainsbury's but had to return it; it didn't work.

What exactly do you mean by a bookmarker? Like a post-it on the page you're on? *feels obtuse*

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I have a tiny electric timer that beeps annoyingly. I tried using an old-fashioned one that ticks, but it drove me nuts.

What exactly do you mean by a bookmarker? Like a post-it on the page you're on? *feels obtuse*

You aren't obtuse, I was just imprecise. By bookmarker, I meant anything that helps me find my place again quickly -- depending on the medium it can be a piece of paper, a highlighted section of a webpage, or my name typed into a document where I stopped reading.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Electric timer: this means you need to be near a socket to use it?

Aha, bookmarker! All becomes clear. I type 'bup' to mark my place in a document, *g*.

What, btw, is the academic equivalent to a SHINY SINK? I need to know!

[giglet.livejournal.com]

What, btw, is the academic equivalent to a SHINY SINK? I need to know!

Hm? A clear desk? That seems ridiculously unlikely to me.
A shelf just for books borrowed from the library or colleagues?
A shiny, empty email inbox?
Or maybe dirty dishes = papers to grade?

My timer is battery-operated.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I bought myself a battery-operated timer today!!!! It attaches to the fridge via a magnet. How Star Trek is that?

There doesn't seem to be a shiny sink equivalent in academe. Drat it all. Maybe if we ponder this longer.

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

I think a pile of marked papers is pretty much like a shiny sink, but of course that only ocvers the admin side. With research, there doesn't seem to be any progress-marker short of a published paper or a talk given.

When it comes to housework, I don't think it matters whether you define it as worthwhile or not. It's just necessary. If you don't wash dishes, you have nothing to eat off; if the kitchen counter is cluttered or dirty, you can't prepare the next meal; if you don't do laundry, you have no clean socks; if the coffee table is covered in crap, you can't put your cup down on it or find the remote; if you don't do something vaguely organised with the mail, your electricity gets cut off and you miss Brad Pitt's birthday party.
Everyone has their own standard about how much clean surface they need and how much choice of sock they require to be contented, and whether it really matters that there is dust under the bed, and as long as you stay within your own limits, you're fine. But you can't just not do housework (unless someone else does it for you). My ex used to sometimes say (usually when asked to help) "Oh, just don't do the dishes, it doesn't matter." Well, sure, in the big scheme of life, dishes don't matter, but the fact is if I don't do them now, they'll still be there tomorrow, and personally I would rather look at an empty sink for twelve hours than one full of dirty dishes, so I do them now.

Do you think male academics have these sort of discussions?