Week 88
View from the houseboat
It’s been a time of complexity, and so I’ve been a little more reticent, lest the responses to what I share feel unsatisfying. I’ve been a little quicker to irritability, frustration, or anger, which is my signal to step back and replenish the well – not that I’m always great at remembering.
I’ve been engaged in a dialectic – with myself and with those around me – regarding where the boundaries of vulnerability should lie in a professional context. What should we share and how and with whom? When do we (often unintentionally) add to the burden of others by sharing, and when do we create a sense of transparency and companionship in bearing hard things. I wonder too, how we advocate for change without acknowledging hardship in ourselves and those around us.
Since I last wrote, I’ve marked the 3rd anniversary of my father’s accident and death, and in between honored Theo’s extreme excitement over Halloween and his 5th birthday. My mother moved into her long-term rental that’s been under renovation since she arrived in April (and, frankly, still is). I flew for the first time since October 2019 to celebrate the 100th birthday celebration of my (adopted) grandmother, the woman who cared for me from a few months after I was born, until preschool, and every day after school ended.
I did have some planned time off amid all this, which gave a little more space to step away from email and work, to invest a bit in replenishment activities including exercise, meditating, acupuncture, therapy, and journaling. Let’s be clear – self-care activities don’t solve complexity, and the time away was insufficient. But it was enough to give me bandwidth to realize I can continue finding ways to step away and de-escalate.
I made similar analogies in my dissertation, talking about the importance of the organizational values of stewardship in non-profit organizations. they have to engage in stewardship of their resources in order to not only fulfill their mission today, but also in a year or 10 years. I am no different. am also noticing that my ability to write my own first-authored papers is suffering during this time. It takes time and clarity of mind to write clear and compelling arguments when I’m making my first attempt at making them. For better or worse I’ve always been someone who writes 5-10 (or 40) versions of something enroute to a final draft – my first drafts are almost never good. I am doing my best to be patient with the process, and to acknowledge and honor whether things are rather than where I wish they were.
We are coming into a season of additional complexity, with holidays, family, pandemic negotiations, and for many of us, grief. I hope you find moments of quiet, ways of honoring your feelings, and space for reflection.
Interesting things on the internet
On Being podcast on Trauma, the Body, and 2021 with Bessel van der Kolk
Women at Work podcast from HBR: If we want equity work needs to be less greedy
Kemi Doll’s podcast on Learning How to Quit
On my reading list: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness
On changing language in academia, and tackling the meaning of vulnerability
Peer review in academia is a billion dollar donation, primarily made by women
A blog on research methods and other things by an interdisciplinary PhD policy researcher
Mary Oliver’s poem Last Days