Hah. This week should have given me some Grate Thorts on this but to be honest I've never thought of my daft busy life as in opposition to someone 'having it all' by having busy life + children, or felt excluded by not being accused of trying to have it all. I guess it's because I'm very conscious that my daft busy life is full of things which my perpetually-strained mother never got to do because she was raising children with no money, and also because I feel that I spend a lot of time loafing around reading poetry, eating peaches and trying on dresses and other things which are easier to excuse when you don't have a small insistent person whose needs come first.
BTW your mention of Img's stethoscope reminded me of this (https://www.facebook.com/jmestill/posts/10151859835558698), which is in Spanish but still fairly understandable and ridiculously cute (although you may have some 'don't lie to children' objections to it, which I also understand)
The thing is, the unhappiest periods of my life have been marked by great periods of doing nothing: first as a teenager, in a place where there was nothing, just nothing to do, and secondly during PhD wilderness, before I discovered working for a living. So I do too many things to stave off the possibility of those long silences coming back, I think. True, this does occasionally result in weeks where, for example, I try to fit in PhD corrections around three days in the office plus going to a folk festival in mid-Wales and delivering two workshops there plus going from there to Swansea for two nights of filming for a TV show and a day of travelling back to London trying not to be dead and then more PhD corrections and trying to arrange an international visit from a Bolivian intellectual without actually being the one who is able to buy his plane tickets or reserve his hotel. And then in the next week I'm going to be in Cambridge then London then Leicester then London then the Forest of Dean then St Austell then Bristol then London and it's all a bit augh but mostly I feel SO GRATEFUL that I get to do all this and not live my life on a council housing cul de sac in the Highlands somewhere working part time in a shop and spending the rest of my time bringing up kids.
...which also kind of reminds me how much I do want to be spending my time bringing up kids, wich makes me all the more determined to wring every drop of scandal and long working hours and travel and boozing out of these few years before that happens, so I don't have any regrets. But what you've written is a great example of how it's not an either-or; you show how you can have a little child and still be doing interesting, demanding work, so thank you for that.
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Date: 2013-09-05 10:40 pm (UTC)BTW your mention of Img's stethoscope reminded me of this (https://www.facebook.com/jmestill/posts/10151859835558698), which is in Spanish but still fairly understandable and ridiculously cute (although you may have some 'don't lie to children' objections to it, which I also understand)
The thing is, the unhappiest periods of my life have been marked by great periods of doing nothing: first as a teenager, in a place where there was nothing, just nothing to do, and secondly during PhD wilderness, before I discovered working for a living. So I do too many things to stave off the possibility of those long silences coming back, I think. True, this does occasionally result in weeks where, for example, I try to fit in PhD corrections around three days in the office plus going to a folk festival in mid-Wales and delivering two workshops there plus going from there to Swansea for two nights of filming for a TV show and a day of travelling back to London trying not to be dead and then more PhD corrections and trying to arrange an international visit from a Bolivian intellectual without actually being the one who is able to buy his plane tickets or reserve his hotel. And then in the next week I'm going to be in Cambridge then London then Leicester then London then the Forest of Dean then St Austell then Bristol then London and it's all a bit augh but mostly I feel SO GRATEFUL that I get to do all this and not live my life on a council housing cul de sac in the Highlands somewhere working part time in a shop and spending the rest of my time bringing up kids.
...which also kind of reminds me how much I do want to be spending my time bringing up kids, wich makes me all the more determined to wring every drop of scandal and long working hours and travel and boozing out of these few years before that happens, so I don't have any regrets. But what you've written is a great example of how it's not an either-or; you show how you can have a little child and still be doing interesting, demanding work, so thank you for that.