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My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
My personal value is not determined by my professional achievements.
When I was growing up, the idea of paying someone to clean the house or do yard work was unthinkable. This was due, mostly, to the fact that my family was pretty poor – it was a luxury we couldn’t afford. But, there was also a cultural or psychological element – my parents were both of the “why would you pay for something that you can do yourself?” mindset. In my father, this was attributable to his general fix-it philosophy – he’s a man who actually likes to tinker with things. My mother’s situation was more complex: Raised in a traditional Southern family – but not a wealthy one – she inherited the idea that a real woman should be able to keep her house spotless, her children clean and well-dressed, put a full meal on the table every night, and keep everyone happy. But, being a twentieth-century woman, she wasn’t allowed to pay anyone to help her – that was a sign of weakness. These untenable standards had the effect on my mother that they had on so many women: depression, sense of failure, resentment, etc. Despite the fact that I closely observed how she suffered trying to do everything herself, I still absorbed the idea that domestic help was an indulgence reserved for the rich and spoiled – not for the likes of me.
Recently I found myself talking with a group of other female faculty, representing many different departments and disciplines from across Unnamed U. Somehow the topic of housekeepers* came up – and suddenly all of these women began to admit (there is no better word for it) that they had housekeepers and were so grateful for their labor but also incredibly guilty. The conversation took on a distinctly confessional tone, as they reassured each other that it was perfectly okay, that they are professionals with many responsibilities and duties, that they can’t be expected to do it all, etc. It was a little awkward when I said that I don’t have a housekeeper – but it was quickly explained by the fact that I don’t have children – all of these professors are also mothers, which was a major plank in their explanatory discourse.
This is all to say that I’ve been thinking a lot about hiring someone to clean my house, but it’s a fraught issue for me.
On the one hand, I can muster a number of arguments against it:
The Marxist in me recoils at the very idea of participating in an exploitative practice in which I would use my economic privilege to have someone perform labor that I could totally do myself, but I just don’t want to do.
The new age-y/ yogic / Buddhist in me questions whether I am letting my possessions define me to the extent of paying someone else to take care of them – and instructs me to scale back my life if it has become that complicated and over-burdened.
The Feminist in me is practically not even speaking to me, because she knows that domestic labor is unfairly distributed not just on women, but on immigrant women or women of color, the working poor whose lack of opportunities are intrinsically linked to my own class and race privilege.
And, the completely shy and socially embarrassed part cannot imagine letting a stranger into my house to see my dirty, slovenly ways.
All really good reasons for NOT hiring a housekeeper.
On the other hand, I’ve become increasingly frustrated and impatient with cleaning my own house. It’s so time consuming that I usually do a shoddy job – just good enough to get by – so the house is rarely clean enough to invite anyone over, we generally don’t have guests over and, when we do, we have to do a marathon cleaning first. Meanwhile, Golden Boy and I snip at each other about the necessary duties, and get outright surly on the days we set aside to clean. (I should mention, for the record, that GB is really great about do his part – often picking up my slack when I’m particularly harried.)
The Marxist in me says: why not redistribute the wealth in a very direct and immediate way by hiring someone to do certain labor, but treating them with respect and paying them a living wage?
The new age-y/ yogic / Buddhist says: maybe you’d actually have time to do yoga if you didn’t feel obligated to make time to scoop cat boxes, do laundry, and other tasks everyday.
The Feminist says: You should not be enslaved to some oppressive ideal of womanhood that expects you to do it all and well. Admit to yourself that you have made certain lifestyle choices such as putting your career before other things, and one of the costs of that is that you cannot keep your house spotless. And, if you pay another woman well and treat her with respect, why shouldn’t she clean it for you?
The shy part of me says: Fuck it! Who cares? At least the kitchen floor will get mopped every once in a while.
As always, I am a divided subject.
So, I appeal to the wisdom of the interwebs – and particularly to you, professional women who are also caught in the family/work bind: Do you pay someone to clean your house? How do you explain the choice to yourself? Are you guilty about it? What do you recommend that I do?
* I’m not entirely sure what the appropriate terminology is — that’s how alien this whole thing is to me. Is it housekeeper, maid, domestic help, or something else? I dunno.
This picture captures my mood today.
I’m in that all-too-familiar state of mind, one I’ve complained about many times on this blog — and yet, here I am again.
It’s Sunday afternoon. I’ve been working pretty much non-stop since I finished my Thursday afternoon classes. I’ve been grading and writing and revising and prepping and there is no goddamn end in sight.
I have not been raking the leaves piling up in my backyard, doing yoga, running errands, cleaning my house, making good meals, or taking any kind of a break.
It’s been a fucking weekend of work and I’m pissed about it.
Once again I am asking myself how I have allowed this scenario to unfold — what choices I have made (including the one to become a professor) to create such a flat, unsatisfying, exhausting life for myself.
In a few weeks, when this awful semester finally ends, I will feel differently, of course. I’ll applaud myself for being a teacher and therefore getting a month off between semesters. I think kindly about my students and look forward to the next semester. I will allow myself to forget how unbelievably hellish it can get, and how shallow my life is most of the time because I’m working so hard I cannot even think about anything, let alone be creative, spontaneous, curious, or alive.
But right now I’m like a raging storm cloud. Watch out for the lightning.
… is what I did just now.
The beans that I had quick boiled this morning & then soaked for several hours.
The ones I was going to make dinner with.
The dinner I was working on, chopping all the requisite vegetables.
Before I knocked the colander of damp beans off the counter and onto the dirty kitchen floor.
The floor with the liberal amounts of dog and cat hair on it.
The kind of pet hair that sticks fast and relentlessly to damp, squishy beans.
Universe, I cry uncle.
It’s official. I’ve hit the nadir of the semester — a bit sooner than I’d expected, which predicts an extra extended slog back up, out of the muck. I worked all weekend and had two uncontrollable crying fits as I stared at my “to do” list with an unshakable conviction that it could not be humanly done. I’m overwhelmed with grading, with my professional mess, with annual review crap, with a conference paper I’m presenting in less than two weeks, with other professional stuff, with stupid class prep for the class I’ve never taught before and am barely keeping up with the reading in, with dirty laundry and dirty cat boxes, with no groceries in the house, with no time for exercise or yoga, with no time for eating well or sleeping enough …
Geez, I really hate this time of year.
Nope, not the news you might be expecting. Not about the on-going book manuscript debacle. Instead of having good news about my book, I have good news about my finances.*
Funny thing … making headway on my finances seems so much more meaningful than all the work that the book represents …
But, I am getting ahead of myself.
September 1 marked a major turning point in my adult life: I am officially out of credit card debt. This is no minor achievement because, at the worst moment, I had over 20 grand in credit card debt. Some of you will be thinking: Wow, that’s a staggering amount! How did she ever get into such a mess? Others of you will be thinking: Only 20 grand? That’s how much I spent on my summer vacation/ my new kitchen countertops/ etc. Compared to some of the people you hear about in the news these days, my debt may not seem like much – until you take into consideration that it represented about 50% of my yearly income. Yikes.
As I have explained before, I got into credit card debt not because I am extravagant, not because I have managed my money badly but because I paid for graduate school myself, then spent several years living below the poverty line as an adjunct, then got terribly underpaid tenure-track jobs, and throughout really struggled to survive. The bills piled up so that I often despaired about my ability to ever dig myself out.
And yet, here I am: out of credit card debt.**
How did I do it?
I have a partner who shouldered more than his share of our bills and made it possible for me to pour most of my income into my debt. We do not have one of those 50/50 financial relationships – Golden Boy has very generously agreed to expend more of his income on our monthly expenses, mortgage, etc. than I. Never once has he lorded this over me, or made me feel guilty about it, or hinted that I “owed” him. Instead he embraced wholeheartedly the idea that, as a couple, any income belonged to both of us, and any debt was an obstacle for us to overcome together. What can I say? He’s a one-and-a-million guy.
But it’s important to me to emphasize that I wasn’t able to do it on my own. I may have been able to do it eventually – a few more years down the line – maybe. But, it would have been much more difficult.
I also took every opportunity to make additional money: Writing encyclopedia entries for $500 a pop? Check. Applying for summer fellowships with small stipends? Check. Teaching intersession and summer courses? Check. Check. Check.
I have also made a point of not spending money. This is not that hard for me because I don’t enjoy shopping but, it is true that I have denied myself many things that I would have liked: more yoga classes, more travel, nicer furniture, plants for my garden, more plays/concerts, etc.
I can’t even convey the feeling of relief I have today. What a psychic burden debt is! I don’t always buy all that Suze-Orman-style psychologizing about money, but in this regard I think she and others of her ilk are right on: Debt is a terrible, paralyzing experience. Paying off debt, on the other hand, is empowering and exhilarating.
Yea me!
* The book ms. remains with the reader who is taking a lifetime to return comments. I haven’t been blogging about this because I want to spare you all the endless worry that circles around and around in my head every day.
** I still have over 20 grand in student loans but I am not going to talk about that today, on this day of celebration and rejoicing. I’m just not. So there.
Once upon a time, I was an undergraduate English major, eager and enthusiastic but naïve and largely ignorant of the wide world. And I fell in love. No, not with a shaggy-haired slacker poet in one of my English classes – this is not that John Hughes movie.
I fell in love with Jacques Derrida.
At least, it can fairly be described as a major crush.
I can’t remember exactly how it happened. I took an intro literary theory course and read some Derrida – “Structure, Sign and Play,” if I remember correctly – and I was completely enthralled. I loved the process of unpacking his dense, playful language; I loved all the French double-meanings, which I got since I was studying French too; I loved the feeling of achievement I received when I was one of the few students in the class who “understood” the theory.
Yeah, I was hooked.
I got together with a gang of equally geeky, aspiring-theory-heads and we read Derrida for pleasure. I took every opportunity to incorporate his work into my student assignments (and I shudder now to think how painful that must have been for my profs). On the encouragement of one of my profs, I actually wrote Derrida a letter.
And, yes, friends, he wrote me back.
That’s right – one of the most renowned French theorists of all time took the time to respond to a piece of fan mail from an American undergraduate.
Is there any question about why I was smitten?
Soon thereafter I heard that Derrida was going to be giving a seminar at a university not too far away, so I talked some friends into making the drive with me and we crashed the event. Derrida sat at a table at the front of the room with Gayatri Spivak and a few other guys who are probably Very Important but who made no impression on me. Derrida talked for almost two hours, riffing on Heidegger’s Being and Time and I was basically struggling to just keep up. (I still have my notes, which include phrases like “truth there is, only in as much as being is.”) I had the distinct feeling that I had snuck into an elite and exclusive club, which I desperately wanted to belong to. It was a very heady experience.
So, I went to graduate school – and I think it’s fair to say that my Derrida-crush played a role in my decision to pursue a PhD (along with my love for literature more generally, and not having anything better to do). However, in grad school, I quickly learned that Derrida and deconstruction was considered to be out-moded if not positively retrograde. I learned that the person I should have been excited to see was Spivak, not Derrida. I learned that if I wanted to be “with it,” I needed to hitch my wagon to hip theory schools like feminism, queer theory, or post-coloniality. I left Derrida behind in favor of Foucault, Butler, Said, and others.
Eventually, though I was steeped in theory in grad school, I became disillusioned about all the theoretical bullshit. I came to feel, like many others, that the promises of high theory were not being realized, and that it had become just so much incomprehensible discourse. My own scholarship is primarily historical and textual, and I mostly stick to these approaches in my teaching. I’ve got a reputation amongst the grad students in my department of being one of the “non-theory” teachers – which attracts some students and makes others dismiss me as insufficiently “rigorous.” (Whatever.)
But, this year I find myself teaching an intro to theory course for the first time. As I’ve been in the process of prepping the “intro to Deconstruction” class, I’ve been remembering my Derrida phase and it has been a bit like encountering my younger self – still bright-eyed and optimistic, believing in the power of complex philosophy to change the world.
I watched the 2002 documentary, Derrida, to decide whether it would be a useful teaching tool and I found myself having reactions like: “Oh my God! Derrida’s looking for his keys!” “Oh my God! That’s Derrida’s cat!” “Oh my God! Derrida eats butter and honey on his bread!” In other words, for a brief moment, my youthful self crept back up – so excited to catch a glimpse of the personal side of the legendary figure.
I don’t remember being particularly struck when Derrida died in 2004 – I was so disconnected from that earlier phase of my life. But something about putting myself into the shoes of my own innocent/ignorant undergrads (as I have tried to figure out how to teach deconstruction to them) has made me very nostalgic about my youthful enthusiasm – and made me wonder a bit what my life would have been like had I pursued this route with more persistence. For one thing, I am sure I would not find the theory as hard as I do know – confirming my suspicion that I am not smarter than I was when I was younger, I just know a lot more. Re-reading “Structure, Sign and Play” the other day, I was really frustrated with myself – because I know once upon a time, I understood it (or thought I did) and now it’s really challenging to me.
I still have the letter from Derrida – tucked within the pages of my much-marked-up copy of Of Grammatology. It’s a pretty incredible souvenir and one that seems particularly poignant to me today.
How to convey the extent of my ambiguousness about this blog?
This has been the running dialog in my head the past few days: “Okay, BSG, time to get back to blogging! Think of something interesting to say — maybe some reflections on blogging? Or, what you’ve been up to this summer? But, I don’t have any deep reflections. I haven’t been up to much. So, maybe I don’t have anything to say, after all. Maybe I should just shut the blog down and move on …”
I blame my blogging inactivity on the general malaise that has lain over me all summer, what can be termed “Waiting on Reader’s Reports Paralysis.” Yes, that’s right, I still haven’t gotten a response to my revised manuscript from the press. I was supposed to hear at the end of June and I’m slowing driving myself insane with the waiting … waiting … waiting … Meanwhile, I feel like I can’t start anything new — or even entertain any new ideas — until I know what’s going to happen with the book. This professional paralysis has infected all parts of my life: every morning when I get out of bed, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m at a loss — and all the presumed “free time” feels burdensome and oppressive.
When I am in this state of mind, I think: “I don’t have anything to say and blogging is stupid anyway.” Hrumph.
When I am capable of seeing more clearly, I can recognize what I enjoyed most about blogging: feeling like I was connected (however tenuously) to a community of really smart, thoughtful, interesting, and inspiring individuals. Reading all of your blogs, having a chance to comment on them and receiving your comments here has been so affirming; for some reason, just knowing that all of you EXIST out there in the universe has made me feel differently about the world, more hopeful, more curious.
Yet, I’ve also started to question this aspect of blogging: Do I put more time/energy/effort into preserving and participating in my “relationships” with other bloggers than with my RL relationships and friendships? I have grown increasingly shy and introverted over the past few years, I have fewer and fewer friends that I spend any substantial time with … maybe I am using the blog as a substitute? Isn’t that dangerous and unhealthy?
So, then I think, “I should make building real friendships a priority and shut the blog down.”
On and on it goes. You’ll know as soon as I do whether I will ever have anything worthwhile to say again.
1) The recent, abrupt departure of my yoga teacher from the studio where I have been practicing for years has placed me in a strange position. I can either continue to go to Nice Studio Dedicated to Particular School of Yoga and study with other teachers there. Or, I can follow my yoga teacher as she tries to build new classes at other studio(s). Either way, I feel like I am taking sides — getting embroiled in the fight between teacher and studio — and that it will impinge on my thinking/feelings about my yoga practice. This week I went back to Nice Studio for a class and it felt weird. But, when I got a message from my yoga teacher about her new class times/locations, I also felt weird.
I just want to practice yoga already!
2) My mother wants me to join her this weekend for a visit to my grandmother (her mom) for Mother’s Day. Sounds great, I want to go — but Saturday is an event on campus hosted by my department and specifically by a committee of which I am a member. The other committee members have basically taken the lead on organizing the event and I’ve been asked to just be there to “help out.” I am confident that my presence will not make any difference in the success of the event; my “helping out” would consist of standing around and chatting with the parents of the students. But, I will feel guilty about skipping it when I haven’t done anything to contribute to the event so far. On the other hand, I will feel guilty about going to a lame campus event rather than having a nice Mother’s Day weekend with my mom and grandmom.
Work / family balence, anyone?
Update: I coaxed one of my lovely, generous colleagues to take my place at the student event so I can go to grandma’s with a clean conscience. Whew.
It’s 4:30 am. I’ve been awake for a while — at first, tossing and turning in bed, hopeful that I would fall back asleep. Now, having given in to the inevitable, I’m out of bed, killing time until the sun comes up or I get tired enough to try sleeping again. My mind cannot seem to unlock for an unspooling series of worries, each one seemingly worse (or more trivial, depending on your perspective) than the one before.
Things That Are Keeping Me Up at Night, or What I Worry About at 3 in the Morning:
house foundation
what my colleagues think of me
new haircut — disaster or passable?
weight/health/diet
did I screw up our taxes and will the IRS come calling?
students’ plea to bring notes/drafts to final exam
did we make a bad decision, committing to two trips this summer and spending so much money on airfare?
were those termites or not?
where to get bigger pots and frames for tomato plants
friend in crisis
swine flu — could I have it? (Is insomnia a symptom?)
relationship with Golden Boy
where/when/with whom I will study yoga next week
book under review
will I get tenure? what will I do if I don’t get tenure?
giant pile of grading that needs my attention
that thing going wrong on my face, what to do about it
have I killed my creativity with academic work?
are all the people and animals I love safe and happy?
