Oh Work Ethic, Where Art Thou?

I lay awake for a while last night listening to my characters talk to me, posing different scenarios, different bits of conversation, new ideas and directions in which to take their stories. I jotted some down just now, but don't feel like writing more. 

This is my challenge - to write even when I don't want to. And I really don't want to today. 

Which got me to thinking about work ethic. See, one of the things that bothers me about many kids today is they don't seem to have much of a work ethic. It's like they expect to have the good life handed to them on a silver platter. Working hard seems unfair. They have a Sense of Entitlement. And I hate it. Now of course I know I'm generalizing here - many, many people a) still have a terrific work ethic and b) work hard for what they have. So I guess I'm talking about the people who appear at least on the surface to believe they don't have to work hard - the high schooler with the new car, the college kid with the latest smart phone living in an apartment paid for by parents, the people on "reality" TV. My own kids. 

And me. Me? Could it be that I've fallen into this, too? I don't want to admit it, if it's true. I've always prided myself on being a hard worker. And for much of my life, I have been. I worked my tail off at Golden Corral as their salad bar girl when I was 16 - so much so that I later discovered on the nights when I wasn't working, they had TWO people to do my job. When I was on duty, they just used me. I worked hard at Target, even developing a new way to organize the back stock room, which earned me "Employee of the Month" one month, and led the Target people to ask me fairly often didn't I want to try to move up the store ladder? Which I didn't, because I knew I was going to college, where I worked consistently and diligently to graduate with a 3.92 GPA - summa cum laude. My goal since freshman year had been to graduate summa cum laude. And I did it. 

I worked hard in grad school, always feeling as if I wasn't doing enough, but trying to keep up with the reading and research. Even on my own obsessions, I've been known to slave away, spending countless hours developing my once-world-known late 1990's website, "Elvis Lives In Evil Levis," - all while writing my master's thesis and doing course work. I received praise from my professors, and my advisor assured me that even though *I* didn't believe it, he thought I could be an excellent medievalist. Apparently the DAAD grant people did, too, because I even won a grant to study and do dissertation research for a year in Germany. (Which I only finished 3 months of, I admit, because as a newly wed, I simply missed my husband too much and needed to come home. Plus I knew I was losing interest in finishing that doctorate, anyway, having my eyes on a family.) 

Even once I quit my doctoral program, I took on a job as a technical writer at Ohio University, something I did without any official training, but in which apparently I performed well enough that I took on responsibilities like redesigning the departmental website to be more in league with the official University design, using web skills and Photoshop skills I'd mostly taught myself. When I left to have my son, the professor that most people found incredibly difficult to work with told me he had been planning to give me a big raise because he liked my work so much. 

I actually don't write all of this to brag. I write it to remind myself that once upon a time, I accomplished something. 

Fast forward to today. I'm a stay-at-home mom living a very comfortable life. Both of my kids are in school full-time now, which gives me more free time to myself than I've had in 10 years. And I'm left wondering what to do with it. I'm left not feeling driven to do much. I'm left spending untold hours on Facebook, playing online games, occasionally cleaning my house, sometimes napping, running errands, getting groceries, and all that stuff. 

But I feel guilty. I feel like it isn't enough. I assume everyone is working harder than I am. And maybe they are. After all, I have a lot of choices now I never HAD as a kid or young adult. I have a lot of options that weren't available to me then. I have a husband willing to let me still stay home even with the kids in school. I don't HAVE to work. I KNOW what a luxury that is. But am I appreciative enough of that? Or have I started to feel entitled? Because it's all too easy to put off whatever I don't feel like doing, and too often I am. 

On the other hand, I still do a lot. Don't I? Maybe it's just less easy to see the value and contribution in it, because my time and efforts are scattered across so many things. I'm not producing one thing - I'm not focused on solely keeping the lettuce stocked, or writing that one paper, or running a web site. But I'm still doing all the mom duties: trying to raise my kids right, talking about values and issues with them, teaching them right from wrong, getting them off to school in the morning, packing lunches, supervising piano and homework time, cleaning the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the bathrooms, etc., ad nauseum (albeit I freely admit, not often enough), running all the errands, getting everyone to medical appointments, running carpool, getting the kids to and from their various activities, picking up the groceries, cooking the suppers, doing the dishes. 

I also am fairly active with my kids' school, drafting the school newsletter every two weeks, running various incentive and fundraising programs such as Labels for Education and selling Attractions books, supervising the stocking of the Teacher's Lounge, and updating their Facebook page regularly. 

So it's not as if I'm sitting on my duff every day, watching Oprah reruns and eating bon bons. But yet I feel I should be doing more. Because is it really fair for me to take half an hour to play SongPop in the middle of the day while my husband is at work? And he works hard for us - full-time as a professor, but also a part-time consultant to Carnegie Mellon, and he runs a Computer Science club at his university, coaches Ellie's soccer team on Saturdays, and frankly spends a lot more time actively playing with the kids and helping Jeff with his homework than I do.

How much free time is it O.K. to have (and/or expect)? It would be easier to measure my productivity, I guess, if I worked outside the home. Right? Because then I would have parameters, and I would have someone else's expectations which I would have to meet. At home now, I'm my own boss. When my kids were little, they were definitely The Boss, determining our schedules in so many ways, and I feel as if I gave a lot to them in terms of taking them to activities, playing with them, reading with them, doing all the things a mom does. But as they've gotten older, I've backed off some on that. Partly because I firmly believe my job is NOT to entertain them. But also partly because, frankly, I can. Now that they're 11 and 6, if I want to play CastleVille on FB for half an hour, usually I can get away with it. They can do a lot of stuff for themselves. I still do a lot for them, probably more than I should sometimes, but not nearly as much as I used to. 

And I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I'm sitting here right now, writing a blog post because I want to, not because I have to. I feel guilty because I assume everyone else is working harder than I am and that I should do more. And I certainly have more to do. I have an eBay business that's rather defunct at the moment, but not for lack of inventory. I have a book I'm writing that I should be writing on far more often than I do. I have other book ideas and a whole lot of research to get done for those. I have a son whose wiring is different and whose conditions I feel like I should be reading so much more about and doing so much more about than I do. So I have a lot to do. But often, like today, I just feel rebellious. I just don't want to have to work every minute of the day. Is that so wrong? 

Of course the reality is I'm NOT working every minute. This is clear. If I were, the house would be cleaner, our meals more fantastic, the yard would be well-maintained, the book would be written, eBay sales would be through the roof. Or at least that's the fantasy. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic. I don't know. I just know that I often feel so overwhelmed with everything I feel I should be doing that I just don't do any of it. Or at least very little of it. And it is easy to do that, to drop it all, when I'm not reporting to a boss. 

So is this a loss of work ethic? Am I just lazy now? 

I hate to think so. But maybe it's true. 

Rebel With All the Guilt

Do you ever have days where you just don't feel like doing what you know you ought to do? Days where you feel rebellious for no reason at all?

I do. Today is one of them. I woke up feeling rebellious. I was "supposed" to go to the gym for water aerobics. I didn't feel like it. So I didn't. I was "supposed" to change out of my pajamas before the kids were picked up by school carpool. I didn't. I stayed in them until 11:00 a.m. I feel like I'm "supposed" to write on my book today, clean Ellie's room today, empty the dryer, do the dishes, run errands. And all I feel like doing is rebelling.

Now this isn't a full-flung rebellion, not like the few days last spring when I ignored everything and spent two days watching "Bones" on Netflix (shh, don't tell). We're talking like 5-6-7 episodes in one day. No, today I have done the newsletter for my kids' school, I've done some legitimate work for the school in other ways, I've listed a couple things on eBay, and I've put the laundry away. But I can just feel it in my bones, this antsy, defiant, disobedient spirit that raises its head all too often.

What is this? Do other people feel this way? Do they give in to it? I go along for periods of time, angsting and worrying about all I need to do, beating myself up when I don't do it, trying to please the people around me and do what I'm supposed to do, and then there comes a day when I Really. Don't. Care.

I skipped the gym. I haven't showered. I ate potato chips for breakfast (at 11:00 - so I guess for lunch, too). I'm looking around seeing all the housework and saying "Who cares?" I'm thinking I should write on my book, and I'm like, "Whatever! Like you're ever going to be able to publish it anyway!"

It's kind of fun sometimes, this free rebellious spirit. I revel in it. For a few hours.

Later the guilt will come. And that's the sucky part. If I'm gonna go AWOL on myself, can I do it without later beating myself up about it? And if I'm going to beat myself up about it, can I not do it in the first place?

It's such a strange thing, this brain of mine, these weird mood shifts of mine. Perhaps some of it is related to fatigue - I'm overtired today, and that definitely is a trigger for the F*ck Its.

I'm just wondering if I'm alone in this, these moods of defiance and disobedience - even if it's just defying my own inner To-Do list?

P.S. I wrote this blog post because I'm "supposed" to write every day. Ha ha, apparently in some ways I even rebel at rebelling!

Procrastinating Perfectionism

If there were a Procrastinators Anonymous, I would so join. Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

I am especially guilty of procrastinating not only unpleasant tasks, but also tasks which could be highly rewarding but which carry with them the possibility of failure (or success), and so it's easier to put them off than to deal with that.

Like writing. Writing is a luxury. It really is. Instead of having to work at a fast food restaurant to make money to pay rent, or even at a higher level position in which I could gain acclaim and make a decent living, I get to write. It's a total luxury. Sometimes that makes me feel guilty. Heck, OFTEN that makes me feel guilty. I'm not even a published writer and don't have deadlines to which I have to work, so I feel even MORE guilty that, for right now at least, this is a fun hobby. My husband is at work right now, probably doing stuff he doesn't necessarily enjoy so that he can support us, and I'm home taking care of a million things, but not making us any money.

Therefore I often feel as if the things that contribute most to the household, or the kids, or my kids' school, ought to come first. It's hard to put myself first. Last year I failed miserably in keeping up with working out, partly because it was always easy to cut that out, figuring other things were more important (and frankly, I don't enjoy sweating. Honest enough for you?). I also failed at writing, managing to find many other things to fill up my days than work on the novel I've started.

Even saying I've started a novel feels so pretentious!

But I have. I have started a book. And even if no one else likes it - heck, even if no one else ever READS it - I want to finish it. To prove I can. To challenge that rather loud voice in my head that keeps screaming, "YOU can't be an AUTHOR! You've never even taken writing classes! You weren't an English major! You don't work as a freelancer or anything! Who are YOU to think you could succeed in that? Only real GROWN-UPs higher/better than YOU do that!"

What can I say? It's a nasty voice.

This fall I promised myself I would put myself first in terms of a) working out, and b) writing. The former is going fairly well - missed two days last week, but have gone more days than not, so that's definitely progress. The writing? I keep SAYING I'm going to do it, and then... I don't. I even told myself at the beginning of the year even if it's "only a blog post" I was going to write. And yet have daily missives from me arrived here? Am I that much farther in my book? No.

What gives, Anne?

In all honesty, I DO have a lot of other things to do and responsibilities to take care of. There have been medical appointments and vet visits and grocery shopping for this new wheat-free/casein-free/egg-free diet we've suddenly adopted. There have been errands to run, dishes to do, school needs to fill. That's all true. I have a lot to do and may have even bitten off more than I can chew with some of the things I've taken on.

Still, no excuses. It is SO HARD for me to not feel like a failure if I "mess up" on whatever I've planned for myself. So even though I made an "easier" schedule for myself this fall, the fact that I didn't work out two days last week and haven't written a thing beyond slightly amusing Facebook status updates has me kicking myself and letting that nasty voice above run on repeat.

But guess what, Stinky Voice Monster? I just wrote a blog post. Sure, it's completely been stream-of-conscious spewing with little organization or editing, but I wrote it. So there.

Progress, not perfection. Progress, NOT procrastination. Procrastination is just perfectionism in sheep's clothing.

Baaa.

The Mores of Hair

I've been thinking about the mores of hair for a few weeks. So much so that I decided maybe I'd just blog about it, to get those thoughts out of my head so I can go back to thinking of more important things, such as what's next for Walter White in "Breaking Bad." Although I could write a lot about the use of his hair or lack of it to convey character development, as well. But I won't.

See, I guess I've been thinking about hair because I'm aging. My once gloriously thick hair is thinning. I discover loose strands on my person all the time. And I find myself thinking more and more I should just cut it short. "Older women seem to always go for the short cut," I've been telling myself, "so maybe it's time to bite the bullet." Only I'm not ready to cut it that short again, even though I had the trendy short hair of the late 80's and 90's, because now in 2012, my face is much fatter and I hold on to the belief that my shoulder-length hair somehow helps detract from my double chin. (C'mon, people, let me keep believing that, will you?)

I've kept my hair this length for a few years now. I've been inching it up a little bit closer to chin level in the past few months to try to keep it short enough that I can't pull it back into a ponytail (because not only is that not the least bit flattering to my big face, but also I noticed that it was contributing to the hair loss, based on the huge number of hairs I would pull out daily after removing the pony tail holder), but long enough to still ameliorate said chin.

Some time ago, while looking through old Facebook photos, I found a snapshot of me when I had longer hair (yes, it's up there on the right). Granted, it's never been truly long - no Crystal Gayle floor-length locks, or even mid-back tresses for me. But in my early thirties I had let it grow down a few inches beyond the shoulders - mostly because I was so busy and exhausted by my challenging first-born that I had neither the time nor the energy to go a salon, so I just let it grow, let it grow, let it grow. And in the snapshot, I looked gorgeous. I tried to convince myself it was the hair. If I just let my hair grow longer like that, I would look like that again, right? Never mind that the photo was 7 years and 30 pounds ago. It's all about the hair.

So I mentioned this pic to my mom and said, "Maybe I'll grow my hair longer again." Her response was a quick and vehement "No!" She continued in a somewhat disgusted tone, "Long hair doesn't look good on women of a certain age!" It was a visceral reaction on her part, and it cracked me up, in part because I've always had that same belief and in part because when did I become a woman of a certain age?

But still, where did this belief come from? Apparently for me it came from my mom. My step dad was quick to say I should wear my hair however I want to and what other people think be damned (his common response to most questions or debates on social standards)! One other person to whom I mentioned this gut feeling that older women ought to have shorter hair quirked her eyebrow at me quizzically and said, "Really?" Clearly not everyone agrees with mom and me.

I'm sure there are academic treatises written on the mores of hair. Well, maybe - when I googled it, surprisingly I came up with no strong hits (beyond one blog in which a woman was speculating on how the length of a woman's hair often is seen as determining sexiness, which does actually kind of go to my point). Were I working here with my scholarly cap on, maybe I'd spend more time researching this question about "hair rules for women" in different societies throughout different historical periods. I actually like the idea of doing that, but I'm blogging, not professorializing - which is basically my excuse for being lazy and not investigating this beyond my own thoughts and experiences today. Sue me.

But it does seem the case, loosely said, that for much of western history, longer hair on women has been associated with youth, with vitality, with sexuality. As women age, we seem to be expected to put our hair up, as they did in the "olden days" in buns or braids around the head, what have you, or, in more modern times, to cut it off. To wear it more closely cropped to the head. Of course there are exceptions - I think immediately of flapper hairstyles of the 1920's and the short perms of the 1980's that many young women wore, but those seem to also be a statement, a representation of rebellion against social norms, and of times when women, in striving for more rights, often resorted to fashion which made them appear more masculine (straight-lined flapper dresses, the 80's pin-striped suits).

Longer hair on older woman is often perceived as not as attractive. I've heard some women say long hair on older females makes them look even older, not younger, because our faces have started to sag and the hair just emphasizes that. Maybe. Maybe older women are tired of dealing with longer hair and keeping it short is just easier, regardless of what pop culture may say? As we lose our high estrogen levels going through perimenopause and menopause itself, I know brain research has shown we tend, as women, to become a lot less concerned at a biochemical level (read The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine) about what people think about us. Which I guess means we probably become less concerned about social expectations in general, although we still seem to follow the hair one. But is that because it's an expected custom for us to cut our hair off, or has it become one because we decided it was just easier to have it short?

I don't know. It seems a rite of passage, this permanent cutting off of the hair. Like admitting, I'm really older now. I'm done trying to be a sexy young thing. I'm past child-bearing age and don't need to project my sexuality in that way anymore. Is that true? Or is that just one more example of my warped thinking? You do still see some older Hollywood actresses holding on to their long manes, but then again, they're also trying to hold on to their youth because being an older woman apparently is the kiss of death in terms of desirability in Hollywood (yes, in both sexual and professional terms). To most of them I just want to say, "You're not fooling anyone! Madonna, we all KNOW you're in your 50's - stop trying to convince us you're not by dressing like a 20 year old and wearing gloves to cover up the old lady veins you now sport." (Um, no, I'm not always kind in my thoughts toward others. Something else to work on, I guess.)

I'm not ready to do it yet. I'm not ready to cut it off and step over into that post-estrogen phase. And that's O.K. I'm 40. Not 80. Many, many 40+ women look gorgeous with medium to long hair. They really do. They look younger than women of the same age from generations past - in part because life is generally physically easier, probably, but we're also armed with more knowledge on better nutrition, the importance of exercising, and a vast arsenal of chemicals we slather on our faces in hopes that they will minimize wrinkles and mitigate the reality that we are no longer the 20-somethings we still feel like on the inside. Women also wait longer to go grey now, meaning of course that they color their hair, and this seems socially acceptable right up through senior citizenship.

So I guess since I'm still standing on the threshhold of this new post-fertility stage of life, I can keep mine at shoulder length for a while longer yet. I just don't dare grow it longer, or mom will be after me with scissors.

Whew. Now I can move on to more important things. Like playing CastleVille.

(And as a last side note, when I was musing about this out loud to my husband, I asked him whether 'mores' was always plural, or if one could have a singular 'more'? I went on to say I thought hair length on women was an example of a social 'more', to which he replied, "No. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, THAT's amore...")

Balancing Act

Do you ever have that feeling - even in the midst of being productive - that you should be doing something else? I do. All the time. It's multi-tasking in overdrive, a monster perhaps created from our current culture, in which doing one thing at a time no longer seems to be valued. Or perhaps it's a symptom of anxiety. It's definitely a fixture of my over-active, worrying brain. I never feel as if I'm doing enough. And it drives me nuts.

I can be standing in the kitchen loading the dryer, and be thinking I should be putting the dishes away, or answering that e-mail, or writing on my book, or running those errands. I can be sitting at the computer working on legitimate stuff (if blogging can be called legitimate?), feeling as if I should be cleaning out the basement or finally filling out Ellie's baby book, or any other number of things. 

Why is it so hard for me to focus on and be happy with the moment? To do one thing at a time? To be satisfied with doing one thing at a time, instead of constantly berating myself for what I'm NOT getting done? The stress I create for myself with this hand-wringing "You've got so much to do and you need to be doing it all RIGHT NOW" belief often leads me to just...check out. I paralyze myself with everything I feel I should be doing, and so I don't do any of it. Or at least not very much of it. I figure I'll just check Facebook, or eat some chocolate, or play CastleVille, and suddenly, whoosh, there's no time left. Not exactly helping the "You've got too much to do!" feelings.

I'm happier checking out. Maybe that's a clue to the problem. If I focus on one thing at a time, will I *gasp* actually have to do it? If I say I'm going to set aside one hour every day to work on my novel and not do anything else at that time, will I actually get something done? Horrors!

I do think partly that I, like most Americans, have too much to do, or at least too much I expect myself to do. I don't know what is realistic in terms of what most people can accomplish in a day. Not only do I have a lot of things I'm expected to do, I have a lot of things I WANT to do, and I can't seem to fit them in. Well, at least not when I'm frittering time on dumb things while freaking out over the bigger things. Duh, Anne.

The kids have gone back to school. My husband starts teaching today. And it's up to me to figure out how to spend this year learning how to FOCUS. One thing at a time. And not just time-wasting, mind-numbing things like Facebook or games.

I say all the time that I'm very task-oriented, and I am. So much so that I don't like to START a task that I can't FINISH at that time (or at least make reasonable progress on). Kids have inhibited that - I just have a hard time thinking I can start / get involved with some intense project, such as painting a room or writing or working on a photo album, etc, because I know I'll get interrupted and/or have to stop before I'm ready to in order to help the kids with something. That drives me nuts.

But in all honesty, I can't seem to focus on any task for more than 5 minutes. Is it my brain, so cluttered down with to-do's? Or is it my brain on modern technology, feeling as if I should check email or my phone or Facebook every 2 minutes? I certainly think that's part of it. Is it easier to get distracted now with all these electronic gadgets and the internet around? It is for me. Can one develop adult-onset ADD?

I'd like to stop beating myself up over all of this stuff, would like to unparalyze myself from inaction, and start DOING. In small steps. Baby steps. A little at a time. 15 minutes at a time. Whatever it takes. I've crafted a loose schedule for myself this fall, and I want to follow it: work out every week day (another area in which I feel like a complete failure, but that's another day's blog post), write, read/research. That's it.

I've been working on stuff for my kids' school this afternoon. I've been fairly productive, I think. But I've been telling myself the whole time, "You should be writing. You should be editing your book." Blah, blah blah.

So I took a few minutes and drafted this impulsive, not-so-well-written, stream-of-consciousness blog post.

And now I can cross writing off the list for today. I told myself I'd write something every day, even if "just a blog post." And I did. Take that, overactive anxiety-ridden, ueber-multi-tasking brain!

The Rest Is Yet Unwritten...

Wow, I suck at keeping a blog! Maybe it's because I've chosen no overall focus - unlike other bloggers, who focus on organizing or dieting or product reviews or the like, I've kept this one kind of, well, random.

Hopefully this fall that will change. Not because you all are dying to read everything I write, and not because I'm suddenly clear on what I want to do here. But because come this fall, I am going to dedicate at least 1.5 hours a day to writing. It can be on my books - the one I've already started, or other ideas in my head -, it can be on a non-fiction topic, it can be a blog post (or several). But it's going to happen. I'm excited! I'm nervous! I'm still lacking in focus here!

So perhaps we will see this blog evolve into a chronicling of my attempts to write a "real" book. Perhaps it will be musings on my children, or ramblings from my head on various topics (deep and incredibly shallow) that interest me. But it's gonna happen. You've been warned. Hee hee hee.

Rejecting Rejection.

"So what did you do at the party, Ellie?"
"We played wif da parachute, and climbed on da rock wall."
"Oh, was that fun? Were you good at the rock wall?"
"Yeah," she said, and then paused. "But all the kids said I was too heavy," she added.
My heart broke. Again.
But then she went on..."But I didn't cry or whine or do anything, I just did it anyway. I thought about turning around and saying 'Don't say that!', but I just ignored it and did it anyway."

YES! YES, my beautiful Ellie girl. Don't let them defeat you before you even begin. Don't let them tell you you can't do something just because of your size - whatever that size is. Try it anyway. And most of all, don't let their negative comments influence your own feelings about yourself. Way to go!