My colleague Sue Jefts and I met today to shake off the cobwebs on our Poetics of Sustainability project, and to begin finding ways to make our dream of offering a workshop on personal sustainability to faculty, professional and support staff, and students at our college into a reality.
Our hopes for the workshop soar each time we bring it up. However, the reality of the times sometimes has a tendency to crush back those flying hopes. It is a tough time economically for our college and for the nation in general, not to mention the global world that increasingly interconnects us more and more. It is an era where fiscal discipline for taxpayer funded institutions such as our college tends to translate into fewer enjoyments and more and more work. Job security feels less and less certain, and the very existence of higher education as we currently know it even seems to be under the microscope. Will our colleges, our employers be able to sustain themselves through this time period -- a period that seems less like an economic cycle and more of a full-scale restructuring?
Perhaps they will not. So, it seems in this time of duress, that learning how to sustain one's sense of self and one's spirit become all the more important.
I remember ending 2012 with an emotional crash. I was soaring high with the multitude of projects that my college had offered me, and I was working in over drive. Work in over drive was cutting into a lot of things that I cherished: time to write, time to sleep late and spend time with my husband, time to exercise and dream about completing challenging events like an Ironman. I was drinking a lot, and even though I eat relatively healthy foods, I was indulging in junk food binges more than I like to care to admit. In short, I was cutting corners into my down time in order to work and accomplish more.
The crash came at an opportune time: two weeks before Christmas, a much-heralded period of time that many spend with families and loved ones. My husband and I spent it in the best way possible. We relaxed at home, sitting for hours before our fire and sometimes even sleeping by the fire. We read books, pet our cats, and went for walks. I stopped checking my e-mail and began circulating word that I had been hit with something that seemed like it might turn into the flu. That was partially true because I did have a bad cold and was sneezing a lot -- symptoms that medical doctors encourage their overworked patients to use as excuses to slow down. But bottom line, I emerged from the down time with a new insight. I realized that the work pace I was putting myself through was not unusual for a person in an assistant professor position who is hoping to do what she needs to do to gain tenure and the job security that this designation has traditionally promised. I also realized that if I did not receive tenure, I would survive. But if I didn't take care of myself, I might not survive.
And so these days I take care of myself.
Sometimes, taking care of myself feels overwhelming. It shifts priorities and shortens the time available to satisfy work commitments. There's the conventional rule that eight hours of the twenty-hour work day must be devoted to sleep. There's the marathon and triathlon training modality that mandates one to two hours be dedicated to working out, five or six days a week. There's the writing regime that calls for more and more time for the page and less and less time for the world. And, for me, there's the call to service. If asked to do something that I feel will genuinely better society, I usually say yes.
All of this self-care creates an interesting dilemma. Even as I work very hard, sometimes I do not feel as if I am working at all. With that comes conflicting emotions that sometimes translate as defensiveness and sometimes as guilt. I am leaving the office at 4 p.m. because there's a cycling class at the YMCA at 6 p.m., and I want to get in a run before that. I am staying home until 11 a.m. because I have a lot of reading for my classes to do and it's easier for me to read at home (yes, in front of that cozy warm fire) than it is to read in my office, sitting straight up in a chair that even with all of its wondrous ergonomic properties remains too large for my feet to easily touch the floor. I am following a self-defined logic, but how do I explain it to others? How can I be a hard worker if I waltz into the office in late morning or early afternoon? If I waltz out after a few hours because a workout is calling.
This rubric of self-defined logic seems to lie at the root of what it means to create a sustainable life. It is individualized, and not something that can be scaled to accommodate large masses of people or replicated for others to emulate. Yet, I feel, it is extremely important. And, as Sue and I share our visions for such views of sustainability with others, it strikes a chord. People are looking for it, even if they are unsure what the "it" they are seeking actually is.
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