A loaded term?

I've been thinking about the term "sustainability" and this blog, which I created shortly after the July 2013 Summer Institute for Mentoring, Teaching, and Learning but have not been very active at maintaining.

What does it mean to be sustainable? I feel like I turned that question over in my head so many times that the very thought of the word frustrates me to no end.

I have come to conclude that sustainability is a loaded term. Talking about sustainability with others can wear me out because my idea of what is sustainable bumps up against others’ conceptions of what is not. And, of course, the opposite is true. This has made writing about sustainability a challenge because I feel as if I am not an expert on the topic. All I know is that I think about living sustainably a lot as I move through the rhythm of each passing day.

           

          I particularly think about living sustainably as I work in the garden. Much of my sustained time in the garden involves pulling weeds, a task that I find quite therapeutic. I usually rub a good amount of a mosquito repellent/sunscreen on, and don a straw hat before working in the sun. I find that weeding is best done in mid-afternoon when the mosquitoes, deer flies and other insects that populate the Adirondacks are less active. I usually down on my butt in the dirt, pulling out tall grass and the ever-persistent dandelions and stinging nettles that populate our land with my bare hands. I have mild allergies to birch and an air-borne mold that is present in our soil, which helps me further appreciate the privacy of weeding, as I can let my nose run and my sinuses clear themselves out without worrying about appearances.

            Clearing is the task of weeding. Our grass grows tall and fast. I do not think it's all that harmful to the garden because it seems to trap moisture down near the roots, which keeps the edible foods we sow well hydrated. But as I clear the grass, the garden plants bounce to life -- I swear they bounce -- with a certain level of joyfulness. One hour, two hours pass, and the wheelbarrow near the edge of the area where I'm weeding fills. Below me and all around me are clean patches of soil, the results of my labor. As the space is cleared, other, more functional plants have room to grow.

            Clearing is what I did last Thanksgiving when I moved from the office I had been occupying for about two and a half years to an empty space down the hall. The move gave me a good opportunity to sift through papers, files, books, and journals -- and to recycle and donate many items for which I no longer had use. It also gave me a chance to reorganize my space in accordance with fang shui principles (which I had studied once before but hardly am an expert in) as well as the understanding I had gained of how to best do my job over the past few years of doing it.

            My position is that of assistant professor. That means that while my job description is vague, my official responsibilities and personal projects and initiatives are infinite. Officially, I teach; supervise independent studies; mentor students who have a variety of personal and professional interests; oversee six courses which includes reviewing, revising, and creating curricula as well as supervising approximately a dozen adjuncts; serve my college and community through participation in a variety of committees and special projects; and devote a fair amount of my personal and professional time to scholarly development.

            When I first joined the college, the job seemed daunting because there was so much. I attempted to organize my office and my computer desktop in a way that would always have my student folders close at hand, the books for my classes at my fingertips, and separate folders -- both electronic and paper -- for every single college related activity with which I was involved. I kept e-mails stored indefinitely, and reacted to every single e-mail that I received from a member of the college's support staff or administrative offices as if it were the most essential data to my job. By the start of "year three" on the job, I realized that I didn't need to do all that, and that data that had seemed vital in the first three months on the job didn't need daily checking. My office reorganization plan reflected that shift. To put it mildly, a lot of things were weeded out.

            Clearing also has been reflected in my efforts to establish priorities. Some people draw a line between the personal and professional. I used to draw that line, too, until I realized that my line of work necessarily involves a bleeding of one into the other. With that in mind, living in a sustainable way came to gain a new direction: Instead of asking myself how to reduce my time in front of my computer or how to create a stronger separation between work life and home life, I started considering what was important to my life. In 2012, a very friendly and extremely competent and caring member of the support staff retired. She laughingly described her decision to retire as an opportunity to read more books and to travel more. She was 65. Because I began my academic career later in life, I decided that year that I would plan to retire at age 75. I turned 50 at the end of 2012. So when I asked myself what was important to my life, I considered what I wanted to have accomplished over the next 25 years, and how I would like the planet to look. Those questions proved to be foundational to how I chose beginning in 2013 to articulate my role as a professor (assistant and hopefully someday associate, then full), as a writer, and, in a sense, as a community servant.

            Articulating those goals has changed my relationship to my job. It has made me a better time manager. It may not look that way on the surface. In fact, when I look at a time management tool like a day planner or a how-to guide on writing “to do” lists or at how some of my colleagues seem so effective at organizing their days around working with students and logging into their classes, I do not look like a good time manager at all. But I am good because I do my best to focus on what’s important for me to accomplish in a single day – as a professor, a writer, and community servant.