Category: balancing family/work and PhD

Life, me and the PhD: learning to ask for, and accept, help

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I have bronchitis, and for the last 2 weeks climbing out of bed to have a shower and change my pyjamas has left me breathless, heart pounding, and just exhausted. I’m getting better, but as this morning’s trial showed, hanging out one load of laundry is very tiring and I’m not at all back at normal speed yet. I have to let people help me do all the things I usually do, like laundry and tidying and managing the kids’ homework. I even have to ask for help with work stuff, or at least for extensions and extra consideration. This is really hard for me. I do not like asking for help, and I quite like doing things a certain way. Letting go of this ‘stuff’ is not easy. So, I have been prompted to reflect a bit on why I find this so hard, and how I could make this easier on myself going forward. Even when I am all better and stronger again, it would probably be good for me to ask for, and accept, help at home and at work.

This is not unlike what my life was like when I was working on my doctorate, or, more recently, my book. It was just not possible to work all day, and then be home and do all the ‘stuff’ – tidying, cooking, kids’ homework and baths and bedtime routines, and then have enough space in my head and energy left over to work on my research and writing, and be effective at all of it and happy. Trying to do it all made me feel so cross and resentful and over it all. Why couldn’t these people just see that I was struggling and HELP ME (preferably without being told to, please and thank you)? Why did I have to tell them I needed help? Wasn’t it obvious?

At the time, I didn’t stop to think much about all of this. I just revelled a bit in my long-suffering crossness and soldiered on. But I got very sick for a long time when I finally submitted my PhD thesis – it was months before I really felt like myself again. And, given my current health situation, I can’t help but wonder at the link between not actually asking for, and accepting, help during the PhD – at work and at home – and the severity and duration of my illness in early 2014. Was there a causal link, and not just a correlation, between trying to be and do everything myself and my resultant health crisis? I think there was, in hindsight. And, I think now that I could have helped myself enormously by not being so bloody-minded about being Wonder Woman.

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There’s a lot I could say here, with help from feminist scholars, about the gendered nature of academic and domestic labour. About how many women academics carry a significant portion of the care burden with students, and spend more time actively worrying about their students’ wellbeing and trying to do something about this; about how many women academics carry a double burden, with a heavy workload at work and at home, filled with expectations about what they ‘should’ be doing and caring about; about how many women academics burn out trying to prove that they are just as worthy of titles and accolades as their male counterparts, in some fields having to work twice as hard to win the same grants and publish in the same journals as men in their labs and departments. I could say so much more, really. The point is that as a woman academic I experienced this odd mix of wanting (needing) help but not wanting to accept it because accepting it meant I couldn’t do it all – especially at work – and doing it all was what I felt I was expected to do to be taken seriously, by myself as much as by my peers. So, I just pushed on, and I burned out.

So, sitting here in bed, trying just to take normal breaths without pain, I am asking myself: how do I not go there again? How do I figure this out a bit better, and actually give myself a freaking break? I think some of this is personal – how I was raised and who I am – but some of this is definitely systemic. A lot of what I expect of myself and what others seem to expect of me is gendered (at least). As a woman and a mother I ‘should’ be doing the cleaning and cooking and caring. At work, I should be focused on teaching and publishing and committee work and engagement. And I should not be complaining about it because that is my job, all of it. And I chose to be a working mother-scholar-teacher-wife, right? I should be able to have it all and do it all, and if I can’t, what’s wrong with me?

I have bought into this in various ways over the years, especially around the mothering stuff. I don’t really cook – Lovely Husband has that covered thank g*d – but I have taken on a lot of the parenting and household stuff I could just as easily have shared, or given over. Silly things, like being the one who had to pack the school lunches and sort out the homework and wash all the laundry, etc. as well as bigger things to do with actually raising our boys. I didn’t share because I worried far too much that things wouldn’t be done exactly the way I wanted them to be done, or the way I would have done them. Now, unable to clean or do laundry without feeling faint, I am having to teach my boys how to sweep a floor or run the washing machine without getting up to correct them or do it ‘properly’. Very little, if any of it, is being done ‘properly’ (i.e. my way), but you know what? We have clothes that are clean, even if they are folded weirdly. And the floors are not super dusty, even if they were swept differently. And the boys are keeping up with their schooling, even though Lovely Husband’s idea of homeschooling is not mine. Things are getting done, even though I am not doing them.

As Lovely Husband said recently, when we were talking about this, the things will get done differently, and sometimes differently is probably worse rather than just different, but you have to think of the trade-off. Have ‘stuff’ done, however it is done, or run yourself ragged trying to do everything ‘properly’ including your research, only to be left feeling invisible, resentful, tired, unhappy? I have to think, now, that I would rather work on letting go of (some of) the ‘stuff’ rather than end up feeling like this both at work and at home. I would rather keep trying to just let people help me, and say thank you instead of correcting their help, than end up feeling alone and put-upon. This is hard work, I think, for many of us. It might mean that your kids leave the house in non-colour coordinated clothes, or with a skew ponytail or weirdly brushed hair; it might mean that the clothes are folded differently or the pillows on the bed are skew, or the chicken dinner tastes different. But, your kids will be fine. Your pillows and clothes will be fine, and your tummy will be full.

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Learning to let go is not just about making more time in your head and your life for your PhD or whatever research you are working on. It’s about learning to make space and time for yourself, and to put your own mental and physical health higher on your list of priorities. Not asking for help and flogging yourself to the point of exhaustion is not actually a sign of strength. It just hurts you, and for many women, perpetuates a very gendered division of labour, both at home and at work, that I think we all need to be conscious and critical of so that we can challenge and change this. This is perhaps especially vital now as this pandemic has thrown so many imbalances and injustices into sharp relief, and so many women are battling to get space, and support, and time for themselves and their work.

So, this is my current learning: how to just let Lovely Husband and our boys help in whatever way they are able to, appreciate that help, and let go of the ‘stuff’ that, at the end of the day, is not as important as I am, and as my health is. This frees me up to expend what energy I do have on things that I think are important right now, like student feedback, revising my book, writing a report that is due soon, and cuddling the boys when they’ll let me. I hope that when I am stronger I will not revert to being this Wonder Woman-person, trying to do and be and have it all. The search for that balance is ongoing though, so who knows? But, I’m optimistic :-).

Taking a break: how long is long enough (or too long)?

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Every year while I was working on my PhD I would struggle to get back into the reading and writing after the December holiday break. I took around 3 weeks off each year before Christmas and then into the new year, and it was so hard to come out of idle speed and back up to work and PhD speed. I wrote about the need for a break, acknowledging the challenge of making this break neither too short nor too long. Too short and you are not rested enough to get going again with fresh energy and drive. Too long and you may get stuck in holiday mode for too long, leading to writing and research paralysis and anxiety.

I find myself, right now, in desperate need of a mental and physical break. But, and this is a big but, I cannot take one because my book manuscript in its entire, finished form is due in mid-January to the publisher. I cannot ask for a new deadline, because I have already done that. Also, I don’t want another extension. I want to move forward with a new project next year and I need to complete this one first. So, it needs to stay on schedule. Hence, there is no break this year for me – not really. I will be writing over Christmas and new year, not lolling about all day by the pool or on the beach, reading holiday-for-my-brain chick lit on my Kindle.

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That said, it has been a long and exhausting year on the work front, and if I work too hard over this supposed break time, and then launch myself right out of the book and into 2020 work, I may well be burned out by Easter. This would be a poor plan for a productive start to my new research, not to mention all my 2020 teaching, supervision and writing development work planned. So, I do need some sort of plan for rest in amongst the writing, even if that rest is more physical than mental.

Ideally, your end-of-year PhD or Masters or work break needs to be both: physical and mental. You need to actually not turn on your computer, or check email, or write or read anything, or be near your office. You need to physically and mentally change the scenery, reading fiction, going for walks outdoors, binge-watching a new series, spending time with family and friends, drinking a G&T in the swimming pool under a wide-brimmed hat (that last one might just be mine). This change of scenery, I have learned, is important for putting work in its place, and for rebalancing your energy after a long year. There is no rule for how long is too long for a break from email, research, writing and thinking here, but I think there is a rule that breaks are important and need to be properly taken when they are needed.

Work is just one of the things that we do and that shapes us, it cannot be THE thing otherwise that work-life balance will be quite skewed to the detriment of physical and mental wellbeing. This has been a hard one for me over the years, and something I have only gotten better at since my late 30s, when I stopped trying to push myself to ridiculous lengths to be the Best Ever at Everything. I think all (over) achievers can perhaps identify with a struggle to slow down, delegate, turn the out-of-office email on without the fear that something will go down while you’re not looking and leave you out.

I certainly have struggled, and while I am by no means over all of this, I do now find it easier to realise that my own physical and mental health, and emotional wellbeing, is so much more important that being online and available to anyone who may need my help 365 days a year. That is neither possible, nor desirable as a work-life goal. I can say ‘no’, the world will keep turning, and I don’t have to feel terrible about putting myself first. I think there is something in this about learning to put ourselves first, and seeing that as selfish in a positive, rather than negative, way.

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There is a certain kind of humility, perhaps, in being selfish like this: realising that you are tired, and need a rest, and may even need help to take a rest properly. As the saying goes: you cannot pour from an empty jug. If you are depleted, then what will you have to offer your peers, colleagues, students, not to mention your family and friends? Not very much. And the result of spreading yourself too thin for too long, apart from burnout, may also be feelings of resentment towards those peers, colleagues, students who keep asking for your time. In my experience, pushing myself too hard for too long has also lead to writing paralysis, and then guilt and shame after neglecting my writing because I was just too tired to face it.

So, this year, stuck as I am writing like a fiend now because I procrastinated too much a few months ago, I need to take little mini-breaks and make them count. Obviously, I will have Christmas day off, and probably will have to rest off the champagne on new year’s day. But, in between I have to write and write hard. My plan is simple: a few good hours or more of writing every day, and then a proper rest. My novel, or a game of Wii tennis with my boys, or a swim in the sea, or a surf with my son, or a walk with the dog. And then back to writing. I am hoping, with a conscious balance between important writing time and important resting time, I will reach this particular finish line with enough energy intact to keep the work going until I can take a longer rest later next year. And perhaps, I will learn enough from this year’s “break” to achieve a better work-life balance in 2020.

Thank you all for your support, likes and comments this year. I am looking forward to sharing more writing ups, downs, advice and journey in 2020. Happy holidays to you all!

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Book writing: a week in the life of meeting my #WritingGoals

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At the beginning of this week I tweeted that I was going to double the word count on my current book chapter. I started the week at 2503 words, which meant getting my writing going in a big way to get up over 5000 words. Overall, I need about 8500 to finish this beast, so ideally, I wanted to overshoot the goal (as always), but I would have also been quite happy with just achieving it. In addition to all this writing, I had to travel to another part of the country, spend two full days teaching, and prepare for a writing retreat I am co-facilitating. Plus all the usual parenting and house management and all that stuff.

Alongside all my writing at the moment, I have been reading Light and Air and Time and Space. How successful academics write by Helen Sword. It is so inspiring and helpful in many ways, but I do find myself wondering at some of the details that the stories of successful writers gloss over, like bad writing days when the kids are sick, or the childcare arrangements fail, or the car breaks down, and so on. What do you do with the bad days you can’t plan for and still manage your #WritingGoals? I did actually make my goal, this week, but not in the way I thought I would. So, to fill in a few of the often-glossed over gaps, this post is a ‘week in the life’ of an ordinary working parent-writer-teacher-etc..

Monday, Day 1: Tweeted that I wanted to double my word count, and tagged a few writing buddies who have been reading my drafts and encouraging me so far. The thinking was that I would be less likely to not write if Twitterland was following this, and would be expecting a post saying ‘Goal achieved’ at the end of the week. Even if this is only true in my head, it helps to spur me on. I planned to start writing at around 7am, once the kids were off to school. I woke up, had coffee, and then spent two hours doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen and making more coffee. I answered a few emails, and them gave myself a stern pep-talk, and sat down to write at about 9.30. By 11 or so I had managed 609 words. Yes, I counted them. I then spent the rest of the day doing more cleaning, and pottering around on email and Facebook. But, #WritingGoal for the day done.

Tuesday, Day 2: I had to take my son down to Fish Hoek to sit his learner’s license test at about 8.30, so I took my charged laptop with me, and while he was writing his test, I sat on a rather uncomfortable chair and worked on my chapter. I was really productive and wrote 1401 words. Helped that there was no internet and nothing else to really do. Caveat: I am working on the easiest part of the chapter – explaining and exemplifying the theory – but still, Achievement! Once we had processed his learner’s permit – he passed! – and I had taken him up to school and gotten home, via the pharmacy because I have lost my voice, it was after 11. Spent the rest of the day prepping for teaching, and making beds and answering email.

Wednesday, Day 2: Woke up with even less voice than Tuesday, and with blocked ears and a bad headache. Husband now also ill, so I had to get up extra early and do the school run, which he usually does in our parental division of labour. Got home around 7.30, feeling pretty grim, and got back into bed. Taught my class online later in the day, before Ubering to the airport, flying to another province, and driving 1.5 hours to the university town in which I am working for the next week. Exhausted. No brain or mojo for writing. And, I did write many words yesterday, so I can have a break, right? Yes, I can. But, no words today.

Thursday, Day 4: Started teaching at 9am, with a very hoarse voice. No time for writing as the course is intensive on the first day, and it’s about my writers’ work, not mine. I planned, though, to write in the late afternoon, once I was done with teaching. Not sure who I was kidding with that plan. By 4pm I was so tired, and my throat felt swollen. I bought take-out, climbed into bed, and fell into a Netflix hole to unwind. No words today.

Friday, Day 5: There were two pomodoros for the writers in the short course today, so in pomodoro one, I worked in my research journal on the next chapter’s basic outline, because I needed to leave the slide up on screen, on my laptop, for the writing exercise. In pomodoro 2, I could unplug, so I sat with the group and we all worked on our writing. Managed to get the chapter up to 5241 words, including two diagrams. Super chuffed. #WritingGoal achieved. Big plans for a long, silent Saturday writing in the library. At least another 1000 words, on the back of this week’s momentum.

Saturday, Day 6: Woke up late after staying up late binge-watching Youtube crap I will not confess to. Tired. My throat still hurts, my voice is sore, and I just want to hide. No library, but maybe still some writing. By 1pm, I have managed to make a cup of tea and eat breakfast. I feel allergic to my laptop. I don’t want to open it. I haven’t even gotten out of my pyjamas, and I am tired. So, I take a nap. 3pm, I wake up and eat a snack, and then decide to watch a few more hours of stuff on my tablet. No laptop, no writing. I just cannot. But, it’s fine, because I have reached my goal at least, and I can rest today and then write tomorrow.

Sunday, Last day: Much better morning – I am actually awake and showered and dressed by 9.30am. But, I do have to drive back to the airport to fetch my co-facilitator, so I have to be up. Instead of writing a bit before I leave, I play Words with Friends, and potter on Twitter and Facebook. Sigh. It’s now nearly 4pm. I have not done any more work on the chapter today, although I really really wanted to. But, I have written this, and it’s not the end of the day yet. Hmm, sure, but in my head it kind of is, and Netflix is calling…

#WritingGoals for next week? Well, I am facilitating a writing retreat with a new colleague, and we have a big group coming. Lots of one-on-one time talking through their research and writing, which is mentally tiring, and I am still hoarse. Odds are I will be pretty tired by 5pm. But, I have someone with me who also has writing to do, so odds are I will get some writing done each day. Finishing the chapter is the ideal, but I will settle for getting at least a pomodoro in each day, and that’s usually about 400 words. That’ll do. I’ll still be behind on the big 4-chapters-to-series-editor goal, which is not far off, and this is the 3rd of the 4 I need to send. But, I’ll be closer.

Lessons learned (again, and again, and again):

  1. Be kind to myself – who knew I was going to get sick, and my housekeeper would be ill, and my husband would get sick, and all of that would slow me down?
  2. Small, achieveable goals are so much better all round than large, somewhat ridiculous goals (i.e. Write The Whole Thing).
  3. Taking too long a break does make going back harder – keeping in touch, even a little every day or every other day is critical for progress.
  4. A goal shared is a less daunting thing, and being accountable, whether to an imaginary or real community of fellow writers is helpful, too.
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On sexism in academia

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When I started this blog in 2013, my primary audience was working women in academia, balancing work, PhD study and the demands of family life. I am so honoured to have a  wider readership now, and in so many different countries and academic spaces, but as a woman in academia, a mum and wife, a researcher, and a feminist, one of my chief concerns is still helping women, like me broadly speaking, to navigate at least some aspects of their personal, professional and PhD lives as they traverse these spaces.

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I have been thinking a great deal lately about sexism in academia, and all the big and small ways it makes itself felt. I had an encounter, recently, where a senior colleague who works at the university at which my husband still works (and where I used to work) asked me to apply for a post advertised in his faculty. But, rather than approach me (and he does know me well enough to do that), he sent me a message via my husband to tell me about it. My husband replied that it would be better to approach me directly, but did come home and tell me about it. Not only was this, for me, unprofessional; it was sexist. I was pretty angry about it.

I would not, I am very sure, have been given a message to pass on to my husband, unless it was to ‘say hello’ or ‘give regards’. Before you think I’m being overly sensitive, this is underscored by several other messages male colleagues have asked my husband to pass on to me over the years, including when I still worked at the university. And a former line manager meeting me for the first time, in a job interview, with the greeting ‘So you’re the other half of [my husband’s name]’. No, dude. I’m the whole me. And that same line manager dressing me down in front of peers and colleagues in a high level meeting for not being at my desk when he stopped by the day before, because I was on family leave taking care of a sick child and trying to work from home. And then proceeding to tell us all about a male professor who works 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week, and publishes prolifically, and is the epitome of academic success and worth (and has no children, partner, ageing parents, pets … or life, it seems). Ho hum. Taken together, all of these events can have the effect of making you feel smaller, less self-confident and less able to take up the same amount of space as your male colleagues can.

So, sexism is alive and well in my lived experiences of academia, and in those of many other women around the world. A recent piece in The Conversation reported on research that shows that women get less funding than men in the biomedical sciences, and tend to apply for smaller grants; a further piece in University World News reports that women are under-represented in senior academic positions across European universities, and elsewhere, such as in South Africa, the same is certainly true. Most of the research I have read speaks a great deal about how to change all of this; far fewer stories celebrate significant changes happening, although we are taking steps forward, particularly in the social sciences.

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What interests me, personally, is what role I can play in celebrating my own and other women’s achievements in academic spaces, and in amplifying women’s voices, and research. What can any of us do? Here are a few of my initial thoughts:

  1. Amplify one another’s voices: Have you ever been in a meeting where 3 women will make the same basic point and the male chairperson will only really hear the point when a male colleague echoes it? I have. A lot of women I know have. So, one thing we can do practically is to amplify one another’s voices, using a fantastic tool women staffers working in the White House during Obama’s presidency put into practice: amplification. Essentially, how it works is that if one woman makes a point that is not heard or noted, another woman in the meeting will repeat it, giving her colleague the credit for suggesting it. If it is still not heard, a third woman will speak up, crediting the first two, and so on until the people in the meeting have no choice but to hear the point, and credit the woman who made it.
  2. Stop being so bloody modest: The male researchers and academics I know have no problem talking up their research, and promoting their achievements: grants won, books published, papers cited many times for being amazing, etc. No problem. But, and I am pretty sure this is not just me, I am less comfortable doing this. Women are taught to be modest, and not to be too brash, or self-congratulatory or in-your-face – it’s unladylike and makes other people [men, mainly] uncomfortable. The trouble with this learned behaviour, though, is that many women can also become squirmy when other women ‘brag’ on social media, or in person, about their papers published, or grants won or laudable achievements. We have to stop this, and start not only being less modest about our own achievements, but also add this to the amplification. ‘Did you hear about J’s grant – her stem cell research is really groundbreaking!’ Have you read C’s paper on a critical history of women resistance fighters in Africa? It’s really fantastic! Your students should read it too.’ And so on. We need to be our own, and each other’s, cheerleaders.
  3. Create and sustain supportive spaces: I am always encouraged, inspired and energised by meeting with other women colleagues and peers, spending time talking about our research, our lives, our writing and so on. I feel surrounded by people like me in the sense that they get where I am coming from, and what I struggle with, often without me even needing to put it all into words. We so often, in academia, feel alone. We feel we are the only ones not coping with PhD and home and work, or not writing papers, or not doing Impressive Research, or not winning grants, or not being Good Enough. We are SO not alone, and reminding ourselves of this, and learning from one another as we support and cheer on one another, is a really good idea. We need to be creating and sustaining supportive spaces and cultures in academia – formal and informal – so that we can give ourselves and one another this emotional and intellectual sustenance and support.

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It is  galling that we still have to read so many stories of women in academia struggling to reach the seniority of their male counterparts, struggling to balance the demands of childcare with those of research, teaching and administration – often without sufficient support from their university – and struggling to make their voices heard above the still-male-dominated din. But, we do, because sexism in academia (and in society) is alive and well. But, it can be fought – it is being fought, and gains are being made. To keep the momentum moving forward we  can all be doing our part where possible, amplifying, listening to, supporting, and learning from one another. We’re worth it.

Acts of self-sabotage

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I have been pondering the issue of self-sabotage lately in relation to various parts of my life. I have been wondering, mainly, why I do this, and trying to spot the signs so I can try to head myself off at the pass. Lovely husband and I then started talking about all the parts of our personal and professional lives we can affect with acts of self-sabotage, especially writing and the PhD.

As you may know if you read my last post (which was a while ago), I am writing a book. At this stage the qualifier ‘trying to write’ should replace ‘writing’. I am doing this in fits and starts in between pieces of other work, some of it essential work of the paid variety needed to pay bills, some of it of the essential unpaid variety, such as supervision and blogging, and some of it of the not very essential type at all. Obviously, I cannot stop doing the essential work, but I can rethink some of the non-essential work; I can also rethink how I do the essential work, and where my writing fits into my time.

superhero-emojiI wrote a post a while back about how you make, rather than find, time to write. I am clearly not very good at taking my own advice (not at the moment anyway). I left the writing retreat I was on when I posted my most recent post with a resolution that, at least 5 days a week, I would start my work day with two pomodoros (which roughly translates into 50 minutes of focused writing). Before 9am, I would have written part of my book for almost one hour, and then I could move on with the rest of my working day. I did this for about a week, every morning. I felt like a freaking superhero. My back had a red mark on it from being patted so much. And then, and then… I stopped making this time to write. I got busy with managing journals, and writing reviews, and responding to emails and reorganising folders on my desktop, and my pomodoros fell away. And now, having done no writing for over a week, the book has become Annie Dillard’s feral creature**, and I am rightly afraid to go into its room, without or without the chair.

What I have been doing is sabotaging myself. I have been doing all the Other Things before writing, thereby devaluing, and scuppering my writing time. Maybe some of those things are important, but I could do them after 9am. Maybe some of those things are actually not all that important at all, today, and I can just not do them and write instead. I am, rather actively, standing in my own way. The question is, if I want to stop doing it quite so effectively: WHY? Why, when I am actually really excited about this book, and believe it should be out there in the academic world, am I so seemingly intent on making sure I never actually write it? Why, by the same token, do PhD students who really want a PhD scupper their progress by taking on extra work, procrastinating to the point of craziness, hiding from their supervisors and so on? Why do we self-sabotage?

I have one theory, maybe two. The first theory is that we do this because actually finishing the book or the PhD means we have to show it to people. People will read it. It will be published, either by an actual publisher or in your university’s repository. It will appear in Google Scholar searches, people will be able to obtain it, read it, dislike it, critique it. That is pretty bloody scary, no matter how much we believe in what we are writing about. I imagine it must be even scarier if you are unsure of what you are writing about, or writing about something you are not passionate about. It is impossible to separate your writing and thinking work from your self. My writing is so much a part of me. I cannot but take it personally if you don’t like what I have written, or criticise my argument. And that can hurt. So, perhaps, we self-sabotage to avoid that potential hurt. It’s a protective instinct, possibly.

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Credit: Allie Brosh

The other theory is connected. When you do put your work out there, and it is critiqued and commented on (by PhD supervisors, critical friends, examiners, book reviewers and so on) (and it certainly will be) (and even if they are all very nice to you) you will have more work to do. You will have to do more reading, more head scratching, more sighing, more scribbling, more thinking, more writing. And, while most of us who choose an academic life are more or less okay with that, it is a lot of work. Life is full, and busy, especially when you are a working parent and student and person. Often, I just want to be done with work. Revisions are hard, and they take time, and I don’t always want to do them. I therefore think I self-sabotage to head off the inevitable additional work I will have to do further down the line – the really difficult thinking work that will certainly make my writing better, but will be tiring and challenging and just plain hard to do.

The thing I am trying to do now is talk myself off that distant ledge: I am not there. No one has read my work yet, or been able to dislike it (or like it); I don’t have to anticipate all the negatives here. They may come, they may not. Past experience of peer review has shown me that as much as critique hurts, it is almost always helpful, and I have been far prouder of the revised papers than I would have been of the first versions I wrote. I have to get out of my own way long enough to be brave, write the thing, and send it to people who are willing and keen to read it and offer me input and advice.

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Psych Central Blogs

The thing that gets theses and books and papers and blogposts written is writing them. I have to be better at taking my own advice, make time for those promised pomodoros, and protect my writing from all the other work I use to sabotage it. I need to just focus on now, and what I need to write today, and tomorrow and this week, and then next, and stop trying to see so far into the future. Perhaps that will mitigate the fear of critique and more work that seems to be freezing me up now. I just have to write, and I will. Simba, here me roar!

 

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“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, “Simba!”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life