my brilliant career

When I read academic bloggers like Dr. Crazy or Profgrrl, I typically end up feeling envious of their ambition, confidence and engagement with their work. And then I realize: I used to be like that, back in the days before I had my daughter. OK, I was never terribly confident, but I worked my butt off, and got things published, and focused intensely on my research, classes, and students.

Most importantly--and this is my new realization, which led me to want to write this post--I was able back then to adapt my schedule completely to the demands and rhythms of my work. I could stay up all night finishing a novel, spend a day in the coffee shop grading, preparing a lecture, or writing an article, sleep-in after a late night's work, eat dinner at 10 pm while watching TV to unwind, etc. Intellectual work has always been deeply tied, for me, to this impulsive and irregular scheduling of my time: work/write/think when inspiration and/or deadlines strike, relax/eat/socialize in the moments between.

With a small child, this approach, for me at least, is simply out of the question. These days, work and sleep need to happen at certain times of day and on certain days of the week if they are to happen at all.

These last two years have allowed me to delay figuring out how to be an academic and a mom at the same time. Though frustrated by my lack of productivity during this break, I've enjoyed living by a more regular schedule. I like it when everything happens at around the same time every day: meals, snacks, preschool drop-off and pick-up, bed-time, waking up. I like that I can be around for all of those things, without sacrificing anything more than the brilliant literary critical opus that is still bouncing around in my head.

Come fall, this will all change. My life will become much more complicated, and I will need to figure out some new strategies for coping. It seems ridiculous that I'm only just recognizing this--and of course, I'm not, I've realized it from day one in a way. But never in terms of the different ways I inhabit and schedule my time as a mom vs a professional.

I think one answer is to give up this notion of my potential "brilliance" that I romantically tie to impulse and irregularity. It really is time I outgrew that version of myself.