The Dawn of Productivity, the Twilight of Leisure

As Terry's last post shows well, we have both been privately contemplating what the coming baby will mean for our lives in a concrete daily sense. For me, this contemplation usually leads me to think of this period of preparation as both the dawn of the new organized/productive me, or the twilight of the old spontaneous leisure me.

I have repeatedly reflected on the idea that teenagers are so terribly stupid for thinking that their parents just are lame, while ignoring overwhelming evidence that everyone's parents are pretty lame (go to bed early, get up early, don't go out much, organized, pro-cleaning). That lameness may, in fact, be a defining characteristic of parenthood with a nearly perfect correlation. And so the thoughtful person might conclude: gee, perhaps parenthood itself is what makes you lame.

Terry and I have both been anticipating the need for being much more organized to successfully balance the demands of work and family once a child is introduced into the mix. He has responded to this by rededicating himself to working hard now, putting in long hours of solid work to make progress.

My response has been somewhat mixed. Sometimes I face an almost crippling anxiety about all of the things that I need to get done. In order to position myself to be successful on the job market 12 months from now (with a baby coming 6 months or so from now), I should ideally 1) resubmit a very high quality version of my article that is in the publication process, 2) draft two new substantive chapters of my dissertation, 3) revise and refine the existing substantive dissertation chapter and theory chapter to use as job market writing samples 4) apply for dissertation fellowships for the following year so that I don't have to teach and raise a baby while on the job market in 2009.

Just writing the list sort of exhausts me. And sometimes I respond by plunging in, making good progress, and working towards my own idealized version of the well organized, efficient and productive gal I'd like to be.

Other times focusing on the upcoming demands produces the opposite effect: I find myself mourning the impending loss of leisure time. Or at least spontaneous leisure time. I can see how easy it would be to have to so structure time that the idea of "quality" time (squeezing a lot of quality into small time periods) becomes appealing. And slow, unstructured, unintended moments of quiet enjoyment seem to fall out of that picture. Or at least they rearrange themselves in my mind into the picture of "kids finally in college" or "retirement." And when that mood strikes me, all I really want to do is sit curled on the couch with some second rate novel and a cup of tea.