Dear YY,
In an effort to call the proverbial spade “spade”, let me start by saying that I tend to be a glass-half-empty kind of person. I imagine potential dramatically awful results for each option before making a decision; I often expect the worst and am often surprised when I get the best case scenario. I get that there might be reasons that I should try to “not be this way”, and I concluded long ago that much of this is simply a function of my personality, the way my brain works.
That said, I’ve noticed that I’ve become hard-wired to dislike certain things, often defying logic. Mondays are a good example: we are supposed to hate Mondays, because, you know, work. I’ve started understanding that I need to counter the sinking feeling in my stomach because it’s irrational: I love my work. I get the sinking feeling purely because of my work history and because I think of alternate options – I could be sleeping in, I could be at home with B, I could be running through fields with flowers in my hair – but I never actually think of where I’m going, and what I’m going to do there. I’m going to school – I like my office space, I like my classes, I like my colleagues – where I will do my work – I like my work. Instead of thinking of the counterfactual of my activities directly (“if I didn’t go to work right now, what would I do instead right now, today?”) I have to retrain myself to think of the counterfactual more long-run (“if I didn’t have work, what would I do all day?”) The answer to the first question may seem intriguing, but the answer to the second question is simply awful to me. So then what am I fearing when I head to work? Nothing concrete, nothing logical. I am socially trained to dread Mondays, and for me, that makes no sense at all.
I began thinking about this not because of work, however. I began thinking about this because of this post which essentially describes not constantly thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side. I am the self-described queen of the grass disparity so I couldn’t help but think about this and now can’t help but comment on it. I thought specifically about spending time with B, and how it was work that wasn’t all that much fun to both R and me in the early months. Now it’s more fun, particularly spending a morning out and about with B is great – although quite honestly, playing with him with his toys, still not the best thing in the world to me. I feel terrible even typing this, like I should enjoy every waking moment with my child, but frankly, playing with toddler toys is boring. His imaginative play is incredibly cute, but you don’t understand boredom until you’ve been forced to pretend-sip coffee out of an imaginary cup approximately one-hundred times over the course of two hours. It beats entertaining a newborn any day, and it sure beats holding him up for twelve straight hours, too. However, for me, who has trouble watching movies because two hours is a long damn time to sit still and just watch, man! sitting still with a toddler is not easy, especially if it involves a repetitive process of any kind.
As he gets older, the time spent with him does become a lot more fun, though. And this leads me to a similar situation as with work: once you’re conditioned to react a certain way, it sticks. My work as a consultant sucked, and I grew accustomed to dreading Mondays. And I continue to dread Mondays, even though when I think about it logically, I actually look forward to going to work every day. I don’t mind working weekends. I read those articles for fun, not just for work; I write for fun, too (obviously). Similarly, with first six weeks spent at home predisposed me to automatically think that spending time with B will likely be awful and boring. (I really, really hated my six weeks of maternity leave. Like, really, a whole lot. I’m still feeling the effects, seriously.) I still think that putting him to sleep will be psychosis-inducing. Though the latter is still sometimes true, it’s different now. Taking him out, showing him new things, is amazing. Putting him to sleep is hard, but as he gets older he understands more and tells me more and I, in turn, understand him better. I need to retrain myself to not dread spending long periods of time with him, because logically, I do enjoy it now. Now that he can communicate, every tough moment has its reasons. He is acting in a certain way for a very particular reason. (This is why I disagree with punishment for misbehavior, but that’s another post entirely.) His insights are illuminating and fascinating.
This all sounds too general as I reread it, like I don’t enjoy my child, and that’s not what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m trying to express how the first impression of a category of activities sticks with me even after it’s no longer a valid assessment. I started thinking of my life as work and B. That was it. And the goal became, when do I get free time? The problems with this line of thinking are, I start to resent both work and B, illogically so since I enjoy both, and there is no free time when you’re a parent. You’re lucky to have “free time” to clean the bathroom, quite frankly. My ingrained notions of what work and parenting are clash with what my work and my parenting time really are.
On a side note, I should also mention that this is a particularly salient application of the idea that I expressed previously about how B is a bit different from other kids. We get up at 7:30am and B usually gets up with us. He is up until 10:30pm these days, so I rush around in the morning, go to work, come home at 5:30pm and take over B, and am then in charge until 10:30pm. We go to bed soon-ish after he does. When I’m charge of B, he needs lots of attention (he gets overexcited to see me and that never ends well) and lots of indoor activities (LA shuts down early). So it’s easy to start to see time with B as a chore when I’m in charge of the toughest time of day (we’re both tired at the end of the day, and indoor-only with a toddler…yeah.) and when the hours are so long. I often wonder how both R and I would view B if he went to sleep at an average hour for toddlers his age. I wonder if we would see being parents as just as much of a chore.
Today I’m at work. I just read two articles which were interesting and relevant to my own work. More importantly, I have my own work. My own research, my own line of thought, my own creations, my own writings, my own plans. I have plans galore, research ideas piling up, some of which I may not even have time to get to over my entire academic career. I have a budding academic career. When I left the house, B was playing in his bedroom with Raggedy Andy. He was making him breakfast with his plastic veggies on his plastic stove. He was turning on the light for him and reading him a book. He was pretending to light the ends of cardboard tubes to have fires around them, like at the closing ceremony for the Olympics. Seriously, given those two options, what am I doing wishing for time by myself without work?! What would I possibly do that would be more interesting and important than either of those choices?
I’m not switching my view of the glass. But I do need to get a hold of the glass on the other side in this case, and more importantly, not look back.
Love,
US
