So, this is basically a nothing post, since I’ve been too busy in the past couple of weeks to have an idea that is unrelated to scholarship. I head off to a conference in a few days, so that has me preoccupied, plus I’ve had friend-related things going on – with friends near, far, and soon-to-be-far – plus I have a fucking boyfriend, which seemed awfully great when that whole thing blindsided me in November, but, in a surprising turn of events, it turns out that I hate having a boyfriend in the summertime, when in theory I should have time to have one.
No, seriously. It’s easier to go out with him when my time is so structured during the semester, because the things that structure my time then are easy to transition out of. It’s easy to compress grading. It’s easy to bring a novel I have to read for class over to his house. It’s not easy to compress writing, and it’s not easy to do my scholarly work while also attending to another human being.
Oh, I love him and he’s great and whatever, but seriously? Making time for him has caused a severe uptick in my stress levels about accomplishing things this summer. Because, you see, I am used to being able to be a workaholic in the summer. You know, with weekend visits from friends and family thrown in for good measure, but how I’ve handled my professional life in the summer, oh, forever, is that I work like a maniac and then have fun when I have visitors or when I travel. Only now there is this “person” who expects to see me on the weekends – EVERY WEEKEND – even on HOLIDAY weekends, like Memorial Day Weekend, which is some awesome thing for him who doesn’t have a whole summer stretching in front of him, but which historically for me has been a great time to get a lot of writing done while all of the generica [grad school term coined by my grad school BFF Medusa for guys who wear dockers and work at dumb office jobs] of the world are busy cooking out, and while in the abstract I am totally on board with that, in practice, dude, it’s cramping my workaholic style.
And that makes me cranky.
And it also makes me cranky that he thinks I’m having “fun” when I go to the pool to read, when I’m reading shit for work. Even though I know that I’m unreasonable because pool>cubicle in terms of fun, and, of course, I am ostensibly “picking” what I read while I lie in the sun and take breaks for swimming.
But for serious, people: you will the majority of the time find me with a stack of journal articles or a theoretical tome or a novel I HAVE to read at the pool (which, an aside: please all of you go read Adam Thirwell’s first novel Politics, and probably everything else he’s ever written, though I haven’t actually done that yet, so I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure, as is Granta, that he’s a genius), as opposed to with some fucking pornographic best-seller. My pool time is serious business, and I want people – i.e., The Dude- to recognize that the pool is my office. An office with SAHMs, kids, teenagers, and senior citizens, but my office nevertheless. Which of course he can’t because I’m being an unreasonable asshole, given the fact that he’s trapped in a cubicle.
Honestly, though, I’m feeling pretty good right now, precisely because, taking practical factors into account, I begged off seeing The Dude tonight in favor of doing tons of work, even though in theory I’d have loved to have seen him, and even though we’d had plans all week long for me to see him both today and tomorrow. (Now we’re just seeing each other tomorrow.) Honestly, I just am having a hard time negotiating the time commitment that he seems to require (which, let’s note, is very small, as boyfriend time commitments go, which is probably why things have been good).
If it weren’t totally crazy, and if I wouldn’t hate it (as I know I would), I would really like it for us to break up this summer and to get back together on August 12, when I’m back under academic contract. Not because I want either of us to go out with other people or because my feelings for him are in any way in question – indeed, the feelings grow and grow, annoyingly: just because I’d really like to be dating my book right now. And the fact that he lives 40 minutes away from me means that I can’t just take him for granted and work on my book all the time, expecting him to just show up periodically when I’m feeling uninspired. No, because of where we live, we need to have “quality time” in the dating. And I’m tired of dating him and of all the effort that takes, when I want to date my work, and to put my effort in there, which I know isn’t what you’re supposed to say, but seriously: I just want to be able to procrastinate without feeling guilty, and I want to be able to procrastinate without the consequence of not getting my work done because I am obligated to make time for somebody else!
Don’t get it twisted: I totally understand the irony of the fact that I am bitching about being in a relationship when that’s exactly what I want and have wanted; I totally understand the irony of the fact that my bitching originates with a desire to do more fucking work, even though my whole point with continuing trying to do the dating thing was to stop being a fucking workaholic!
And let’s note: The Dude is totally supportive of my work! The problem is me, and me alone! Well, except for that in my fantasy version of my life he wouldn’t just be supportive of my work he would totally sacrifice himself on the altar of my work, because, you know, I’d rather be doing that right now. And then he’d stop sacrificing himself on the altar of my work, and not be resentful, the moment that I didn’t want it. Because I’m a Giant and Unreasonable Bitch who can’t sustain a reciprocal relationship with another adult human being, and who expects people to read her mind and to coddle her, even when, especially when, her demands are entirely unreasonable. So in that way, the problem is also him. Ha!
Look, I was an only child until I was 20. And I’m a Leo. And, apparently, my Enneagram personality type also indicates (according to CF, I haven’t done the weird pop-psych research on this) that while I am the most fun person ever, I’m also entirely unreasonable, in search of what I think is fun. And in numerology my main number is THREE, the CHILD! Thank goodness The Dude is a Middle Child and an Aries (though I’ve not investigated the other fake personality things for him).
So anyway, all is good. You probably won’t hear back from me until like June 12 or 14, because I shall be busy with my conference, nursing my jet-lag, and nursing my motherfucking relationship (I say that to be funny – I really do think things are grand). But let this be a lesson to all of y’all who are desperately alone academics and whining about your desperate aloneness: you get much more work done, even when you’re not getting anything done, when you don’t have a significant other to consider. And sometimes, what you really want is to work. Be careful what you wish for 🙂
Reassigned Time 2.0 
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Having a family and dogs really cramp my style in trying to write more. (Not cats, by the way: cats are the perfect pet for academics since the worst they do is lie on your papers or keyboard).
I persevered around puppy house-training this afternoon and hammered out another 600 words on my latest piece but I’m rather annoyed that it wasn’t more because I had a plan, dangit!
Right now, it’s almost as if you two are in a long-distance relationship, with the need to schedule time, and the pressure for that time to be ‘quality’. Stressful. If you move in together, that would simplify a lot of this. No pressure or anything, but I really do mean that as a practical suggestion. 🙂
My partner and I are both academics, and we both need a lot of hard-core work time, and living together means we get to exchange hugs in passing while essentially ignoring each other for days (or weeks) on end while mid-project.
Oh, Crazy–I *so* hear you on this. This is why I regularly threaten to check into a hotel so that I can get some damn work done. (I’ve never actually done it, but one of these days I will. Maybe next weekend.)
Like Mary Anne, my immediate thought was, “if they lived together, she could totally ignore him.”
No pressure — and moving in is something you should only do if you feel like making another step — but I am able to ignore my husband pretty much six days a week and then we hang out for one night a week. During the summer, I frequently work all day then watch TV with him at night, but I’m actually forcing myself to do that. In years past, I’d work all day and then go back to work after the kids go to bed for another four hours or so. We made that work because I’d stop working for about 2-3 hours every day when he got home with the kids, and we’d hang out as a family for dinner and kids’ bedtime. Then, I’d go back to work with no complaints from him.
“I want to date my work”–I so hear you on this one, Dr. Crazy!
Well, if you were a man (especially a man a generation or two ago) your desires would seem perfectly reasonable, probably to the point where you wouldn’t even need to state them (my father is, all in all, a reasonably considerate man, but/and his relationship with his parents, wife, and children worked pretty much the way you describe, and nobody seemed to question it in the least. In fact, he got a bit grumpy when we kids got older and started having schedules of our own that occasionally conflicted with his — by which time he was a widower and his parents were no longer around to mediate/avoid such conflicts, so they actually occurred).
I’m not saying things were better that way (especially, of course, for women), just that they’re not totally unreasonable/unheard of. A relationship that’s egalitarian, reciprocal, etc., etc. is definitely better in my book, but it ain’t easy (and I suspect women spend much more time beating themselves up for conflicting personal/professional desires than men do, which of course doubles the time/energy drain — there’s the conflict, and then there’s the conflict over dealing with the conflict).
Since having a family, I’ve discovered that the reverse works too — having only short blocks of time to research eliminates all the angsty navel-gazing, and the work is actually better. Try being a human being for a while, and you’ll see that the important work gets done anyway.
Hi Dr Crazy, I totally empathize. Having just spent an hour driving 2 teenagers to 2 different schools in the pouring rain, let me just say, SAVE your post, and read it everything you experience the biological urge to have a baby. You will be locking yourself into 18+ years of servitude that will make your present angst look like a walk in the park.
Ok, I am off to the land of conferencing this afternoon, but I just thought I’d check in with those of you who suggested the moving in thing… Yeah, we’re in serious talks about that happening, but both of us tend to be very deliberate decision-makers (contrary to how our relationship started out!) and so we don’t want to jump into that impulsively. So basically, for the past couple of months we have had many, many conversations about everything from money to “what it all means” to logistical issues about cleaning, space, privacy, possessions, etc. And where we are in these talks is that the soonest such a move will happen is August, but maybe it will take a little longer than that, depending on a variety of factors. In the end I think that it IS where we’re heading, but I think we are both concerned 1) about becoming relationshippy pod people and 2) about familiarity breeding contempt, and so we both need to get to the point where those fears are less important than making the leap.
I don’t think any of us want you to rush it. But it may help to know that moving in may somewhat magically make some of the current practical issues go away. 🙂
“Try being a human being for a while, and you’ll see that the important work gets done anyway.” Patronizing, much?
Mary Anne, Oh, I know! Particularly MY practical issues (while he would benefit as well, in lots of ways). One thing that pleases me as we’ve discussed it, though, is that neither one of us wants to do it just because it’s “practical,” because we both recognize that living together is going to bring its own challenges, too, and we don’t want to minimize those (his geriatric dog, my territorial cats, the fact that I’m naturally a slob with lots of clutter and he’s very neat, the concern about him moving into “my” house, his resistance to paying people to do things like cut the grass or clean…) In other words, we’re going in with our eyes open, and we want to make sure that we’re not romanticizing what it will be like… even though we both agree that it would be great, if that makes sense. Basically I think we just want to make sure that we really and truly are ready for the commitment because it would really suck to break up after he’s moved in (more for him than for me, because he would be homeless).
Sounds very sensible. 🙂
I’ve nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award!! http://msperfectpatty.com/2013/06/10/and-the-nomination-goes-to/
It is pretty goddamn motherfucken FUN to live with someone you love! And it is even pretty goddamn motherfucken FUN to learn to moderate one’s highly specific DEMANDS FOR HOW THINGS MUST BE DONE in order to accommodate someone else’s highly specific DEMANDS FOR HOW THINGS MUST BE DONE! Like, as in, you grow as a person and learn stuff about yourself!
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