Word Prison

I'm already veering from my rigid "blogging my CAE reading" formula, but this is something that I think is important for me to remember as I try to tackle what feels like an overwhelming workload sometimes. It's funny that no matter how many times I try and fail (and I've been trying and failing at this since undergrad) to spend 10 or 12 dedicated hours a day reading, comprehending, interpreting, and staying excited about the vast wealth of material I have to go through, I still try to do it. As much as I know that human beings need breaks to re-energize and restore themselves, both for the quality of their work and for their own happiness, I still go to my school library with way more work than I can expect to accomplish in a day, and tell myself I'm staying there till it's done. Do I ever succeed, or even come close? No. Then I go home, exhausted with the effort, and more stressed out than I was before because I'm overwhelmed by a sense of not having gotten anything done. Have I gotten some things done? Always. But if I went there with the goal of "doing it all," and then don't do it all, it feels like I've failed to accomplish the goal.

It's funny that no matter how many times this formula proves to be ineffective, I still try to make it work. Maybe it's because so many of our social interactions in life seem to be based on a subtle "who's busier" one-up-manship, and as much as I try to consciously reject that system of self-valuation, I still find myself subconsciously motivated by it. I think part of it comes from this ever-present awareness of my friends, in their various "real" jobs and careers, and how leisurely my life must look to them because in their view, I'm sitting at home reading all day and making my own schedule. I so often feel that people don't "get" how stressful and intense and full of unpaid overtime grad school is, so I go overboard to prove to myself (and to whoever's watching) that my life is hard and busy (because of course that's the only way that it matters). 

Even worse, this same impossible work system leads me to not only try to turn down as many fun social activities as I can, but to also avoid my own fun, creative projects that would actually nourish my brain and leave me fresher for the "work" part of my life. One of the most interesting things I learned about myself this year is that when I routinely deprive myself of any creative outlet like this, I begin to question why I'm in grad school and whether it's truly what I want to do. In short, when I try to push everything out my life except work, I make myself miserable, and I know this. And I still do it! When I got to this point a few months ago, I slowly began allowing the creative back into my life--gave myself permission to write things that weren't for a journal article I was working on, to read things that weren't for class, to (like I did today, at the wise suggestion of my boyfriend) sit down and colour, just because it makes me feel good, like I've escaped my self-imposed prison of words and peer-reviewed journals. 

I've always been a reader and a writer, but the realization I've come to lately is that there is room for all kinds of expression and beauty in my life. I don't delude myself into believing there's a genius visual artist or musician hiding inside me, waiting to burst out, but that's okay. You don't have to be really good at something for it to nourish and energize you. When I stop subjecting everything I do to this hypercritical evaluation of "was it worthwhile, was it productive, what did it accomplish," that's when I start feeling happy again. When I get a little panicked about the mountain of reading I always seem to have, I try my best to remember this. The only person who holds the key to my word prison is me, of course, and that unrelenting inner critic I'm trying to banish.