Category Archives: work

Knowing Our Limits

Life, thinking out loud, work,

This is a tough post to write. I tried yesterday and gave up. But, I think there is an important lesson here for all of us.

One of my students is going to fail the summer school class.

It hurts.

I feel like I have failed.

I could get into a long explanation of her struggles, but the short version is that she overestimated her ability to do it all in a world that rewards busyness and where exhaustion is worn as a badge of honor.

Summer school is not for the faint of heart when you work in K-12 education. The summer term overlaps with the school year on both ends. Educators are at their busiest in May and August while trying to find time to start and finish a pretty intensive summer school experience. But taking two courses means one more semester towards the goal and especially for my library science masters’ students, a potential upward career move.

This student told me she was impatient to get finished. How hard could it be? Just 14 weeks, a few late nights, a little stress over deadlines. But, she has kids, and it’s summer vacation for them, too. Every summer is another one gone to spend camping and swimming and just hanging out. It would be nice for the work/life balance to swing in the life direction for once.

I was reminded of the conversation sparked by British businesswoman Emma Grede‘s comments about being a three-hour mom. While she makes some time on the weekends for her four children ages ten months to eight years old, she is also clear about needing time for herself. Her comments, of course, received some backlash, but she was unapologetic. Men, she noted, are lauded when they spend 60 hours a week working. If women are going to have the same opportunities to succeed as entrepreneurs and business leaders, ideas about their role in their children’s lives have to change.

So, Emma Grede has made a decision that her work/life balance swings towards work, which may be why she is worth $300 million dollars. She is not bothered by the mundane routines of life like cooking and laundry and dusting. She and her husband employ a staff that includes a chief of staff, nannies, housekeepers and a private chef.

Another way to think about work/life balance is to redefine balance as integration. That is how Donna Morris, an executive vice president at Walmart, describes her approach. It is how I see my sister, the chief financial officer for an investment company, operate when we visit together. She may answer an email while we wait for our lunch or take a phone call as we relax on her porch; a family visit may include her disappearing into another room for a meeting before we head out to go shopping. Her work seems to be her life but it is really just part of the life she is living.

In the end, we all have to decide on our priorities. If you are going to start a business, work is going to be the priority. Are you prepared for what that means for the rest of your life, especially your family? Would you be happy only spending three hours with your children? What about your spouse? And perhaps the most important question: what are your physical and emotional limits? Just how much stress can you take?

We all have limits.

My student learned her limits the hard way this summer. I hope she carries the lesson forward when choosing how to spend her limited time and energy. Maybe being more than a three-hour mom is more important to her than finishing her program early. Maybe her definition of success is more personal than professional.

I learned my limits over the course of several years when I was consulting on multiple projects that required extensive travel. I tired of airplanes and hotel rooms and whirlwind trainings pretty quickly and begin reconsidering how I wanted to earn a living.

We can admire women leaders like Emma Grede and Donna Morris without feeling like we have to emulate them in our own lives. Sure, I could find something to do with $300 million but, honestly, I’m not willing to work that hard even for a personal chef.

Never Mind

teaching, work

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”
Robert Burns

I am knee deep in grading the final projects for the summer semester but looking forward to trying out retirement. I even announced it to the world, or at least the few people who read this blog.

Then the email from the department chair arrived yesterday evening: two sections of an undergraduate information literacy course are available for the first term. The course is developed and just needs a facilitator. It will mean working through the weekend as the semester begins Monday. I said yes. The money isn’t great but it helps stave off social security. Plus, of all the jobs I have done in my career, I love teaching the most. Even asynchronous, online courses offer opportunities to connect, learn and grow with other educators.

So, full retirement is on hold at least through the end of this year. We shall see what 2027 brings!

Now, back to grading.

My Last Monday

thinking out loud, work

When you work as an independent contractor, you never really retire. I called it retiring when I left the Virginia Society for Technology in Education as the directorship had been my main gig for many years. But, I continued to consult and teach. For the past year, I have taught online for a Virginia university’s library science program. I am finishing up the summer semester this week. I am not scheduled to teach another course until the second half of the fall semester. So, once I submit my grades this coming weekend, I will not be working for money, my version of retiring.

To be honest, the teaching I have been doing takes up just a few hours a week so it won’t be huge change: there are no live classes, only office hours. I joke that my main jobs are to nag and grade. I also work hard to create community and develop meaningful relationships with my students in an online, asynchronous class. But despite not being a huge demand on my time, the work provided some structure to the week. Next Monday, it really won’t matter that it is Monday. There will be no announcements to post or assignments to grade.

I am spending my first week of “retirement” visiting my family in Pennsylvania. And then, when I return the following Monday, the week unfolds with wide open spaces on the calendar. Rereading my post from 2022, I have kept to the list of what was going to do when I retired: reading, gardening, and lots and lots of making of all sorts of arts and crafts with a focus on making different kinds of books. I practice the piano most days and occasionally pluck at the ukulele. My morning routine includes journaling and some sort of artwork, often a quick collage or doodle. We adopted a dog last year, and we take a long walk each morning, watching the property change with the seasons. I am doing some volunteer work including serving on the Board of Trustees of the regional library system, participating in a bell choir, and playing piano and singing hymns with a group at the local rehab center once a month. I have avoided the very active pickleball group but do attend the book group at the library.

This fall, I want to spend time doing all of the above along with quilting and watercoloring, two of my newer interests. As for writing, I will keep poking at this blog. It might be fun to do some throwback Thursday posts to see what I was writing about in 2003 and 2013 and all the years in between. I would also like to try my hand at poetry. Earlier this year, I wrote a daily haiku and found it to be a mindful way to start each day. To that end, I pulled a few poetry writing manuals off the shelf.

The View from Sixty Two

thinking out loud, work, , ,

I celebrated my birthday on Tuesday: low key with gardening in the morning and gel printing in the afternoon. I even made supper. Don’t feel sorry for me: I had been with my family over the weekend. Plus, I like to cook and it was easier than having to present myself to the world.

I was considering the typical “five things I’ve learned” blog post with advice about how to live your life. But, honestly, I can’t tell you how to do that. I have not always been that intentional about my own life. Absent some latent talent or burning passion, I followed my interests, wandering a bit both physically and metaphysically in the world until I found my place in education and, eventually, ed tech.

I suppose this blog is one of the ways I offer insight into the kind of life that brings me joy. There may be aspects that resonate with you. But, frankly, if you enjoy the hustle and bustle of an active, public life, you would probably be bored stiff here at the farm. And, I would find your life exhausting. I tried it for a few years and, while I loved working with educators as part of several programs, the relentless schedule and travel just wore me down.

I was describing the work to a younger colleague who commented that it sounded exciting. All I could remember was one particularly grueling week when, after negotiating Boston rush hour traffic on a Friday, I fell asleep on the shuttle bus after dropping off the rental car. The driver gently nudged me and then helped me down and into the terminal. Embarrassing but also a wake up call that this work was not for me. I began looking for other opportunities that would keep me closer to home.

What I realized was that I had a choice. That would be my reminder to you: you always have choices, and sometimes over the course of a life, those choices change. A friend was saying that she wanted to give up a particular activity but couldn’t because they needed her. I gently suggested that, while her concern was legitimate, she could give it up. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” You are allowed to change your mind, make different choices, pursue new ideas.

One big lesson I have learned is the uselessness of worry. As I was thinking about this blog post, Mary Oliver’s poem “I Worried” crossed my path. I leave you with her thoughts read by Helena Bonham Carter:

P.S. As I was getting ready to press publish, I thought of one more thing: I have written a lot about my meditation practice. I think, no matter how busy you are, finding time to just sit and do nothing even if for a minute, it important. Learning to be alone with yourself is a valuable skill.

Farm Life

gardening, Life, Nature, work
Corn
Our first planting of corn has been producing for almost a month! Eating fresh and freezing as much as possible.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, about her family farm in southwest Virginia, she describes the extensive preparations they took to protect the garden from weeds and critters before going away for a week. I was away for two weeks at the height of the growing season with no time for preparation, and my gardens, both vegetable and flower, were busy both producing and returning to the wild when I returned. I was able to wrestle back some control from the weeds while also harvesting corn, green beans and tomatoes for consumption and preservation. My freezer is slowly filling up with bags of beans and plastic containers of corn and tomato sauce. It will be a delicious winter.

The Pear Orchard
The pear orchard with six trees and lots of delicious, eat-off-the tree pears.

I have also been canning pear jam with the bounty from our six pear trees, all of which have produced amazing fruit this year. I am using this great recipe from Practical Self Reliance; it makes a beautiful, chunky but spreadable jam. My only hack is that I use my pressure cooker to cook down the pears as it requires less tending than the stove top.

The world of “real” work is calling, and in between gardening and cooking, I got started on a couple projects for the fall semester. I was worried that, after feeling very retired for the first months of 2023 and especially while I was hanging out with my parents and then digging into my part-time farmer life, I wouldn’t have the energy or motivation to deal with timelines and deadlines and other people. Fortunately, my skills at prioritizing and focusing kicked back in but with a better sense of balance. I was able to integrate work without it overwhelming the rest of my life the way it might have in the past. Plus, it has been a great time to learn new tech skills: I am incorporating AI into both my edtech courses and have been having fun learning about and experimenting with ChatGPT. More on that later.

For now, I’ve got pears to prep and tomatoes to pick, and I might even take a bike ride on a Monday morning.

Pears
Pears hanging low on the branches