on juggling

diss diary #2: thinking about time management these days. also what's a dissertation???

Dear Weed-ers,

We’ve hit some major milestones since the last diss diary:

• I hit 25 subscribers for in the weeds! This was my arbitrary milestone for turning on the paid subscriber option, and I’m happy to have a sweet little community over here. :) <3

• AND over the last week, I’ve added just over 2000 words to an article project due at the end of the month!! Normally I’m a “write 200 words a day” girly, and I’m grateful that I had that habit in place to prime me for bigger daily writing chunks. But I was positively zapped when the weekend hit. So naturally, I ran 6 miles, went to an art museum, and did a tough Pilates session this weekend. (I have issues with resting, we’re working on it.)

Anyway, I shared new of this writing milestone with my partner on FaceTime the other day. In all his lovely frankness, he said, “That’s nice, but it is for your dissertation, right?” To which I basically said, “At this point, just assume that everything I’m doing is related to the dissertation.”

It’s sort of true? Definitely not totally wrong, but not totally right, either.

Academics are writers and thinkers, and in my field of musicology, we are also musicians and composers. Many of my friends entered humanities disciplines because they love the reading and writing parts. And we love the creative thinking involved in crafting big ideas about cultural production. But starting graduate school forces you to realize that a) we don’t, in fact, get to spend all day doing that, and b) on days we do have all day to write or research, it’s exhausting. And maybe we shouldn’t be.

Maybe that’s a hot take.

Every time I spent entire days writing seminar papers, I had so little to come back and do it the next day, despite the looming deadlines. I was burning out every semester of coursework. My favorite activity, and the part of my job that I felt I was best at, became a source of panic. —> I also am just not convinced that spending 8 consecutive hours on an assignment actually produced work that was proportionately better than if I’d spent half that time on it and let my brain do other labor in the meantime. (Sure, that would have required a little more preparation. But in reality, academics never work as quickly as we were forced to during coursework and knowledge production is a slow a deliberate process, so it’s not like it’s necessarily good prep for our careers?? Maybe I’m just bitter lol.)

Left: writing at a cafe last week! Right: view from the rez-de-jardin (ground-level) of the Tolbiac branch of the BnF

About three years ago, I started treating academic work less like a 9-5 but instead like a creative career, because at the end of the day, it is. There is the centerpiece of it all, which is the research and writing. That’s the actual making: painting canvases, crocheting the squishy toys, sitting at the pottery wheel. The reality is that those things are maybe 40-50% of the job? Maybe less? (Not actually sure about the numerical value here, but stay with me.)

But there is also the life admin stuff that keeps the ship afloat, which for artists and creatives would be web maintenance, inventory, shipping orders, etc etc. For us in the academic industrial complex, we have conference presentations, participating in committees and leadership roles, supervising theses, editing articles that you sent off years ago but that still haven’t made it to print. It can feel like a special brand of hustle culture because of the pressure to always juggle just one more ball, to spin one more plate. It’s the stuff we unintentionally sign up for but that is no less important.

Admittedly, sometimes these extra responsibilities can be distractions and forms of “productive procrastination.” Hence my partner’s reminder hidden in the question of “it’s for the diss, right?” The prose I generated in the last week is for my dissertation, but not for the portion dedicated to the French-related material that I’m here to find.

• a brief aside: i have gone back and forth about whether this has been a waste of time, whether working on this article unrelated to my archival work is a good way to use my time. i mean, i could have written up my article at home, i didn’t need to be here to do it, but then again the beauty of being in the writing phase of the dissertation is that i can write from anywhere and why not write in one of the world’s most amazing, creative, inspiring places? i think that if i weren’t in this foreign place without the distractions and comforts of home, i wouldn’t have been able to put together what i’ve put together in the time that i have. i know there’s more to say here, but we gotta move on, Cana.

But I think juggling is actually important to sustaining a meaningful research, writing, and creative life life. I feel better when I have something on the agenda other than writing. Keeps my brain fresh and keeps my creative energy intact from day-to-day. Or, put another way: I feel my best when I have other things to work on in addition to my main priority. It helps me feel more balanced, and my little Libra heart loooooves balance.

A propos my first dissertation diary, my friends all expressed how unrealistic it would be to spend all day every day consulting archival materials. So when I let go of the pressure to do that, all of a sudden I opened myself up to an opportunity to publish my original research for the first time. (Technically not my first publication, though: I did write a conference review last year that I’m really proud of!) I let myself join a creativity collective to support me on the journey and to learn about other ways of being writers. I let myself explore Paris and take long walks through the Bois de Vincennes with audiobooks, especially lovely now that spring is more or less here.

Me, loving my life at the Centre Pompidou (left) and the alpine garden at the Jardin des Plantes (right)

It let me love my work (and my life, to be honest), and allowed me to return to it each day with joy and energy and inspiration, rather than confronting the pages and the books with fear and grumbles. Fear and grumbles don’t produce good work. Which is not to say that fear and grumbles aren’t necessary parts of the writing process and sometimes we have to push through them. But I dunno about you, but I don’t want to hate my work every day. I don’t want to manifest that energy into the parts of this career path that I love the most.

I feel my best when I have my core priority to work on. And then I can spend the afternoon wrangling emails, putting together abstracts, having a Zoom event to attend. I also feel my best when I do have a writing project. I felt so unmoored just swimming through the archival stuff without something to write and use those brain cells each day.

The dissertation is not just the Word document itself. It’s the supporting stuff around it: the emails that allow Big Brain to turn off for a bit; the writing project that is but isn’t related to the current topic; the exercise that burns off the anxious energy that only fuels my perfectionism gremlins.

The reality is that we all have to juggle lots of things. The task at hand is not necessarily to learn to “get better” at managing it, but to make those things serve you and your practice. The task for me is to let myself just loosen up and explore possibilities without everything having to be explicitly connected: you never know what kinds of connections will form organically. And in my experience, the more meaningful connections are the ones that just…happen.

I get that time is short, but also all it can take sometimes to feel fulfilled and connected to the things we want to be doing is 30 minutes. 150 words of writing. 10 pages of reading. Other things may ask more of our time demands, but that doesn’t mean they are more important. Quality over quantity. folks.

So, yes, everything is about my dissertation. But also not. And that’s okay. :)

Stay tuned for the next installment of in the weeds, which will be…well, TBD. But it will likely a running and reading roundup because I’m on my audiobook grind these days. Please share this newsletter with a friend or loved one, and feel free to upgrade your subscription if you feel so inclined. It would make my heart sing!

Bien cordialement,
Cana<3