How My “Want to Do” Morphs into “Have to Do”
The English department at my university has asked me to attend its end-of-the-semester banquet and talk about how I find the time to write as well as hold a full-time job and publish a monthly webzine. I thought it was an interesting invitation, coming as it did on the same day that I woke up at 4 a.m. feeling panicked by all the things I had to do!
Have to do. When I stop to think about it, there’s actually very little that I have to do. I chose to pursue a professorial career over an editorial career. However, if I want to keep my job as a university professor, there are a few things I have to do reasonably well: teach, grade, advise, carry out and present research, and serve on various university committees. That may sound like a lot, but in fact those responsibilities aren’t usually the ones that wake me up in a cold sweat.
To be perfectly honest, what usually stress me out are all the things I choose to do: write stories, pursue their publication, put out a monthly webzine, post on this blog regularly, start publishing books at The Harrow Press, organize my mother’s digital art collection, and so forth. I look at my collection of How to Draw Manga books and stress because I haven’t picked up a sketchbook in, well, a year. I look at my shelf of Italian novels and stress because I haven’t been keeping up on my language studies. And when am I going to figure out how to put ads on this site, anyway, and by the way, shouldn’t I be arranging some book marketing events?
In other words, I forget that I choose to do those things, and instead I imagine that I have to do them. I start to feel harassed by some faceless, imaginary group of readers, writers, artists, etc. who, I am sure, are watching and evaluating me and will be disappointed/scornful should I falter in my self-appointed duties.
Pretty sick, huh?
I’m constantly trying to simplify my life, but I don’t by any means lead a simple life. Sometimes I think it’d be great to give up all my extracurricular interests except, maybe, reading and writing — but I find it extraordinarily difficult to give up anything that I’ve started. And of course I’m limited in what I can give up at work, although there’s no doubt that I could delineate some clearer boundaries for myself and stop saying “yes” all the time.
I aspire to simplicity, and I’ve been getting better over the last eight years or so that I’ve been pursuing this goal, but — it’s not so simple to lead a simple life!
drupagliassotti @ April 1, 2008