Working (on) the Weekend

I read an interesting thread on Twitter earlier about whether or not academics are working on the weekends. Lots of respondents made valid points that we are hardly paid well enough to be working all day every day, and expressed horror that others did work on weekends. They also pointed to the history of labor laws in this country, and the fact that we only have weekends now because people in the past were willing to die for more equitable labor practices.

The other camp can best be described with the following:

I'm not here to shame anybody either way. There's way too much shame about literally every single thing one decides to do in life these days.

But having just come off a week that started with a fever, included several nights of bad sleep, and far more trouble focusing than I normally encounter, I did start to wonder how I can feel more in control and conscious of my non-working habits. That's not a typo, I say my NON working habits because...well, if my default is to work all the time, then it must be stopping that's my problem and needs the attention.

I see these discussions sometimes, and I see friends who also have academic jobs doing things...for fun? Because they have hobbies... or like doing things... or I dunno have lives that aren't just non-stop because they don't allow them to be? And I admire these people, because I know that they work HARD to take the time they take. And I believe them when they say that taking weekends off benefits them in the long run.

But I also have a tendency to see the gulf between their lives and mine as insurmountable. And this is not some kind of exceptionalism, nor is it totally about the fact that my field is one that often includes long nights and weekends going to see shows, attending rehearsals, etc.

It's also because I (like lots of people) have let the non-stop work become normal. Or at least the IDEA of non-stop work become normal. And maybe the idea can be as much of a problem as the reality.

It started--as so many bad habits do--in grad school, especially when my husband and I were living apart. The person I wanted to be with most wasn't there: what else was there to do but work? In theory, the more I worked the faster I finished and the sooner we were back together. But when I look back on this time, I was, in fact, aware that time off was necessary, and I took it: I spent a glorious summer watching the O.C. every Friday with some really good friends. We'd paint our nails, eat chips and chicken nuggets, and have margaritas. It was fantastic.

And even though I work a lot now, I do also make some space during the week to stop: playing games with friends, going to yoga, vegging out on a weekend afternoon, taking a long bath. But I'm not sure it always feels like I've stopped. And I wonder if that has as much or more of a toll than actually working non-stop.

So, that's my profound thought for the day. In the spirit of getting my non-work time in, I'm going to stop now and spend time with that man I love. I've spent a lot of working hours getting to this point.