Quicksand

Growing up quicksand was a big deal. The kids who grew up in the 80s were exposed to a lot of quicksand-related trauma as illustrated by this one minute montage and this article. If you have personally never been victimized by a serious fear of quicksand and are wondering what the hell I am talking about please listen to this excellent episode of Radiolab. They get it. The thing about quicksand that was always most scary to me was that the harder the person tried to extract themself, the further they sank. Quicksand disregards your efforts. Quicksand doesn't give a shit. Quicksand has you and it’s not letting go. Also, quicksand always looks kind of gloopy* and sticky and that, if you were able to get out it would be a real bitch to get off of your clothes and person. 

Quicksand popped into my brain the other day because I am a bit stuck. Not in actual quicksand (whew!) but I still don’t like how it feels. Here’s the deal. I have never been very excited to write because it was never really fun. I wrote essays in college** but those were on assigned topics with prescribed formats. I wrote a master’s thesis on a topic of my choosing, political corruption in Mexico (#lamordida), but was limited in how I wrote about it. Then I started doing academic writing in my PhD program and that was lame. I was limited in pretty much every way. Academic writing is formulaic, dry, and lacks an opportunity to swear or include photos; though I do enjoy a good footnote. Writing this blog is different. I enjoy it and I want to do it because I actually like it and not because I have to. The problem is I am running out of hours in the day. When I started doing this in August I promised myself two posts a week and I did that. Now it’s January. Classes are about to start again and sabbatical is over. In addition to my normal professor job I am still Department Chair, North American Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics Education, and a boatload of other things to other people so I am trying to be realistic (gross).  I want to do all of the things but I can’t and it’s bumming me out. I do not like feeling disappointed (I’m guessing nobody does) and am trying to get my head around how to let some things go in order to do all of the things I need to do. I started reading about how to deal with disappointment and found some great suggestions. First, we have to actually acknowledge it. 

I am in the valley of disappointment because I can’t spend all of my time writing fun things for the blog. 

Next, we have to accept things as they are. This is not easy. I will try:

I have a lot of obligations. Some are fun and some are not but I have to take care of them all. The blog is not an obligation but it is an outlet and I know that is also important. I will likely need to write less for fun in order to take care of everything but I am not willing to stop writing it altogether. 

To combat disappointment we can consider the opposite. Instead of letting it fester, flip it on its head. Take a look at this awesome wheel of emotions. The thought is that you may be able to counterbalance the disappointment with a feeling from the opposite side of the wheel. 

After acknowledging the disappointment (which falls under grief), instead of wallowing in it, you try on a little joy. What is making you happy right now? That doesn't eliminate feeling disappointed but it takes the edge off a bit. Here’s mine:

The other day a woman I have never met messaged me on IG to tell me she loved my blog and that it made her laugh. She found it because one of my friends who lives in the UK posted a link to it on a moms with PhDs Facebook group. That is amazing and random and how social media works and exactly why I am doing this in the first place. Knowing a woman somewhere read this and resonated with it; that’s all I want.

Speaking of joy, I started a new thing this year. Every day I write down one thing that brought me joy. I am never going to have a gratitude journal. I will never have any journal of any kind. But I can write two words a day about what made me happy. My thought was that, when things are feeling shitty, I can flip through all those little moments of joy and get back on track. 

I really like the idea that you are disappointed because you are passionate about something. I am. I am passionate about helping women (and myself in the process) extricate themselves from this shell game we are forced to operate in (#patriarchy). I am passionate about building my force field and helping other women do the same. I am passionate about women knowing they are not crazy; that all the “little” slights, comments, looks, and suggestions are happening, are not acceptable, and that there are solutions.  

I’m also learning that disappointment can lead to success (even HBR says so!) which isn’t something I had considered. I was so focused on the icky side of the feeling that I missed what comes next. What comes next for me is that I’m going to keep writing the blog when I can and I am going to move past the disappointment that I can’t dedicate more time to it right now. I have a long list of topics I want to write about and it keeps growing because insane things continue to happen in the world. I am looking at you Missouri House of Representatives. The success I am hoping for is that women continue to find the blog. That it helps women feel seen. That it leads to conversations that lead to connections that lead to me getting in front of even more women and that, together, we revolt. 

If you want to help me keep the blog rolling please share it far and wide + send me topics you think I should write about. I am not (yet) past feeling bummed out but I have a lot of joy too. I have new research in the works with fun co-authors that will allow me to remain a qualified Scholarly Academic (the blog does not count as “scholarly”). I have an air fryer. I made it into Dandayamana Janushirasana on several occasions recently and it would appear that feeling stuck in quicksand offers time to reflect in ways I don’t normally. Rather than what I would do normally (struggle!!!) I’m going to follow these actual suggestions for getting out of quicksand because most of them seem helpful for life in general. I’ll let you decide which ones work for you and if I see any of you walking around barefoot with your arms in the air I will know what’s up.

*Not goopy. I do not want to use any word that could possibly be confused with a mention of the brand name Goop. Gweneth Paltrow is a scammer. Goop’s “wellness” products are snake oil. $525 for a gray turtleneck sweater (G. Label by Goop) inspired by what Gweneth wants to wear is both a crime and eye-roll inducing. You can either get “luxury-grade investment pieces at direct-to-consumer price” (barf) or an equally cute sweater from Everlane ($100) where they ethically source materials and transparently share their costs and supply chain. Oof. That was a bit of a rant. Gwyneth really bugs me.

**I once took a summer class at the University of Pittsburgh on political history. I was not excited about that class. I didn’t proofread my first essay so I did not realize that my printer had not printed every other line. I turned it in. For my second essay I wrote about Karl Marx except I spelled Karl with a C!!! Carl Marx. That professor probably told his friends about me. I don’t know how I passed that class. I’m a professor now. Dream big kids!