Something curious always happens, when I'm at home all day and don't have pressing deadlines. Progressively, my standards drop as to what an "accomplishment" is.
When I'm in classes, I need to get a large amount of work done every day. I'm reading several books at once. I have many essays on the go. I'm planning out seminars. I'm keeping in touch with people, and running errands. Sometimes, I can do all sorts of these things in a day and feel like I didn't accomplish anything.
When I'm at home all day, my standards lower. I feel like I had a big day because I went to the chiropractor, walked to the drugstore, and washed the kitchen floor. The other day, I spent the entire day drafting an e-mail to my professor. If I've done anything that involves leaving the house, I'm especially proud of myself. Or if I've read a few pages of one of my books.
This started when I was working on my thesis. If I'd written a page, I'd spend the rest of the day celebrating the fact I'd written a page. This tendency carried over into my coursework, for the first while. I was hard to write more than a page at a time, because I was just so proud of myself for writing a page.
Of course, there's also the flip-side to this: tasks that I don't even notice, when I'm busy, start seeming so daunting. Sometimes, the act of leaving the house feels like too much work.
4 comments:
I had a day like that too. I was proud of myself for going to the library and getting out a book.
And when you have kids it's a big deal to be able to go and throw to items you forgot into the laundry downstairs. You have to make sure all of the doors to the rooms the 1 year old can't go into our closed, make sure he's not anywhere near the kitchen or that you've left anything he can't touch out, you have to close the stair gate behind you, throw the laundry in as fast as possible and then get back up, close the gate again and find the child, who of course has found the glass of water you forgot to put out of reach. It's amazing how little things can be big deals!
Yeah, it was probably the month of nannying a toddler that also gave me a sense of accomplishment. I still think "Wow! I washed the floor undisturbed!" and cook meals as quickly as possible.
I'm the same way: yesterday I was so proud because I actually opened the document I'm supposed to be working on; I even changed a few words here and there. Then I called it a day.
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