Craving Structure

This week was really hard. Not because I was all alone or because there’s a virus killing hundreds of people every day, though that is plenty to worry about. No, it was the constant feeling like I was falling behind, not doing half the things I planned and wanted to do, constantly bogged down in chores that seemed to pile up.

So yesterday I sat down, and made a list of all the things I 100% have to do each week, and realistically how long they take. And you know what? At the end of all the sleep, laundry, cooking, dishes, disinfecting, medication managing, getting a reasonable amount of exercise, and my one fixed social event a week… I had between 34-39 hours left per week (depending if I clean my house that week) for writing my dissertation, gardening, blogging, and maybe actually having a little fun. No wonder I felt like I couldn’t get anything done!

Instead of making me feel even more depressed, I actually found this discovery really empowering. First, it made it much easier to be kind to myself about not having done much on my dissertation or taken enough walks, because obviously there wasn’t as much time to do it as I thought. I also spent the rest of the afternoon mapping out when certain things have to happen, and when it makes sense for me to do other things like the laundry and cleaning the house. I created a schedule– no, not a schedule, that sounds too rigid– a framework, to structure my life.

I need structure. Without it, I lack motivation. This week, I noticed I had lost the fire that has been driving me through my doctorate, and I realised it was because it suddenly felt like I had all the time in the world. Someone told me today about The Five Obstructions— the film itself doesn’t matter, but the point is, when someone has to overcome obstacles, this tends to fuel creativity. The most difficult obstruction is when there is no obstruction. Then, people struggle to find any creativity. Before my quarantine started, I had a deadline for my dissertation, a possible three-month research grant for ‘pressing issues’ research, which would have started on 1 May. Now, I have no idea when that is going to happen, let alone when I’m going to start a post-doc. I’m even hesitant to rush the end of the doctorate, because I don’t want to finish, lose my visa, and still need to be in isolation. I removed all obstructions.

Now, I’m hoping my new “framework” will restore some sense of urgency, because I only get 13-15 hours a week to work on the dissertation, split into 2-4 hour segments. When I used to teach high school, during creative writing units I would give students a tiny amount of time at the beginning of class to write on any subject– only rule, they couldn’t lift their pens off the page. I never saw their writing from this exercise, but over time, it ignited something in them, and students who hated English class couldn’t wait to write by the third week. I am hoping this framework will work the same way for me: unstopper all the ideas that are racing around my brain and pour them onto the page.