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Posted in progress not perfection, Uncategorized

Reclaiming my time

Posted on by Tracy Norton

I want to weave three threads together, so bear with me.

Also, it seems like this is a good place to say that I’m a generally cheerful, upbeat woman who is nonetheless mad about everything. I function in a patriarchy and also in an inequitably-compensated female niche of a male-dominated profession. There’s lots to be mad about. I don’t want to rant here, but I do want to provide enough context so that the theme of progress comes through. And a lot of times the progress isn’t apparent unless you can see where I started. I suspect that some of you are the same. I see you. You’re doing fine. We all are.

The Wind Up

Thread 1: The Pandemic Blur

Over the past 18 months, the line between my work life and my home life — already a smudgy line at best — completely disappeared. My oldest daughter came home from college to take classes online; my two school-age daughters attended school virtually; my husband was laid off and home supervising our youngest daughter with first grade; and I was teaching classes, serving my institution, and attending conferences online. We were all everything all the time: Spouse, parent, student, employee, homeowner. This was exacerbated by my employer’s desire to ensure that everyone was getting their money’s worth out of us by “suggesting” or sometimes requiring us to attend training and seminars to learn or perfect online delivery. Most of us work on 9- or 10-month contracts but have a salary paid over 12 months, so — while I was receiving a paycheck over the summer — all this was uncompensated labor. Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy to have a job and willing to pitch in to help weather a storm. But too often this kind of thing falls on the women-folk.

Thread 2: Women are the Mommies at Work

I teach in higher ed for a living. It’s no secret that teaching is a female-dominated profession, and we have the paychecks to prove it. Where I work, the subjects that are considered more masculine pay more and have better job security. The subjects considered more feminine pay less, have inferior job security, and include lots of unpaid emotional labor. It can be very satisfying to nurture students through a difficult course of study, and it’s an honor for a student to share some of their burden with me and ask for suggestions about how to manage. But — and I say this knowing I have a great job and great compensation vis-a-vis the general population — I don’t get paid extra for the emotional labor, and I have the same 24 hours in every day that my male colleagues do. Probably the biggest downside of being a mommy even at work is that I’m expected to respond to students and hold their hands in ways and at times that my male colleagues are not. I once gave students an online final that they could submit anytime before midnight the day before our next class. I walked into class the next morning, and more than one student asked me if I had graded them yet. The final had been due just 9 hours earlier. I had been asleep for most of those hours. I have male colleagues who confirm that they don’t get asked questions like that.

Thread 3: I Lack Adequate Self-Regulation Skills

As my brother once said to me, “I know my problems are all of my own making, but no one would appreciate a break more than this guy.”

I will cop to part of the problem being that I don’t say “no” nearly as often as I should. I don’t turn off my computer when I should. I don’t turn off email notifications on my phone when I should. I like feeling needed by my students sometimes. I miss them when I’m not teaching. So while I can’t fix the problems in threads 1 and 2, I could definitely ameliorate them by addressing thread 3.

The Pitch

But after 18 months of being everything all the time, I am saying, “uncle.” I need some time when I’m just a professor and not also a mommy. I need some time when I’m just a mommy and not also a professor. I need some time when I’m just a wife. I need some time when I’m NONE OF THOSE THINGS and am just Tracy. And just being Tracy in the middle of the night under the covers with Netflix or a book on my phone is not what I mean. I need quality Tracy time.

So this is my new auto-responder for my work email. Just FYI, I teach at a Jewish law school.

Hello and thank you for your message. 

To protect my time, I generally check work email once in the morning and once in the evening with the following exceptions: between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday, and on Jewish holidays. During those times, I do not respond to work email or work texts and may be slow in responding to personal messages. 

Please feel free to call me if you have an urgent matter that requires my attention. Otherwise, I'll usually respond to your message within 24 hours of reading it.

Thank you,

Tracy Norton

That felt like an incredible act of radical self care, and I wasn’t sure I could stick to it. But after this past 18 months (see Thread 1) and, well, the last 24 years (see Thread 2), this was astonishingly easy to stick to. Yes, sometimes I still check email more than twice a day, and sometimes I still respond to something right away at night (See Thread 3), but just having this layer of protection against all of the forces that would steal my time has been so liberating.

But it’s not all about me! There’s something for everyone else, too! In my signature block, I have this for everyone else:

Our work hours may not coincide. Please do not feel obligated to respond to emails you receive outside your ordinary work hours. Kindly allow 24 hours for any response from me.

If we all reclaim our time, this just might become a thing!


Posted in Uncategorized

Turning on a light

Posted on by Tracy Norton

It’s raining out today. Gray, pitter-pattery rain. It seems like a good day to sit down and tell you about this idea I have for a blog. I’ve had an idea for a blog since I was sitting in the waiting room of my ocular oncologist’s office in Philadelphia about 5 years ago. I was diagnosed in 2011 with ocular melanoma. Ocular melanoma is rare, aggressive, deadly. But I’d survived and was in Philly for my annual checkup. I started thinking that it could be useful to talk about surviving things. But thinking something is useful is very different than having time to be of use.

Then a year or so later, I was in a recovery meeting and I heard someone refer to themselves as “a work in progress.” You hear that a lot in recovery. Or really anywhere people are owning up to their humanity. To me, the subtext is, “I’m deeply flawed but at least I know I’m flawed, and I’m working on improving.” It’s almost an apology. Being a work in progress is to have the good part ahead of you, which isn’t all bad. But “work in progress” doesn’t acknowledge the fierce beauty of having survived the things that make us flawed, and it doesn’t celebrate how rare and amazing it is to be able to acknowledge where we are right now and to reach for the next thing.

Rather than living lives that will eventually be works of art, we live lives that are art at every step.

So I think we are “progressive works.” Our lives are like a progressive dinner, where each course is at a different person’s house and you go from house to house through the evening. The dinner is a single event but it’s composed of these mini-events at each house. I think we’re like that. Our whole is life is The Work, sure. But every stop along the way can be celebrated as its own event, its own finished product. Rather than living lives that will eventually be works of art, we live lives that are art at every step. The flaws are a very individual, beautiful part of the art that we are in this moment. We won’t become more worthy or valuable or precious later. We are worthy and valuable and precious right now.

Of course, “progressive work” refers to other things, too. It refers to the fact that my work on myself and in the world is progressive rather that contained. It goes on; it changes; it evolves. It refers to the fact that I relate to causes and philosophies that are labeled “progressive.” And it probably refers to things I haven’t even thought of yet. Maybe it refers to something different for you.

I have a friend who says that people with anxiety disorders are the only people who have accurately assessed the situations we live in. Everyone else is delusional. She says that the occasional panic attack is the only rational response to what goes on in the world. That makes a lot of sense to me. The world is scary. Life is scary. Adulthood is scary. And we’re all feeling around in the dark to figure it out. And still, we find our people and experience friendship and love and joy. The way we find our people in all this scary darkness is that they turn on their lights. It’s when we have our lights on that people in the dark can find us, and then together we experience the good stuff.

So this is me turning on a light. I hope it’ll be useful.