Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

Notes from home

January 2, 2006 at 10:36 pm | In yulelogStories | 5 Comments

Updated, Jan.3/06 (see coda, below)

Dave Pollard’s recent (Jan.1/06) list of links for the week included this nugget by Paul Graham, Good and Bad Procrastination. At first I enjoyed reading it (it’s well-written and often funny), but in the end it really ticked me off.

Graham talks about “running errands” as an avoidance tactic for getting great things done (he calls Great Things “big stuff”). Well, part of my daily agenda includes running errands because they’re inherent in my job in raising my kids. In fact, I’ve been known to procrastinate long enough on the “errands” to the point where something starts to fall apart around the house (or do I mean hearth?) — so don’t tell me that “errands” are an excuse for avoiding the important things. Errands, in some poor (female) sods’ lives, are the warp and woof of what they do to keep the so-called other big stuff alive.

But then, I’m just a mom, and god knows that raising kids sure isn’t considered an important big-stuff thing. If it were, there’d be less talk about how it’s ok to let the small things slide so that the Big Things can get done. (Kids are after all just Little Things.) Less talk about how important it is to get The Big Ideas Realised. And. All. That. Graham writes that good procrastinators put off the right kinds of small stuff errands so they can get the big stuff done:

…they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

What’s “small stuff?” Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary.

Oh, I see! That’s why no obituary ever mentions “was a great parent,” and it explains why great parenting has devolved to the hokey schmaltz world of soap opera and corporate-generated cliché: that’s all “small stuff” and the “big stuff” matters so much more. And I guess that explains why kids today are often so fucked over by their parents.

I have been accused — no, that’s too harsh a word: it has been suggested to me, by someone who is male and who does not have young/ young-ish offspring still at home, that writing this blog is evidence of procrastination, that I am wasting my time and that all I need to do is buckle down to get some “real work” done. I always resented that suggestion, and now I know why. This blog is evidence of the fact that I am buckling down to keep my brain alive, it is evidence of all the learning that I’m still doing, and it feeds into the energies I have to continue priming the pump of learning that goes on in my “work” as a parent, too. Without it, I might as well go shopping instead. (As it is, I’ve discovered that I haven’t a clue anymore how to shop. Before I had kids and when I still worked “in my brain” all the time, shopping was a mindless diversion I got quite good at, even if I didn’t buy. But now, I am alas quite hopeless.)

But I may as well hang it up now. It’s all small stuff, proof positive of my inability to get any big stuff done. I should go shopping instead, or to a bar, or something.

Increasingly it’s a depressing exercise (swimming against this inexorable tide of what counts as “great”) and if you’re a woman, and particularly if you’re a mother who is raising kids, it seems there is nothing you can do right. All of it is just useless “small stuff,” none of it is “big stuff,” and I am sick to death of it all. Everywhere I look, I see men collectively dominating online intellectual / technological / political / design / elearning discourse. I see lots of men who are tiny insignificant schmucks like I am, but they still stand out more than the invisible women: they are part of the gender club. The women either aren’t there, or else it’s “understood” that they’re not dealing with things at the same level of Big Stuff importance as the men. I see this in every single sphere. When we start to complain (like I’m doing now), we sound like whining harpies. When we don’t complain and just do our work, it’s somehow not “big” enough. Even a discipline like art history (not present all that very much online, but very present offline), which is dominated to the teeth by female graduate students and female graduates (but, “naturally,” male professors, especially of the tenured variety), has only a tiny percentage of women who manage to develop “big stuff” presence. It is a relief to come across someone like Ana Finel Honigman or Ellen Harvey (see my I want to be a bad camera entry), and it makes so much sense for these two to be talking to each other and sharing their conversation with the reader — especially since they’re not necessarily pushing ostensibly “big stuff” in your face but instead are engaged in an intellectual questioning. Most of the time, however, the women (even in art history, for cryin’ out loud) can’t get a word in edge-wise.

Yeah, yeah, I know this isn’t what Paul Graham had in mind. But you know, Mr. G., fact is, when you write, you write from a gendered position. And when you write publicly, you’re going to have gendered readers. I’m not saying anyone should “tailor” their ideas accordingly — not at all — but I am saying that it’s important to keep this in mind. Unless, of course, you’ve ascended to such an empyreum of Big Stuff heights, that it doesn’t matter anymore. When that happens, stop and talk to a “little stuff” kid for a while.

Update/ coda: part of my personal skipping of “small stuff,” and it’s now coming back to bite me in the ass, is cutting back drastically on reading the blogs of my virtual friends (which begs the whole question of how good a virtual friend I am). Hence I’m late in reading about Elaine’s escalating plight in caring for her aged mother. If you don’t have kids and think, meh, this stuff about mothering doesn’t apply to me, think again, because chances are you have parents who are getting older (unless you’re one of the lucky ones hatched ex nihilo, i.e., an immortal, a god). You could end up mothering them (and it won’t be in your obituary, so it’s definitely “small stuff”: isn’t that a comfort?). For a glimpse of what that could be like, be sure to read Elaine’s entries here and here and here. The story isn’t over, either. Hang in there, Elaine.