The Coronacation Diaries, Episode 51

Faustian Bargains

Today was a 12-hour work day. I started working a 8:30 a.m., a perfectly respectable time, where I zoomed with a lovely Irish boy as part of a research study about Dropbox. He was in Dublin, and I was at my kitchen table, and did I mention that he was lovely? He laughed at all of my jokes. Swoon.

After that meeting, it was straight into prepping and then presenting a webinar and grading papers and conferencing with students and recording screencasts and emailing parents. Through it all, I was interrupted eleventy million times --to pour Cheerios, listen to a story, commiserate, answer a question, find socks. All day long, I fought with video editors and google forms and screencastify and AP Classroom and pretty much every piece of technology I own --but mostly, today, I fought with my son.

This post --before I got in a late night walk and a glass of wine-- was originally titled, "Anybody Want an Eleven-Year-Old?" All day long he was angry. Angry at me, angry at 6th grade math, angry at his English teacher, angry at Roblox, angry at the Switch, angry at the portable mouse, angry at the chicken noodle soup, angry at the lasagna, angry at the popsicle wrappers, angry at his socks, angry at life. There was much stomping and cursing and slamming of the doors. I kept telling him to just give me a minute. Let me finish my sentence. Let me finish this assignment. Let me finish this paper. Let me finish this project.

I'm not even sure I saw my daughter before 2 p.m. I woke her up in the morning, but then she hid out in her room all day, a hermit crab of a daughter.

If parenting-by-ignoring is a category, I am a winner.

When my partner ventured up from the basement to tell me about the meetings he was just in, about the kudos he received, about the projects he is working on, I tried to look away from the screen. I tried to truly listen, and to respond fully, even when I had no idea what he was talking about. I tried, but my brain was still going, scripting the next slides and writing the next paragraph.

Shonda Rhimes, in a commencement speech at Dartmouth half a decade ago (in those halcyon days when we actually had graduation ceremonies) said, 

"Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life...If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel a hundred percent OK; you never get your sea legs; you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost...Something is always missing."

 Today I was a decent teacher (as much as one can be, in this isolation). I was a decent webinar presenter. I was a distracted partner. I was a lousy parent. It's impossible to do all of the things well all of the time...especially when you are interrupted eleventy million times.

Working from home is not an easy job, it requires a lot of creativity 😆😆#CoronaVirusOutbreak pic.twitter.com/c0aUsRWdCz

— Pankaj Nain IPS (@ipspankajnain) March 17, 2020