It's the weekend

Finally. (It's funny, though. The week seems long, and yet, at the same time, it seemed to fly by).

I did get my hour of exercise in yesterday afternoon...I had budgeted an hour for the car-stuff and it only took 15 minutes. (The mechanic came and told me: "Your battery tested bad right away, so we just replaced it." Bonus: it was under warranty so I didn't pay a cent for the fix). Also, lab got done earlier than expected.

Scheduling has been very tight lately. Part of it is that 14 hours is the "new" full-time (12 officially is, but most of us teach closer to 14, because of attrition of staff). Also, I have three labs this semester - six hours in class, for which I get three hours of credit. (I'm not complaining, exactly, but I do wish that the administration was more cognizant of that when they calculated loads and credit-hours produced and such...people who have heavy lab-loads (there are a couple who have even more than I do) look like slackers by comparison because they have fewer FTEs or whatever they're called next to their names).

Wednesday night at the church board meeting, I was looking over at one of my friend's smartphones - we were trying to figure out the date for something - and I got a peek at her schedule. (She's the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, plus she and her husband run a business together).

In among all the meetings was "Pedicure."

And that made me kind of sad. No, not sad that she was going to get pedicures and I'm not (I wouldn't choose that as a free-time activity; I don't like people touching my feet). But sad that I don't do that for myself. I don't really have anything in my schedule that is a for-me appointment: everything I do that's not work or volunteer-work related is kind of shoehorned in around the things I "MUST" do.

Even things that I pretty much need to do, like piano practice (why take lessons if you don't work to improve?) and exercise (again, I need that - not just for my physical health but I find I'm happier and sleep better when I'm regularly exercising) kind of get shoehorned in. (Well, okay, the exercise I get up at 4:30 am most days to do, so that is scheduled. But golly day is it at a time I'd rather be sleeping. But I know if I tried to do it in the afternoon, life would intervene and I wouldn't get to it a lot of days, or I'd be trying to work out at 9 pm).

I really need to work to be better at convincing myself that I need to schedule in time for myself. I guess I learned too well the old "Homework first, then you can play" dictum of my childhood. The problem is, when you're an adult - the homework is FOREVER....work expands to fill the time available. Or you get asked to do more stuff.

I am periodically better at doing it....occasionally, I've been able to muster up a "no, I have plans" when someone asks me if I'm doing anything over the weekend (when they are angling at "There is this thankless task I'd like you to participate in") even if those plans are "just" doing my laundry and reading a Georgette Heyer novel.

I think perhaps some of my difficulty in saying "no" to stuff like that stems from two sources:

First: I've had too many people pull the old "But you don't have a family to take care of!" guilt trip on me, and I've kind of internalized it. But dangit - just because I don't have kids or a husband to take care of (or elderly parents, or a disabled relative, or whatever) doesn't mean that my time belongs to everyone else and I don't get to have a life. But that's a constant fight; it does seem that when (a) you are an unattached person and (b) you are someone who has been generous with time/talents over the years, people come to expect certain things.

And second, I think it comes down to something I first saw linked from Not Martha: Ask culture vs. Guess culture. In a nutshell: people who grew up in an Ask "culture" (families have different cultures; we're not necessarily talking different ethnicities here) figure they can ask for anything they want, and "no" is the worst thing they're likely to hear. Those of us who grew up in a Guess "culture"....it's a little different. You don't ask for stuff you know you are unlikely to get. You don't want to put other people out by making them have to say no.

I know some people have characterized Guess people as "passive aggressive," and while that may IN SOME CASES be true, it is not true of all of us. Many Guess people don't want to hurt others' feelings, or don't want to make people uncomfortable, and they become good at gauging what is and is not a reasonable request.

And so, if you're a Guess person, when someone asks you something, your immediate reaction is "They must think this is a reasonable request; they expect me to say yes to it." And so, if it's NOT a reasonable request, the Guess person is stuck in one of two unfortunate cognitive loops: "This is a very demanding person with a sense of entitlement" or "My expectations must really be off; this person thinks it's OK to ask me for this even though I don't." (I generally fall into the second camp here).

When, in a lot of cases, it's actually that the Ask person is going, "I'll probably hear "No" but what if I hear "Yes"? You can't get what you want if you don't ask."

This is regularly handed to me as an epiphany, because I teach. It happened the other day. A student in one of my classes came up and asked for an extra-credit assignment. (Longtime readers may know of my dislike of the concept of extra credit). At first I sighed a bit - after all, I had a "please don't ask" line in my syllabus explaining why I didn't give extra credit. But then I looked at her and said, "I'm sorry, no. The way this class is structured - it's a Gen Ed class that lots of people teach - we have to be consistent, and one way to do that is not having extra credit in the class."

She looked sad but said, "Okay."

(Perhaps part of my discomfort with being put in a position to have to say no is that early in my teaching career, I wound up dealing with a couple people who WOULD NOT ACCEPT A NO. They would try to wear the professor down by arguing or continually asking. And so, when someone asks me something I know I have to say No to, I get that little knot of memory in my stomach - is this person going to try to browbeat me into saying yes?)

(One of the commenters over at the site I linked suggested there's a third type - the Takers. And that "those people suck." Heh.)

I suspect some of this is bound up with being a fundamentally shy person. (Yes, I am, despite my volubility on the blog and my tendency to comment, or perhaps over-comment, on some people's websites). I don't like being put on the spot, I don't like being made to feel "bad" for saying No to something. I don't like being pushed to make a decision in a hurry.

But, I don't know. I do need to get better about making time for myself and sticking to that and not saying things like, "But I collected a bunch of student labs today and even though I am tired and really only have about an hour open this evening I MUST GRADE THEM TONIGHT."