"Not much, you?"

So this tweet came across my timeline last afternoon:

"there’s only ONE MONTH left in the decade. what have you accomplished?"

And my first reaction, because it's 2019, and I am thinking about 2019, was to say "I *SURVIVED,* jerks!"

But then I saw other people listing stuff: books they got published, plays they wrote, soulmates they found, Ph.D.s they finished....

And I began to feel very small and very futile again.

And this brings up all kinds of conflicted feelings. (And this is something I talked about, briefly, with the grief counsellor, and maybe I look into what regular sessions would cost later on so I can work on this):

"Why am I not doing MORE" vs. "we are not put on this Earth simply to grind for other people" vs. "Even if you did as much in your career as your dad did, in the end it would boil down to a recycling dumpster full of paper that is no use to anyone else"

And it''s hard to reconcile those three things and figure out....well, figure out what I'm SUPPOSED to do.

Or maybe there IS no "supposed to do" and that's part of the problem.

It's complicated further by the fact that I was a borderline-gifted child ("Borderline," because I was nominated for the program, but because of a series of stupid events, never got in, so I don't think I can actually call myself CERTIFIABLY "gifted." Gifted-adjacent, maybe. More like "freakishly good memory that makes her look smarter than she is" because I tend to lack that spark of creativity and lateral-thinking ability* that truly gifted individuals have)

(*At least for anything useful. I can come up with dumb gags using lateral thinking, which is a pretty useless gift, really)

But the problem with having been a Smart Kid in school - maybe it's not a problem any more, maybe this was a uniquely Gen X problem - is you are expected to Do Big Stuff. Whether that Big Stuff is tutoring the "slower" kids in your class (fun fact: that doesn't help your social standing one bit) or you're supposed to grow up and find the cure for cancer (or AIDS*) or broker world peace or write great novels....well, the "to those whom much is given, much is required" is very much in operation.



(*The "joke predictions" made in high school, at our senior-class "roast" included another girl and me "finding the cure for AIDS" (there was another, considerably less tactful, joke made about two of the guys in our class right after that). I guess I can take some comfort in that the other person named along with me has not been in the news for any great discoveries, so I guess she didn't find it either)

So anyway. That's something that's eaten at me for a long time. Couple that with my having "learned" somewhere along the way that "friendship is transactional!" (meaning: you have to EARN someone being your friend by doing stuff for them, and, in a bigger sense, you have to earn your place on this earth).

And couple it to the fact that I KNOW I've slacked off this fall, though I suppose with some justification, and I don't even feel like I have any successes I can point to: I don't feel like I inspired any students, my teaching is either going "meh" or "badly" depending on which class it is, I know my evaluations this fall are going to be terrible and I will talk about that in my post-tenure review this coming spring and am just basically bracing for the "you suck and work on getting better" letter as a result.

But yeah. It's very....triggering, to use a word I hate....to see other people breathlessly listing the books they've published, or the fact that they met and married their soulmate (especially when I'm still alone, and in fact, have lost several close friends to death in this decade), or that they created something wonderful, or....whatever. And I look at my life and feel like I've done jack squat. And yes, I'm sure part of it is a factor that for many of the people writing, the 2010s where the decade where they were moving from their 20s into their 30s, and this was the decade of my 40s, and we're at different places in life. But that doesn't help as much as you''d think.

And then this came across my Twitter feed:

"bless y'all with your one month left what have you done, but eff that noise. Productivity metrics are the bane of intellectual life so I'm not playing along (but if it makes u happy then...)" (Michelle Moravic)

And yes, okay, so maybe I'm doing something I hate (pooping on something that makes other people happy) as per Michelle's last statement  there. But yes, there's a point: Productivity metrics are awful because if you have an off semester for reasons beyond your control (illness, death of a loved one, some kind of gosh-awful life problem*), then you feel like a bad person for not getting more done at work. And that worry does eat at you ON TOP OF whatever bad thing you're dealing with in life.

(*I remember one semester a colleague had her identity stolen. Full-on stolen, like, "have to get lawyers involved and a new social security number" stolen, not just credit card fraud, which I've dealt with a couple times)


But anyway. Also, I am focusing mainly on this fall because another thing I do - which is definitely exacerbated by the whole "productivity metric" idea - is believing myself only as good as my last success, and forgetting about what I did before, so, looking at my CV, here are some things:

- Earned full professor in 2011 (so that JUST makes this decade)
- Published eight papers, two of which were with student researchers as co-authors
- Presented material at five different conferences
- Re-developed a class, taking over from someone who was retiring
- Had three research students working with me
- Served on two Master's committees where the student wrote a thesis
- Taught Ecology 24 times
- Taught Principles I something like 20 times
- Taught Biostats 10 times
- Taught Soils 11 times
- Taught Policy and Law 3 times
- Taught GIS something like 3 times
 

I guess that's SOMETHING. It's just not something like a *book* that will be widely read or paintings I can easily point to. And a lot of it does feel like stuff I either did for other people, or to fulfill some requirement other than what I really wanted to do.

In my "outside" life, I

- Served as Secretary for the AAUW chapter
- Served as recording secretary for the local Wesley Center board
- Served as chair of the scholarship committee for the local AAUW affiliate
- Served as an elder, and for part of that time, as Head Elder
- Presented a couple of sermons when the regular pastor was either out, or we were between pastors
- Dealt with chronic allergic hives (they are less now but I still get them, and sometimes I think stress makes them worse)
- Dealt with hypertension (Still have it but it seems well controlled)
- Survived massive budget cuts here in 2016 that led to a lot of retirements, a lot of furlough days, my having stress-induced stomach issues for half the year
- Survived a lot of other stuff: loss of maybe a dozen friends to death, loss of my favorite aunt, loss of my dad, loss of a favorite cousin to a stroke

And a few "fun" things:
- Developed a friendship more with someone I originally "met" online and she and I periodically meet up to go to weird museums or antique shopping and that is probably the best thing for me that came out of the 2010s to be honest.

- Made a few quilts, most of which I only got finished by having someone longarm them
- Knitted a few sweaters
- Made a bunch of amigurumi
- Loosened up a little about spending money on "foolish" things so I now get a couple fun subscription boxes periodically, and I got back into doll collecting in a small way
- Decided that the tiny Christmas tree I had used in my apartment was not enough, and invested in a 6 1/2 foot artificial tree to put up.


But honestly? I feel like I need more successes I can point to and more fun. Though maybe my role is, as so many things listed up there, to be someone who "served as" - doing the dull but probably-important jobs that no one really thinks about, but that no one else actually wants to do because they're behind-the-scenes and don't carry a lot of perks....

It is kind of hard to reconcile what your "likely role" is with what you "would like to do, really" if those are two different things...