red in the face

I just want to give a productivity shout-out to the Pomodoro Time Management App, an adorable little tomato that hangs out in my menu bar counting down twenty-five minute intervals while I work.

Apparently what my dissertation writing needed was for me to treat myself like a toddler who doesn't want to pick up her toys but will easily and readily be tricked into thinking it is a game - nay, a COMPETITION! - to breathlessly fling barbies back into a box before the timer goes ding. I will readily admit to typing faster and faster as I see my tomato timer count down the final three minutes, very afraid that if that 'ding' comes before I finish typing my inspired thoughts on imperial involvement in the Roman senate, my computer will explode, taking every good idea I might have with it.

The fancy (free) app has replaced my iPhone timer, which I had been using to mark off 20-30 minute timed writing sessions (and which was become disorienting because it made the same chime as my morning alarm. Finishing a paragraph was akin to hitting snooze and my body done get confused). What's nice about Pomodoro is that it gives you a five-minute break after each session, so now I read Slate with the same nervous drive for completion. While I used to casually wonder 'when is Dahlia Lithwick going to get the point?' I'm now frantically scrolling while looking at the clock thinking, 'oh, shit, I sure hope Lithwick gets to the point because I've got a minute thirty for this supreme court article to get INTERESTING'. The internet is starting to feel like a trailer to an action movie. 'In a world where Facebook only has five minutes to load albums of people you only tangentially know and vegan cooking blogs are limited to only nine different recipes for seitan and quinoa (pronounced keen-wah!) before the reader must go back to doing work, will the internet survive?'

Dun dun dun.

Let's hear it for the boys

A couple weeks ago on 30 Rock there was the following joke:

"I feel about as useless as a mom's college degree."

It's a great joke but I'm still not sure if I let out a 'ha' or an 'oof' when Kenneth said it. It felt a little below the belt, and the joke brought up a lot of issues I'm sifting through right now as I plan to go on the job market and the mister and I start to think about having kids. It so happens my two major life paths are diverging at the same point: right now could be the best time to have kids and right now could be the best time to start my career. And it seems like choosing one over the other is more serious than changing up a Netflix queue.

The joke also brought up a bigger issue of the options the women of this generation now have to have a family or not, to pursue a career and family, or to pursue career and then pursue a family. There's a lot of baggage still about staying at home or working and being a mom. As much as my own mother tells me that the first five years really isn't that long and I can easily pursue a career again once the kids are in school, I still have some feminist resentment that after those five years I will probably be back at the bottom of the ladder in my field. But I also feel liberated by the fact that I could completely walk away from this career path, raise a family, and be judged harshly by few people for doing it. I could render my PhD 'useless' and make bank as a 'mommy blogger', joining the cadre of highly intelligent, educated women who make a career out of their daily lives and frustrations.

I also realized the flipside to all of this is that the mister doesn't have this option, a fact which was made all the more apparent when we talked one morning about our parents' reactions to our career decisions. My parents never once pushed me towards any career path (although I do remember my dad telling me when I was 12 to become a flight attendant because I could travel) and they never expressed any concern about if or when I would have a job. The miso, on the other hand, was offered a franchise in place of a college education and faced an uphill battle with his parents upon leaving computers for dead languages. While I realize my parents probably assumed that I would 'meet a nice boy' someday and my education was more for life experience than ensuring an income that could support a family, I feel more liberated than subjugated. I was able to happily pursue my interests and now I can happily decide to stay at home and watch Sesame Street, while the burden falls on the mister, at least according to common opinion, to provide for the whole family. I know myself, and I know that I will always want to have my own income and will probably never look to my husband to be the sole provider, but a large number of stay-at-home moms, women who pursued advance degrees, are doing just that. Not to betray my feminists tendencies or anything, but I think I might be done bitching about having to stay at home. For now at least. When I'm up to my elbows in poo and cease to have adult conversations, I'm sure I'll have no end of feminist tirades. But for now, at least, let's hear it for the boys.

above you below me

I caught myself screaming at Says You on WGBH this morning because none of the 6 panelists could rightly identify 'travel down the road and back again' as the theme song to Golden Girls. I can't tell if I'm now above or below NPR programming.