The Sweet Spot
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
I often find myself thinking about this essay by Emily Morson in the Disability Studies Review. You should read the whole thing if you haven't before, but the essay's basic premise is that it's hard for disabled people to know exactly how much effort we should put in and how much we can/should push ourselves. It's not just that our disabilities limit the amount we can safely do; it's that disabled people often don't know what that amount is in the first place, and are actively discouraged from knowing it. We face pressure to push ourselves far past our limits as well as pressure to sit things out and view ourselves as completely helpless/incapable. Often, in weird ways, we face both at the same time!
I'm thinking about this a lot lately because my new living situation has actually changed the amount I can do. In fact, it has changed it repeatedly. The spring was a period of immense stress and change, but now that it's summer (and almost fall!) there is less sensory stress in my environment, there are fewer barriers to doing things in ways that work for me, and I have much more control over the mundane things that happen to me on a daily basis. The result of this is that I can actually do more! How much more? Heck if I know.
Meanwhile: in the spring I spent a lot of time telling myself "Wow, this is a lot of stress. Dealing with the stress should be your #1 priority right now." I cleaned up the upstairs of my house in a huge blitz and then rested and did things to make myself feel better, and if I got anything else done besides that, it was gravy. (The downstairs is almost all the way cleaned up too, but it took longer.) Then at some point a few weeks ago I looked at my schedule and was like, "Wait, but I also have a fall course to prepare and a novel to write; I need to step up these work efforts immensely if I'm going to make it in time." How immensely? How much can I actually increase my efforts? More than zero and less than infinitely! Heck if I know.
(Also, obviously, we are still in a pandemic. Stress and lack of productivity seem to be nearly universal right now even for abled folks. Getting vaccinated and watching the province reopen has given me spoon-intensive but fulfilling opportunities for social activities, while also making me anxious that these opportunities will have to close up again or will accidentally cause harm; this is yet another thing to balance.)
So, because I think about my schedule in terms of systems, it's been a process of making new systems, trying them out, realizing they're too much or not enough or don't prioritize things correctly in some way, revising the systems, trying again.
I think I might feel this in a different way than many other disabled adults, because I don't have an employer who manages my work hours for me. I have an academic job which has class times and various deadlines but no actual fixed hours, and a writing job which is more or less completely self-determined. I get to make up the systems for dealing with this, all by myself, from scratch! I kind of geek out a little over the process of doing this and enjoy it, but it is also very difficult.
Stagnation is death. Burnout is also a kind of death. But if I find myself creeping inexorably towards one of the other of these extremes, I have to remind myself that it's not a moral failing. All disabled people have to work this out by trial and error, often over and over again, because when our circumstances change, the exact amount of effort that's sustainable for us will also change. Error is part of the process, and it's simply a sign to adjust and keep trying.
Can you relate to this?