One dollar short and one day late... a.k.a A room of one's own

This week, as I yet again squeeze in a bit of work here, a bit of work there, a bit of parenting here (and there), some household maintenance, putting out fires (not literally), trying to realize vacation plans, I realize that I either:

Want a wife

Want a room of one's own

After all, who wouldn't?

But then I thought about it, really thought about what it would be like. Which led me to the conclusion that I can't imagine what it would be like.

I don't literally mean having a room of my own or having a wife. I mean the idea that lies behind those phrases: to have the freedom from responsibility that would allow me to ignore everything else and just concentrate on the work I need to do. That's essentially what Woolf is saying in wanting a room of one's own - it's the desire for a space, behind a door, where no one knocks unless the house is on fire. When you, the person behind the door, are the one who decides when the door gets opened again.

I think I cannot imagine what it would be like because I've been working in a piecemeal fashion for so long that it's become a habit that I don't know I could break. Though since I haven't had the luxury of trying, I'm not going to say I couldn't. If I had the opportunity, I'd give it my best shot.

A few weeks back, when I was interviewed about being a single parent and student, the interviewer asked if I'd been accommodated when asking for extensions etc. and I'd replied I'd never asked for one then (and only once ever asked for one, but that was years later after I'd taken a battering during the qualifiers). I explained that since I'd never not been a parent while in school, I'd just developed the discipline to start projects early so they'd get done on time.

After all, when you've got kids that have got to be fed, washed, sent to school, supervised, whatever else, you can't just pull an all-nighter and expect the next day to be normal (or even survivable!) The discipline to start early became a necessity, and the habit stayed with me, even after the kids were old enough to fend for themselves if I had pulled an all-nighter. In fact, I was teased in graduate school for being the one who had the all the reading done all the time (not that I actually did, but I got teased that I did).

But I've always had this image in the back of my mind about how my child-less peers approached their work - writing and reading when the mood hit them, sometimes for days at a time, eating leftovers, or surviving on noodles and coffee, able to throw themselves into a project wholeheartedly and achieve a kind of intensity of scholarly activity that I could never hope for in the piecemeal I-can-read-this-one-article-while-I-cook-supper way that I studied.

But now I'm wondering. Would such intensity make me a better scholar? Would being able to ignore my family members and their bodily needs for food, clean clothes etc. have made me smarter than I am? Would I struggle as much as I do if I'd had that time to throw myself intensely into my work?

I always feel like that country song "one dollar short and one day late" and I gaze jealously at this image of freedom, where I can work on the dissertation for days on end, only emerging for the breaks *I* need, to eat the food *I'm* hungry for, to stop when *I* want to stop. Not when I have to make dinner, or pick someone up from somewhere. Not to have those thoughts intrude into my reading that I have to remember to pay that bill, or put the garbage out tonight, or pick up that item from the store before Friday.

Pathetic, ain't it? My fantasy is a life where I can work whenever I want to!