DISSERTATION: Extensions, Burnout, and welcoming 2019

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing

Time for the first substantial update of 2019!

The first thing that I have been meaning to bring up is that I will likely have to extend this second design project past six months, strictly speaking. Having lost most of September to travel and QGCon, I was still hoping to be able to finish in five months to stay on-schedule with my ideal timeline for the making and writing of this here dissertation. But the truth is that while I was able to get a decent amount of work done in October and November, I involuntarily took almost all of December off, and I still haven’t quite managed to get back to work on my creative projects.

It’s not that I didn’t get anything done in December: I finished my syllabus and made a course pack for the course that I am teaching this winter, I made some last edits to my paper for Game Studies, which came out on December 31st, I’ve been working on materials to help organize future QGCons and have a record of the roles and responsibilities involved, working on conference submissions, updating my CV, and writing an interview piece between myself and another queer designer where we ask each other questions that I think is really pretty awesome. That’s on top of the usual holiday commitments and slowdowns. Not to mention that I have been cooking a lot more home-cooked meals, which is part of that invisible second shift that we don’t really talk about: my laundry is done, my bills are paid (thankfully), and I am working on all sorts of neat things…except for my creative work.

There are a number of factors here: my physical health, my mental health, and Tom’s work situation… which is a coded way of talking about the on-going harassment by process that he is facing, almost a year and a half after they first tried to bully him into resigning. On both December 20th and December 24th (the day before a commonly-celebrated holiday across the world), the RCMP dropped more work with strict deadlines onto our heads. These deadlines failed to take into account that everything is closed during the holidays, and practically everyone is on vacation, so there has been information that we’ve needed that we just can’t get as easily as under normal circumstances. And even if I didn’t want to prioritize this, the truth is that it is hard to think of much else.

On the health fronts: I have been sick off and on for the past two months with respiratory illnesses, colds, at one point I think a mild flu? I was socializing with a very sneezy five-year-old at one point who clung to me like a limpet, so, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. I think that I may have a deviated septum or other issue that is leading to frequent sinusitis and headaches. It’s on my list of things to check out.

Speaking of which, the reason why it’s still on a list might have something to do with the situation described in this article.

Honestly, I have never identified so much with an article about millennials or probably anything else. I feel this in my soul. And if this article is to be believed, I’m not the only one. I constantly feel at the edge of burnout, and I note exactly the kinds of behaviours written here — optimization means that it can be really hard to make time for things that have a low payout, or seem like they do, especially if they’re otherwise stressful for me. It can take me months to make a needed appointment, and I honestly just don’t have that much time for bad news or to be slowed down by issues that’ll require addressing them and then healing from them. I have a bone spur in my thumb that I had an appointment to deal with before we left Fort McMurray — but in Fort McMurray it was easier to say no to things because I would just not physically be in the same city that things were happening in. That left more time for things like doctors’ appointments.

On a similar note: I have whitecoat syndrome when it comes to taking my blood pressure taken, but in order to verify that, I was, again, in Fort McMurray, supposed to get a 24-hour monitor to verify. Since it makes me anxious, and since I had to leave Fort McMurray, that’s another thing I haven’t done yet. But, then again, I only just became eligible and received a Medicare card for Quebec, so that’s the excuse there.

Not to mention that, because of dysphoria and trans issues, I would really, really like to get top surgery. But the research exhausts me, and so does the idea of being out of commission for potentially months. Plus, since I haven’t been going to the gym regularly (too busy with everything in my own career plus the RCMP issues), I feel like I’m not in a good place for a surgery. They say that the healthier you are going into surgery, the easier the road to recovery will be. So I do want to get into better shape before I think about surgery.

All of this is of course a recipe for disaster — I have to admit that I have been ignoring these health concerns because they don’t feel like emergencies. But then, they will turn into emergencies. I know that. I know that as much as anyone quoted in that millennial article knows that they need to register to vote or whatever other thing they’re putting off on their to-do list.

…anyhow, what this means is that it is really difficult to be creative right now. And even things that aren’t strictly creative about the project feel pretty difficult. But I’m doing my best to work on it. At this point, it feels like this isn’t just about the ebbs and flows of creativity – this is about what late capitalism does to art, what it is doing to people. How come even the most “successful” of us can’t have a damn rest? It seems like we’re all just a step away from burnout.

So. I am hereby granting myself an extension until at the very least April for this project. I still feel strongly about the project — it feels big, meaningful, and like it is pushing me artistically. That excites me. I want to give this project the time that it needs and deserves.