Day and Night Jobs - On Academia and Quilting

I love my day job. I am a college professor, which means I spend most days reading, writing, and talking to young people about the ideas that most inspire me. The hours are long and the mental effort is significant, but I also have a great deal of autonomy and flexibility.

There is one thing I don't love about my day job. In academia, there is often an expectation that your research and teaching should be your only life. Many academics have started to bring attention to this issue as it pertains to family life. Academics with small children, especially women who are expected to take on a disproportionate amount of child-rearing and house-running, are often judged as not being serious enough about their work when they try to balance work with family life. These attitudes are pervasive and ultimately harm us all.

I don't have (human) children, but I still feel the pressure to make my academic life the most important thing in my world. For many years, this meant that I didn't talk about my "hobbies" openly. I have always loved quilting and have been fortunate enough to be able to use my sewing skills for additional income. It has been my night job for almost all of grad school and through my now multiple academic appointments. Even the most well-meaning colleagues have responded with surprise when they find out out my quilting. Most often I hear, "Wow, how do you have time to do that?!?" Time is such a valuable commodity in academic life, so I get how this is their first question. But, I'm never quite sure how to respond. So here is the real truth about my day and night jobs.

In both research and quilting, I go through periods of slow contemplation and periods of frantic production. Over the years, I have found that I am most productive in my quilting when I am most productive in my research. Writing and thinking hard about my research areas generates a frenetic energy in me, but also exhausts my brain thoroughly. During my most productive research weeks, I can spend several hours a day lost in my own thoughts. By afternoon, I have no more thoughts, but a residual of energy. That's when quilting is a godsend. I can take that energy and use it for other creative endeavors. Before I realized this link between research and quilting, I would try to relax after a day of research and just sit anxiously. My brain was too tired to continue to work, but I was too amped up to really relax. Quilting is the perfect outlet in these situations. 

You don't have to take my word for it that there is an association between my research productivity and quilting productivity. Like any good social scientist, I have data -- even if it is just an n of 1. The 2018-2019 academic year has been one of my busiest and most productive. I designed and taught three new classes, published six articles, and gave countless hours to commenting on others' work. For those not in academia (or in other fields), this is a lot. Simultaneously, I finished at least six new quilts and many, many smaller quilted items.

And actually, it shouldn't really be a surprise that one can be very productive at complementary tasks. This is supported by some of the great research coming out right now about productivity and self-regulatory resources. In overly simplified terms, some tasks drain us of the cognitive and emotional resources necessary for doing what we think we should be doing. Other tasks generate those cognitive and emotional resources that allow us to get back to work. By keeping the draining and generative tasks in balance, we are much more able to meet whatever expectations we set for ourselves. For me, academic work and quilting work each are draining and generative, but in different ways. I'm able to use the energy generated from one to fuel the other.

So today, the day after I finished my final course of the semester, I'm taking it easy. Maybe I'll write for an hour or so. Maybe I'll quilt a bit. Maybe I'll watch the Golden Girls marathon that always happens to be on when I need it. No matter how I spend today, I know tomorrow I'll get up and do the thing that drains me most (grading) and reward myself with one of the things that generates the most energy (planning a new quilt).