No busyness
During my PhD, from 2016 to 2020, I worked a lot. I didn't receive support from my supervisors. They would not be the persons who'd help me with my career. In fact, in the final year of my PhD, my first supervisor plagiarised my work. I complained about his behaviour, and the university removed him from my supervision. The second supervisor took his side in that situation and I refused to see her in the final year of my PhD. Technically, I was supervised by the head of (neoclassical) economics who had not read my work until it was finished. She was a kind person, but stepped in very late, after the university removed my supervisor from my supervision (though he retained his job as a senior lecturer), and degrowth certainly was not her area of interest or specialism. My PhD was funded internally by the business school, so I could not finish it elsewhere. At that time, I realised that I had to work a lot. This continued into my post-doc. I would work evenings and weekends. I felt that this pattern of work was wrong. It clashed with my worldview as well. It felt hypocritical to write about degrowth and transformations, reduced productivity and slow living while working non-stop.
Around me, I observed how this work pattern was normalised in academia. Fellow humans would stay at the university in northern Sweden until 10 pm. My colleague and I jokingly called having coffee at night at the university a "10 pm fika" (there is a fika break usually every morning at 10 am). Those fellow humans in temporary and precarious positions who have not made it in academia (such as postdocs) would work especially much. They would struggle to say no to additional tasks such as marking and teaching outside their contracted hours in a hope that such compliance would make them more appreciated by those above them. Wherever I look around me in academia, every human being is busy and overworked. Burn-outs are the norm. Fellow humans in academia would send emails late at night and during weekends. They would struggle to find the time for meaningful activities such as supervision meetings and sharing experiences. Lunch breaks would always be meetings rather than breaks.
It feels so odd how normal things such as talking about life during a lunch break or not working on a weekend seem radical and transformative in academia. After being in academia for many years, I asked myself, what am I doing with my life? On both the somatic and spiritual levels I felt such deep revulsion towards phrases such as "I've got too much on my plate" and "I've been extremely busy". I began to ask myself how I could reclaim myself from this (over)performance culture, how I could manifest the things that I value rather than those I despise, how I could become a better role model for fellow humans including students. I value so deeply gentleness, care, sufficiency, simplicity, presence, slowness, authenticity. For me, aligning my values and behaviours has been a journey. I'm still on this path.
In the coming months, I want to dive deeper into feelings and emotions that I am experiencing on this path. There are certainly conflicting feelings and emotions. For example, I am feeling liberated, calm, joyful, and authentic when I work intuitively and take my time. Yet, at times I still feel residual guilt and shame.
There are negative financial consequences to my mode of being. Something that helps me is practising extreme minimalism. I practise extreme minimalism for ecological, spiritual, aesthetic and health-related reasons, but financial wellbeing is one of the positive effects that this practice has. I can take my time and say yes to those unfoldings that I genuinely value and no to those that are detrimental to my life and do not align with my values. If I had a car, a bigger home, would shop more, travel to far-away destinations, I would need a lot more money than I need currently. Then I would feel the pressure to make it in academia. I think that many fellow humans feel exactly this pressure, and it reinforces overwork and busyness. In the worst cases, it encourages violent, exploitative, abusive, instrumental behaviours.
