Author Archives: Ingrid Biese

Clarity comes with action

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I’ve been a bit under the weather during the past few days, and as a result haven’t really had the energy to see a lot of people nor have I read as much as I usually do; two activities that are my greatest source of inspiration. And since I haven’t had a lot of new impulses, I find that I’m sort of at a loss of what to write about on my blog this week.

While I was working on my thesis, whenever I would feel stuck and just sit there staring at the blank screen, not knowing how to even start, my husband would say, “Read something!” He had noticed a pattern, which I just hadn’t seen. When I read other people’s work I would get ideas and feel inspired, and it would help me get started. So now a days that’s what I do, whenever I find myself stuck, I take a break and read. Sometimes, however, I forget and have to be reminded.

I horseback ride in my free time. Sometimes if I’m doing a particularly difficult exercise with the horse, and if I keep getting it wrong, my instructor will say “If you get it wrong and continue doing the same thing over and over again it’s going to continue going wrong in the same way again and again. Try doing something differently, anything – your posture, the position of your hands, how fast you’re going – anything.” She is right of course and although this is so simple it is sometimes hard to see. And the same goes for life. If you want your life to be different, you’re going to have to do something differently, and if you don’t know what, just start with something, anything. If you continue doing what you have always done, your life will be what it has always been.

I’ve mentioned before how I often get asked for advice on how to opt out, or rather how to find a new lifestyle to opt in to. People want to hear about what other people have done, thinking maybe they will hear a story that they can adopt or duplicate. But it isn’t that simple. Finding what it is that is going to feel meaningful and work in one’s own life is so individual. And there are no short cuts.

But the advice that I sometimes do give when pressed (because although I’m something of an expert on the opting out phenomenon, I’m not an opting out coach or consultant) is that clarity comes with action. And when you’re looking to change your life, there are two things that I think are important.

First, talk to people. Talk to anyone really about your thoughts, your dreams, about what you think you want to do, or just that you want to do something different but you don’t know what. Who knows, someone may have ideas, or even know of opportunities, but also saying things out loud usually helps you see things in a new light and clarify what it is you really want.

And second, try different things. If you don’t do anything differently, if you don’t try anything new, like my riding instructor says, things will continue being the same as they have always been. Again, who knows, one day you might actually try something that you love that turns out to be the thing that you end up opting in to. But if you never try anything new, you will never find anything new.

To be honest, I had no idea how much I was going to love doing research when I opted out and in. I knew I wanted to study more sociology and social psychology, but it wasn’t until I actually started working on my PhD that I realized I wanted to be an academic.

The same can be said about this blog. I was thinking that I should have some sort of platform where I could write and talk about opting out, but honestly I felt reluctant to start blogging. I had never done it before, and although I had been on social media to a certain degree, I really hadn’t been very active. Unexpectedly, this blog has turned out to be a great source of energy for me. I like writing, and as an academic, writing non-academic texts is not only fun, it feels incredibly liberating. Also, the comments I get from my readers here on the blog, on other social media, and in person give me the energy and inspiration to keep writing. It’s exciting to be involved in debates and discussions around the topics that I feel are relevant to this phenomenon that we call opting out, and to how we will organize and reinvent our private and professional lives in the future.

So, now that I’m better, I’m looking forward to inspirational lunches and discussions again. How about it, you know who you are!

Saying no

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I am in a very good place right now. I’m basically writing full-time this spring, which I love. I’m happy to be involved in so many exciting writing projects with talented colleagues. I’m happy to be doing work that feels meaningful. I’m also happy that, at the moment at least, my professional life allows me the leeway and freedom to really be there for my kids and other loved ones when they need me.

Unfortunately despite all this freedom, or maybe because of it, I also feel a little tired because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to replicate myself and be in many places at the same time. Nor do I have the magical powers of the likes of Hermione Granger to jump back and forth in time in order to maximize my potential (yes, I have been reading Harry Potter recently). This of course is unfortunate because I also seem to have trouble saying no. Or I think I at least need to get better at it.

This is somewhat ironic since I did opt out and I did manage to say no to a lifestyle that wasn’t working for me. But I have also found that although I have thought long and hard about what my terms are, how I want to work, how I want to live, and what I am and am not willing to give up, sometimes sticking to these terms, or even remembering them, can be difficult. And much of the time, I just get so excited by prospective collaboration, projects, and activities, that I sometimes forget what this really entails time wise. Though, to be honest, that does feel like a luxury problem.

But this issue of not being able to say no isn’t only a luxury problem. It’s also a cultural and societal phenomenon. According to Kevin Ashton, author of How to Fly a Horse – The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, we are not taught to say no. Actually we are taught the opposite, to not say no, because no is rude, it is, and I quote, “a rebuff, a rebuttal, a minor act of verbal violence. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.” However, according to Ashton, the most creative and successful people regularly say no, that’s what gives them time to be creative and successful.

Being taught never to say no is especially true for women and girls. As a girl, I remember being taught how important it is to be pleasant and agreeable. To the point where still today, as an adult and professional, I sometimes feel guilty and worry about disappointing people and letting them down. I go to great lengths to be diplomatic; it has become second nature. I’m sure this is a good trait, but it doesn’t help to be diplomatic in all situations. Especially if you’re trying to assert yourself and get the job done.

According to Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, it gets even more complicated. Growing up, girls are taught not only to be agreeable, they are also taught to provide limitless emotional support to others without expecting anything in return. They are taught to attract boys and pay breathless attention to their needs, and as a result they don’t really have any authority to express their own needs and desires, which in turn places them in a submissive position in society.

Yup, that’s pretty bad. And completely at odds with what is expected when building a career. Not only do women have gender stereotypes, glass ceilings and what-not to overcome, they also have to rewire their brains and unlearn these deep-rooted socially taught behavioral patterns.

Well, I need only to look myself in the mirror, because I can definitely recognize this unhealthy ingrained need to be a ‘good girl’, and I also recognize that this is something that we need to shake because it really isn’t getting us anywhere. So to finish, I will simply say, here’s to saying no! Sometimes at least…

The search for happiness

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After writing last week’s blog post A meaningful existence, I was inspired to finally read a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years now: Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich. I bought it because I was interested in the pathological search for happiness and need to think positively in Western society, but there are so many good books to read that I just didn’t get around to it (and to be honest, I didn’t need to read this particular book to finish my thesis). Lately, however, I feel like I am being bombarded with happiness advice on the Internet. I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say that I see posts, articles, interviews etc. on how to be happy in my Facebook newsfeed several times a week, if not daily.

This bothers me, because this obsession to find happiness is missing the target. Yes, I as much as anyone else want to be happy, who wouldn’t. But happy doesn’t happen on its own. It’s a feeling that is the result of something else. I believe that it is the result of meaning and fulfillment. That is what Professor Catherine Sanderson, who I quoted in last week’s post, was getting at when she says that happiness comes from figuring out what you’re good at and finding ways to do it. That is what Barbara Ehrenreich, who I quoted in my post The irony of work-life balance, meant when she talked about losing oneself in one’s work. Having a meaningful existence is gratifying, doing meaningful work – paid or non-paid – is fulfilling, and when we feel fulfilled, we also feel happy. Suddenly the rest, the things we may think will make us happy, like the perfect body, the latest fashion, the perfect house, or whatever else, doesn’t matter so much anymore. It can be nice to have nice things, I as much as anyone else like nice things, but these things are an extra bonus, and not instrumental in making us happy.

Searching for happiness on its own is like searching for a great sensation, a great taste for example, without realizing that what we really need to look for is the food that provides the great taste.

In Smile Or Die, Ehrenreich takes a critical look at the positive thinking and the search for happiness that has become such a great part of our culture in the past decades. At the end of the 1990’s, the positive psychology movement was instrumental in making happiness and positive thinking a collective obsession. Happiness and optimism were linked to everything from health to career success, and perhaps not surprisingly became a great hit in the media, not to mention among motivational speakers. Happiness became the solution to all mundane problems, and wasn’t particularly difficult to sell, I mean like I said before, who wouldn’t want to be happy.

However, this obsession with positive feelings and happiness can also have a dire effect on our personal development and our relationships with others. For one, it leads to self-absorption. Also, refusing to have anything to do with anyone who doesn’t trigger only good feelings about ourselves, not only cuts us off from reality, it also effectively protects us from any deeper insights into ourselves or our lives. For that we need the whole scale of emotions, both god and bad. Plus, there is of course the risk of ending up very lonely.

Ironically, research has shown, that this obsessive search for happiness hasn’t made people any happier.

Ehrenreich ends her book by dishing out her own happiness advice. And no, she doesn’t succumb to doing what she is criticizing. It is all condensed in one paragraph:

“Happiness is not, of course, guaranteed even to those who are affluent, successful, and well loved. But that happiness is not an inevitable outcome of happy circumstances does not mean we can find it by journeying inward to revise our thoughts and feelings. The threats we face are real and can be vanquished only by shaking off self-absorption and taking action in the world. Build up the levees, get food to the hungry, find the cure, strengthen the “first responders”! We will not succeed at all these things, certainly not all at once, but – if I may end with my own personal secret of happiness – we can have a good time trying.”

And I couldn’t agree more. Let’s not look for happiness. Let’s look for meaning and let’s feel good about what we do. Only then will we be happy.

A meaningful existence

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A friend of mine once asked me if I don’t get tired of people always coming up to me at parties to tell me their opting out story. And the honest truth is no, I never get tired of it. I wish more people would tell me their stories.

It’s true; people often come up to me to talk about opting out. The other day, a woman in my kids’ school asked me if I was the one with the thesis (I had recently been interviewed for our local newspaper), and told me that she is also one of those women. This happens to me quite a lot.

I think it’s wonderful that people recognize themselves in my research, and that it touches them somehow. I feel honored that many want to share their experiences with me. I often hear that I have put words on feelings they haven’t been able to verbalize or analyze themselves. I take this as a great compliment and a sign that my research is close to reality and has managed to capture shared experiences. Because that is what they are, shared experiences. We experience similar struggles in our lives when, for example, trying to combine work with family, or simply trying to manage in an ever more hectic working environment, even though we seldom talk about it. Unfortunately it has been a bit of a taboo to admit that maybe we aren’t doing great when we’re trying to have it all. Many people seem almost surprised that others seem to feel the same way, that they aren’t unique in their frustration, their fatigue, and their turmoil.

Another thing people often want to talk about is what these women opted in to after having opted out. Many women I meet dream of opting out, but don’t know how to go about it, nor do they know what they could do instead. And that is the thing, it is hard to imagine anything other than what we know – it is hard to imagine alternative ways of living and working, which is what people who long to opt out are looking for. Their current lifestyle might not feel meaningful, maybe the stress they experience has a negative effect on their wellbeing, or maybe they are just simply overwhelmed. At the same time there is all this hype and advice on how to be happy, so we expect more of life that just struggling to get by. And rightfully so; this is our only life, we might as well make the most of it.

But unfortunately there is no recipe for opting out and in to new meaningful and manageable lifestyles. The women I have talked to opted in to everything from housewife to entrepreneur. Some have taken top positions in organizations – but on different terms – some have gone back to school and then embarked on a new career. Different people obviously want very different things in their lives and some people want to opt in to types of work that others want to opt out of. The bottom line is that people who opt out, are doing so from a certain way of living and working that is expected of them but that just isn’t working for them in order to adopt a way of life that not only works for them, but that allows them to thrive.

We are all susceptible to other’s expectations and to what other people think we want, or should want. We don’t always realize that we may be living other people’s dreams and not our own. People who opt out typically spend a lot of time soul searching before they actually take the step, and when they finally figure out what it is they are going to opt in to instead, they are pretty clear on who they are, what is important, and what they are and aren’t willing to give up.

Unfortunately there is no magic recipe, but I did read something that I think really hit the nail on its head. Among all the advice on how to find happiness circulating on the Internet, I saw one post that really resonated with me. According to Professor Catherine Sanderson one way to be happy is simply to “figure out what you do well and find ways to do it.” When you do something well you generally feel good about what you do, which in turn feels meaningful. And a meaningful existence really helps when dealing with whatever it is life hands you.

(Read more about Professor Sanderson’s thoughts on happiness here.)

Thinking out of the box (or working two hours per day)

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A few days ago, Swedish Professor Bodil Jönsson caused a bit of a stir in Swedish media. In an interview, she stated that, considering our technological developments and how productive we have become during the past decades, we should really be working much shorter days. She even goes as far as to say that two hours per day could be sufficient. Yes, you read correctly, two hours.

Now I think that is fantastic. I don’t know if I agree with the two hours, I still need to think about that, but I greatly admire what Jönsson is doing. She is questioning the status quo; she is thinking out of the box.

The working culture and career models that dominate today haven’t always been standard. They are a result of industrialization, and were developed after the Second World War. In the history of the world, 70 or so years is not a very long time, however, it is long enough that we have difficulties imagining an alternative. Since this is the only working culture we know, it has become a ‘truth’ – and it seems like the only right way of working and living. Imagining other truly different models or ideologies is difficult, and if we can imagine them, they may seem silly, unethical, or simply wrong.

Two-hour workdays may sound crazy, but that is assuming that being busy, efficient, competitive, and constantly striving for greater profits is something to aim for. And this is exactly what Jönsson is questioning. She is calling for a re-examination of the ethical and moral reasons for working the way we do. In our current working culture, we are defined by what we do, and advancing in our careers provides us with power and a sense of worth. Jönsson is asking why we still live according to these ideals, considering what we have achieved. Who really benefits from them?

At the same times she argues that we need to re-evaluate what is considered real and valued work. But this idea of two-hour workdays doesn’t only entail less work. Jönsson argues that we need to think about how we work; we need to find different ways of working. And let’s be honest, eight hours in an office doesn’t necessarily mean eight hours of efficient work. On the contrary, I think at a certain point energy levels just go down the longer we stick around cooped up in the office.

I might still be undecided regarding whether or not two hours is what we should strive for, but I do know that the hectic pace we have today is not doing us any favors. This need to stay lean, flexible, and competitive, combined with the downsizing and constant streamlining we’re seeing in organizations today, is stressful. And negative stress can have dire effects on health. It is simply time to create and adopt more sustainable ways of working. And this doesn’t mean we should achieve less, we just need to achieve it differently, and yes, maybe re-evaluate what’s important.

I admire Jönsson for her creativity and audacity, and her courage to voice opinions that may be outside of people’s comfort zones. More of us should try to come up with ideas that question the status quo and completely contradict what we know as ‘true’. And while you’re doing that, please ignore anyone that says that this is not the way things are done, because only then can we instigate real change.

As some wise person once said, “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

The promise and perils of social media

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When I was little I had a whole bunch of pen pals and I had lots of cool stationary. My kids don’t have pen pals. They don’t have stationary either. If they did, they would never use it. They don’t ever need stamps.

It sometimes makes me a bit sad that they will never know the magic of a hand-written letter. I remember how special it was to receive a letter. They didn’t come very often, and when they did it was a wonderful and exciting surprise. I couldn’t wait to rip the envelope open. First I would read through the letter quickly and then I would go back and read slowly, savoring every word.

Writing a letter, getting a hold of a stamp, and posting it was an investment in time and effort. It wasn’t something you did for only a sentence or two, like emails or status updates. In a way it was like a diary entry for me – a bit therapeutic actually – because I had to think about what I wrote, and I wrote about my experiences and what I thought about them. I didn’t expect an instant response; that of course never occurred to me. And I still have letters saved somewhere in a box, maybe for me to read years from now, or maybe for my children and their children to read after I’m gone.

No, my kids don’t have pen pals; they have social media. Before long they will have WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or whatever else will be trending. Their messages will be short and spontaneous, and frequent. They may not contain words, only pictures, and they will be easily deleted and forgotten. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Social media can be pretty great. Personally, I get a lot of pleasure from being connected. I’ve been able to find friends from my past who I had lost touch with. I know what people – friends and relatives I would otherwise hear from or see very rarely – are up to, sometimes on a day-to-day basis. And I have this blog! I find that I make less of an effort to call or meet friends in person, but I do keep in touch virtually. You win some and you lose some.

A couple of years ago I came across a book by Sherry Turkle titled Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, which has really stayed with me. (If you don’t want to read her book you can also watch her TED talk ‘Connected, but alone?’) Turkle talks about how social networks can have an adverse effect on individuals’ identities. In their messages and updates, people present a self they want to be. They keep it short and take out the messiness that makes up a real person’s life, and as a result, they are flattened and “reduced to their profiles.” They give less of themselves, and also expect less in return, and by communicating in short sentences, abbreviations, and emoticons, there isn’t really much chance of a complex dialogue. This would be fine, except that it is through dialogues that people learn about themselves and form their identities.

But it’s not only that. It can also be a problem that communication is so fast. People post without thinking, and sometimes you see the most horrendous comments. There has recently been a discussion about WhatsApp and how it is used in my kids’ school. Kids bully other kids, perhaps without even realizing it. They may say something awful about someone, and to make matters worse, it is done publicly, and shared with everyone because it is done on social media. While this may be hurtful and have long-term effects for the person on the receiving end, for everyone else the feed may already have been filled with so much more that no one even remembers it. It’s like it never was. Maybe there’s a reason the age limit for WhatsApp is sixteen?

But I don’t believe in going back, we can never go back, only forward. I do, however, believe we need to think about what kind of a culture we want and are creating together. We need to think about what values we pass on to our children, and about the examples we set. If we are obsessed with how many likes or followers we have, they will be too. And if we don’t show respect and think first before we blurt things out, neither will they. Social media is not just a form of communication; it’s a virtual space where people hang out. We need to be there with our children and our students, showing and teaching them what is okay and what is not; what is important and what is destructive. We need to make sure social media is the positive medium it was meant to be.

Longing for the authentic

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I’m reading a novel at the moment about a housewife in the 1950’s and I’m struck by the quiet and the sheer boredom that hits me on every page as she tries to keep busy in her empty apartment, thinking up new household chores just to pass the hours until her husband and kids come home from work and school. As I turn the pages I feel quite happy that I’m not her; that I don’t have to deal with the insecurity of not being independent, and the lack of confidence that comes from having nothing that’s my own.

I’ve been told that I sometimes make it sound like I think things have taken a turn for the worse, that they were better in the good old days, especially for mothers. Well, some things are worse than back in the day – global warming for one. But a lot of things are better, and I would certainly not want to go back in time. As a woman, I really like being able to vote, having a career, and being able to autonomously make decisions about my life. I like that my husband and I share household chores.

And things aren’t only better for women. Modern medicine and inventions like the vaccine have increased life expectancy; people live longer and living standards are higher. No, I certainly wouldn’t want to go back in time. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be critical of life as we know it today.

In the Nordic countries at least, the past few years have witnessed some sort of retro-housewife trend, where the 50’s housewife is romanticized. I’ll paint you a picture: the perfect house, the perfect wife, pretty cupcakes… I’ve been told it has become a question of status to be able to pick one’s kids up early from daycare (although it’s of course mothers who do this, not fathers.). This is certainly not what feminists had in mind when they struggled for decades to give women the same rights and opportunities as men to pursue a career and to have a life beyond the private sphere of the home.

And I do love cupcakes, don’t get me wrong. But this trend is a bit ironic, because I don’t think any of us, if we think about, really want to go back to the 1950’s. However, I do think a lot of people experience a longing for something else – for a simpler life. There is something about contemporary society that is completely different from anything we have ever experienced before. Yes, we have had globalization and travel since ancient times. We have had media and consumption. But it is the sheer speed and intensity of life and work today that makes living in the 21st century different. Way of life in contemporary society has a deep effect on us, on our identities, and on how we make sense of everything.

According to David Boyle, author of Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life, there is a longing for the authentic and the “unspun”. Downshifting trends and the increased demand for natural, organic, simple, and sustainable products suggest exactly this: that we are simply getting sick of “the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced.” Now that I can certainly relate to.

Speaking of feminism, one of my favorite quotes of all time is one by Caitlin Moran from her book How to Be a Woman:

“We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42% of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”

Control and wellbeing: Scientific proof

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I knew it! Here I have been talking about how important having control over when, where, and how you work is for wellbeing, and the other day I opened the newspaper to find that there has been a study that shows – drum roll please – that having control over when, where, and how you work has a direct affect on wellbeing. Notice how this is exactly what I said? (See also my earlier post ‘Control’)

Seriously though, Orfeu Buxton, Associate professor at Penn State, and colleagues conducted a study of 474 employees in the US. Half of the group had complete control over when and where they worked and the other half – the control group (ironically the group without control) – didn’t. The control group, in other words, worked like most people still work in the corporate world, and elsewhere.

The group that had complete flexibility (real flexibility, this is not the same as the flexible time systems that many companies offer their employees) experienced less work-family conflict and actually got more sleep, than did the control group. And this, in turn, had a direct effect on their wellbeing.

The thing about flexible time (for example, being able to come in an hour earlier or later and in turn leave earlier or later in the afternoon), that many of you probably are familiar with, is that while it sounds like a good idea, research has shown that it actually creates a feeling of having less time. Flexible time was first developed especially for women to alleviate the challenge of combining a career with care responsibilities. But the flexibility in flexible time is, in reality, a relative thing. For many women especially, flexible time simply allows work to more effectively spill over into other areas of life. This means taking work home, and working while also caring for children. And I’ve seen another study once that shows that multi-tasking – doing several things at the same time – leads to an acute feeling of time running out. This intensity of time is simply stressful.

Men use flexible time differently. Since they don’t have care responsibilities to the same extent as women (women continue to do of the brunt of care and household chores, whether or not they are pursuing a career), men can use flexible time as it was intended – to give them some more freedom and flexibility. And as men generally have more to say regarding workplace policies and culture, organizations don’t necessarily recognize the problem.

However, this study on control and wellbeing conducted at Penn State, shows that when we don’t have to worry about working eight hours straight, or however long your workday is, in an office but have control over when and where we work, we can focus on getting the job done and not just how many hours we clock at the office. The people who participated in the study worked more in the mornings and evenings and were better able to combine work with their other responsibilities and life needs. And even though they were working more in the mornings and evenings, they actually got more sleep.

This is a hugely important finding. And it makes me so pleased because I truly believe we are at a crossroads. Companies and organizations will eventually simply have to see the importance of adopting alternative solutions for work and adjust accordingly in order to survive on the fast-changing, increasingly competitive global market. So those of you out there in a position to make a difference and implement some changes, please do!

Mothers under scrutiny

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On the way to work yesterday, I was listening to the radio and there was a commercial for a reality show called ‘The War of the Mothers’ (translated from Finnish). I’m sure this a Finnish version of some international hit reality show, but since I’m not a great fan of reality shows, I had never heard of it before. Now there are a lot of things that can be said about reality shows; the publicly private nature of them say a lot about the ideals and obsessions we have in contemporary society, but that is not what I’m going to write about today. I’m going to write about mothers. I find it really sad that someone has come up with the “brilliant” idea to dedicate a whole show to mothers criticizing each other.

Mothers are already so scrutinized as it is. It is mothers who are considered responsible for the kind of individuals their children grow up to become. If a child develops into a successful adult, we think the mother has done a good job. And if the child on the other hand has problems or should God forbid become a criminal, we look to the mother for blame. We have such high expectations of mothers, and a mother who doesn’t prioritize her children over everything else is not only considered a bad mother; she is also considered a bad woman. Men just aren’t judged as harshly for their priorities (although men do have other social expectations to deal with).

But mothers aren’t only scrutinized by society; they also get a lot of criticism from each other. I don’t think mothers mean to be unsupportive of each other. I think many just feel so overwhelmed by everything they are expected to do and be, that in order not to feel like a failure – in order to feel like they’re doing okay – they compare themselves to other mothers, looking for any sign that they at least are doing better than that. And that is actually as awful as it sounds. We have enough stress as it is, we don’t need to also be waiting for each other to slip up just so that we can feel better about ourselves (see What is it about mothers today? for more thoughts on what it is like to be a mother in contemporary society).

I think one reason mothers may be so critical of each other is that they feel alone in their situations. I remember a woman I interviewed once, who had opted out of her career. She was juggling small children, a very inflexible job, and caring for her husband who was ill. And she was of course the sole provider, as her husband couldn’t work due to his illness. This was a lot to handle to say the least and eventually she realized she just couldn’t do it anymore. Of course she felt relieved after she opted out, but she also felt like a failure. I remember her saying how so many other women seemed to be handling it just fine, what was it about her? Why couldn’t she handle it?

Well that’s the thing. Women are expected to have and do it all. And they are also expected to look their best, be feminine, well-groomed, and pleasant while they are busy doing that – having it all that is. We don’t talk very much about how we aren’t handling it, and we’re generally pretty good at keeping it together, at least on the outside, even though we may feel like we’re going crazy on the inside. Yesterday my colleagues and I talked about women executives who need to take a break for a few minutes in their work day to have a good cry in the bathroom, after which they quickly retouch their makeup to hide any evidence that they might possibly not be keeping it together, and then go back out to continue working.

And no, I’m not saying we should all cry openly at work. It’s just unfortunate that so many women experience similar feelings, but feel they have to go to great lengths to hide it from each other. And as a result we are alone, or even worse we are comforted by others’ difficulties and failures. To tell you the truth, just the thought of a reality show called ‘The War of the Mothers’ makes me feel sick.

Living my dream

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For the past two years I have been employed by a project, a project, which is ending in exactly one week. I have met and had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people during these two years, and for that I am grateful. I have had quite a bit of flexibility and have had a lot to say about how, when, and where I’ve worked – all things that I’ve found are very important to me – but still I have to admit, this wasn’t exactly what I had imagined when I opted out.

But that is the thing about opting out. When you opt out in order to opt in to the next thing, it isn’t forever. That is a misconception people have about opting out. If someone opts out to become a stay-at-home mom, or if they opt out to change careers or to adopt a completely different lifestyle, people generally think it’s forever. But nothing is forever, and opting out and in is only until one’s wants and needs change again.

The people I have talked to who have opted out all say this. While many of them say they finally feel like they are exactly where they should be, they also say that this is good for now and that they are fully aware that their situation not only might, but will change before long and that they will want to, or have to, figure something else out.

This is the thing about life. Nothing ever stays the same, and in a way that can be comforting. For those of us who are parents, children grow and become more independent. Or maybe we realize that we weren’t quite done with the lives we opted out of, maybe we want to opt back in again. And maybe opt out again further down the road.

I wrote a paper with two colleagues of mine a couple of years ago and we used landscapes as a metaphor to describe what careers really look like (instead of the dated linear career model that so many companies still idolize but that really doesn’t correlate with how people really live their lives). In a careerscape you can walk forwards, backwards, sideways, up mountains, and through valleys. Sometimes the sun shines, and sometimes natural disasters strike. And most things are hard to plan.

Just because a person takes another path than the one up the mountain for a while, or decides they need to wait out a storm, doesn’t mean they aren’t ambitious or they don’t want a career. It just means something else is going on in their lives right now, that needs their energy and attention.

What does this have to do with my project? Well, even though this wasn’t how I envisioned the new life I opted in to, this project came at a good time. Just the fact that I had a job set up when I finished my PhD and didn’t have to scramble to find one was pretty great. And also, the project made me realize that I wasn’t completely done with the career I had opted out of. Who knows, maybe before long I will opt back in to another job like the one I have been doing for the past two years. But either way, I’m quite excited that in one week I will be able to go back to living my dream. To living and working the way I originally wanted when I opted out and in. For how long I can and will want to do that remains to be seen. But it doesn’t matter; it’s where I want to be and what I want to be doing right now. Until something else comes along.