In 2016, after fourteen years of parenting, freelancing, volunteer work, and just being, I returned to school to do my MA in English. In 2018 I graduated, and immediately started my PhD. Then there was a whole pandemic, and having to keep four kids’ morale up in the face of all that. I trucked along. I published a poetry collection, I did lots of public speaking (online at first, and in person later), I got some diagnoses (as did some of the other members of my household), and I got one kid out the door to college.
I submitted my doctoral thesis in 2023 and started a full-time, very demanding, very people-facing job two weeks later. That job ended last week, and boy am I ready for some down-time.
I’ve spent my whole life in and out of burnout. Some of my past episodes (when I didn’t know what it was and assumed I was just Bad at Being Human) were pretty disastrous and took years to recover from. I’ve been peering over the burnout precipice for a long time now, and so this end-of-contract freedom moment has really come at an ideal time. The universe does have its ways of intervening, doesn’t it?
So now I find myself with the luxury of a stretch of time ahead of me to try and figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I have two books to finish writing, a steady schedule of scholarly and creative tasks I’ve committed to that will take me to the end of the calendar year, and enough money in the bank to stave off complete panic.
I also have a basement full of supplies for projects I dreamed up but never found the time to actually start. I think some time spent making things with my hands is exactly what I need right now. I recently wrote a funny little piece about the financial burden of AuDHD — the “tax” that comes along with executive dysfunction and poor impulse control — and in it I list the items in the “graveyard of abandoned passions”:
the cursive handwriting workbook, the beeswax for making candles, the vintage toasters and blenders bought cheap on eBay, the books on how to rewire vintage toasters and blenders, the woodworking gear, the linocut kit, the rug hooking kit, the leatherworking kit, the flamenco shoes, the hula hoop, the cameras, the sketchbooks and pencils, the fountain pens, the perfect red lipsticks now gone rancid, the two pairs of snowshoes still with their tags.
So maybe it’s time to get back to some of those things. Also: I’ve never seen such a bumper year for chuckley pears, so I guess I have some jam-making in my future. The white currant and gooseberry bushes in my backyard are laden down as well, and the blueberries are coming in early. I’ve missed being able to make time for berry-picking and jam-making and all that stuff that used to be “my thing.”
Andreae Callanan 