On SAHMs, Ann Romney, and all this silliness

There's some good discussion going on over at Feministe about what's really going on when politicians talk about motherhood being "the most important job there is." If you're a wealthy woman, at least.

As I've mentioned here before, I thought I might take a year off from work after Anton was born, but I took a wait-and-see approach, and didn't make a definite decision because I didn't know how I'd feel in this very new situation. And I was very lucky to be in a financial position to have options. And, as it turned out, I got rather bored with the whole SAHM thing and started to ease back into work when Anton was 3 months old, by commuting to NOLA every couple of weeks to see old clients. I continue to do that, and have now added another part-time massage job closer to home.

The thing is, I love spending time with my baby. But not every second. Some of it is lots of fun. Some of it is quite tedious. And although, overall, I put a lot of work and thought into The Job of Motherhood, it's not as if I'm the only person on this planet who possesses the necessary skills to change his diapers or feed him applesauce, tiny spoonful by tiny spoonful. Sometimes it's great to get a break from all that for a few hours, and use some of the skills I've spent years refining, like my massage skills, or my writing skills.

It is patronizing when Important Men talk about the hard work involved in staying home with the kids (unless you're a poor woman, in which case...get your lazy ass off the couch and work, right?), not because it isn't hard work, but because it is also tedious work, which they are unwilling to do.

It reminds me of when I had an admin job, and one of my tasks was to take a pile of rumpled receipts and create an expense report for one of the executives. It was a frustrating task, because he never sorted anything out, so it was hard for me to tell if a particular restaurant receipt was from taking clients out for a dinner meeting, or taking his family out for dinner (and if it was the latter, I didn't really want to help him get reimbursed for it, when I was surviving on boxed mac and cheese). When I expressed my frustration, which I often did, as subservience has never come naturally to me, he would try to placate me by telling me just how good I was at making these expense reports. Because he was just so naturally disorganized, you see. He needed someone like me to sort things out for him.

Thing is, if he'd seen the state of my apartment at the time, he would have seen that I was naturally disorganized as well. I only forced myself to be organized at work because, well, it was my job, and I needed to pay rent and buy a bus pass and that aforementioned boxed mac and cheese (I wasn't vegan yet at that time, obviously).

Child care, like most jobs, is a mix of fun stuff and important stuff and hard stuff and tedious stuff. But when ambitious men claim it's the Most Important Job In The World, they're just blowing smoke up our asses. I'll believe it when they quit their less important jobs to be Stay At Home Dads.

Can't buy me love

I'm doing home-study courses for my massage CEUs this year. The CEU credits are required every year to renew my massage license. Usually I take hands-on classes, which have given me many useful new techniques over the years. This year, I can't be away from Anton for all of the hours a hands-on class would entail, so home-study it is. If I'd been smart, I would have done this while I was pregnant, because it's hard even to find time to read these days!

Anyway, part of my reading material is this book by the Dalai Lama, Ethics For The New Millennium. Here's a passage I especially enjoyed:

Compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source of both inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species. On the one hand, they constitute non-violence in action. On the other, they are the source of all spiritual qualities: of forgiveness, tolerance, and all the virtues. Moreover, they are the very thing that gives meaning to our activities and makes them constructive. There is nothing amazing about being highly educated; there is nothing amazing about being rich. Only when the individual has a warm heart do these attributes become worthwhile.

I am tired of being told I should admire people simply because they have achieved some level of monetary success. The current economic disaster was caused by unchecked greed. I don't want to be another person who obsesses over money and status. I sometimes get caught up in thinking about things I could do with more money, and while that's not always a bad thing, it can make me feel inadequate and frustrated. It's important to remember what really matters.

DIY and chipping in

I've noticed something lately among some artists I know, which I find a bit disappointing. It's a focus on money and compensation that I don't remember seeing so much of in the past. I hear statements like, "I'm not doing anything for free" and see some Kickstarter pages that make me raise an eyebrow.

Now. Put down the pitchfork and hear me out. I do think art is valuable. I don't think being an artist should mean living a life of poverty. But I also think that 1) financial challenges can actually lead to innovation in art, and 2) community and volunteering are central to the arts and I don't want to see them disappear.

I will restrain myself from gushing about my days at NTI (almost a decade ago...yikes!) because that could go on forever and would only end in me saying ridiculous things like "free your pelvis!" while sobbing with nostalgia, and who wants to see that? But one thing I really liked about the program was that we were given very little (basically nothing, really) for the scenes we directed and for our final project. If you needed something, you made it, or you found it by asking "Who's got a newspaper?" "Do any of you guys have a striped tie?" And if someone had it, they let you borrow it for your scene. You did not go around asking your friends for money so you could go prop shopping.

I adore low-budget, passion-driven theater. I'm more intrigued by a site-specific piece using found objects than some high-budget musical any day. Personal preference, yes. But I value experimentation, and lack of funds and experimentation are a match made in heaven.

I think Kickstarter is a great website, and I have donated to several projects that sounded really cool and truly could not have happened without funding. I'm not trying to say no one should ever ask for money. But I see some projects that seem to me to be more about laziness and lack of imagination than a true need. If you can't get off your butt and make art without someone giving you money first, then I think there might be an issue there.

Which brings me to the second point I mentioned above. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I seem to be seeing less of the "let's get together and do this thing for the fun of it/because we feel it should be done" attitude that I love about the artistic community. Listen, if some big corporation, or your millionaire friend, asks you to make some art for them, by all means ask them for some money. If your fellow struggling artist friend asks if you want in on her non-paying project but you simply don't have the time because you have to work so hard at your day job, by all means tell her so. [Actually, I'm of the opinion that having a day job can be very beneficial to one's art, but that's a topic for another day] But if your across-the-board attitude is, "I'm not doing anything for free," then I have to wonder why you're an artist. I don't think your fellow struggling artist friends are trying to screw you over by asking if you want in on a project they can't pay you for. If you think they are...find some new friends.

Skill-sharing doesn't always have to be "consulting" for a fee. Your time is well spent when you're being inspired with your friends. Who helped you grow as an artist...only people you paid? I doubt it!

Do what you can do, help when you can help, and see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. If you can't afford to do something, that's cool. Make money when you can and enjoy it - you worked for it! But why look at everything with dollar signs in your eyes? Our scrappiness and generosity have served us well as artists, and we shouldn't be so quick to part with them.

The dust has settled.

I gave a massage yesterday for the first time in months. I'm going back to work soon (on a very part-time basis) and I was worried that I'd forgotten my basic routine and/or lost my touch. It's incredible what the body remembers - I couldn't think my way through my massage, but most of the time my hands and arms seemed to remember what to do. I set up the front room of our house as a guest room/massage room, and found it to be a great space to work in. Lit a candle, put on some music, and did my thing.

It helped that the client was my mom :)

Anton is a relatively happy baby, and is quite content to be my companion when I go to the grocery store or the Farmer's Market, or out for walks. And when we're home, he loves to play in his baby gym. Observe:



I've started on a new project, a theater thing. It will be a collaboration with one of my closest friends, and we're excited about it. I'm in the script writing phase now. I find that I don't have many hours to devote to it, but when I do find a bit of time, I make the best of it. Last week I sneaked off to Starbucks for a couple of hours by myself, and hand-wrote several pages at a frenzied pace.

I've been thinking about the future, and how to balance work and creativity and mothering. That silly struggle women's magazines have been writing about for decades now. I want to find a way to feel challenged, make some money, and spend plenty of time with Anton throughout his childhood. This new theater project, if it works out, would hopefully be a long-time gig, and help me achieve that goal.

Anton's napping, I'd better get back to that goal-achieving work.

Fame and fortune

Since I've been ordered by a physician to spend all day on my couch eating,* I managed to finish the book I was trying to save for my upcoming flight to Massachusetts: High On Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips.

It brought me to the conclusion that I'm so, so grateful that I was not raised by rock stars. Sure, my parents were hippies, but they were relatively grounded and actually put a lot of thought and energy into raising their children.

It's made me think about fame. Mackenzie's mom was John Phillips' first wife - she married him before he got famous. John Phillips then left Mackenzie's mom for 16 year old Michelle, and they formed The Mamas And The Papas. Fame gave Mackenzie's dad (who, it seems was never exactly responsible to begin with) money and adoring admirers, allowing him to live in a hedonistic, drug-filled alternative reality where he could do whatever the heck he wanted. Sure, he may have still been a crappy dad if he'd never gotten famous, but he probably wouldn't have had the resources to expose his children to the kind of environment that money and fame allowed.

One thing that Mackenzie said about her dad toward the end of the book was that he had wasted a lot of his potential. She thought he could have achieved more as an artist if he hadn't let drugs and partying completely take over his life. I thought this was an interesting point, especially because he did achieve so much artistically. But he could have done more, she thought, could have continued to grow as an artist, and he chose to party instead. Because he could.

It got me thinking about myself, and other artists that I know. I think for many artists, fame and fortune are the worst things that can happen. This is not to say that I think starving artists are more pure or legitimate, just that many of the crazy, envelope-pushing tendencies that make for great art can become warped into self-indulgent excess when they're not kept in check.


*I should note, though, that she stressed that I was to eat healthy food :)