The Spaces Between Us: Overworked

irina at work Irina: We�ve always felt we should do a work about being overworked. Why do so many women feel overworked all the time? Ingrid Hoofd might say that Irina makes her feel overworked as I ask her do things for me (example - her nice work on this text for you to see on-line) usually without giving her much time. So do we make each other feel overwhelmed? Do you think e-mail and other electronic communication devices make us even more overworked? How to manage, to save each other, to make space and time for: What?

Let�s analyze for a while in what contexts we have discussed it:

  1. Academia, full-time work, making money. This is absolutely different in different countries, universities, companies. But most of the time the more �prestigious� the place is, the more it is competitive, the less you see women in positions of power. We discussed the whole structure and how to avoid it. You�ve managed to avoid it - I�ve learned a lot from it. At the same time, how much can we hope to be �outside� politically, professionally, ethically? As white women, for example, as educated white women - how much does it make sense to pretend subaltern? Probably, it�s also about individual strengths and situations - many do splendid job outside academia, outside corporate ladder.
  2. Ambition - our own work, work we put on ourselves. I remember still Lou-Andreas Salome writing (in German, originally), in her memoirs, about her work, all life, and then someone wrote that on her death bed she said: �What have I done my entire life?� - �Worked, and worked�. I should get the exact quotation - I have it at home. I actually learned a lot from her, this Russian - German woman, this incredible thinker and risky thinker.
  3. So this work we put on ourselves - how much it is still related to men and how much to ourselves? What I am saying: How to get free from constant comparisons we go for between ourselves and the world / language we are born into? Does it put pressure on ourselves? I don�t really have any answers, though obviously our discussions and relation helped me a lot to think through that. And not least my collaborations with artists - since often ambition in art is so different from the one in theory.