ESSAY | We need to talk about work. I need to talk about work. Women’s work. This woman’s work.

I just read a beautiful essay in the Paris Review. It’s entitled, Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over, by Sabrina Orah Mark — someone who knows about fairy tales, and happiness, maybe. Her column is called Happily. As in Happily Ever After.

This is not a piece about Sabrina.

It is about work.

It is about finding work. Doing work. Being a woman finding work and doing work. Wanting to work. Needing to work. Having too much work. Not having enough.

I’m in a secret Facebook group. (No, you can’t join.)

It’s ostensibly for Mothers, capital M, created by me when I was alone and crying in the work dark of having a newborn baby. I had no help. No friends. I felt like I was drowning. My baby was so beautiful and so colicky and she never seemed to stop crying and she never seemed to want to sleep. Blood was coming out of me in gelatinous globs the size of olives, of strawberries, of eggs, and I had to walk outside with her strapped to the front of my body, or his, but in the winter, for hours a day. Hours and hours and hours, just to get her to sleep. I wanted to cry all the time.

My husband didn’t know how to drive. (He still doesn’t know how.) I was still in charge of everything. I made a mistake while paying the bills, accidentally sending hundreds of dollars to one utility that was meant for another. It was a rare professional error for me, one that I still think about. Embarrassed. I don’t think about what I should probably think about. About the why.

I don’t think about why I was still in charge of ALL the work.

And other people were nearby, and some of them had babies, or used to have babies, but they either stared blankly at me when I tried to tell them about what it was like, because their babies had been easy, (stupid maybe, placid certainly), or they were absent, not working, showing no interest. I’d hear about them going to concerts while youthful, helpful grandparent figures provided them with no-cost child care, provided them with help that afforded them the time for fun. Jesus, what a concept. Not the fun. Who cares about fun?

Help. Help with the work.

Such a strange and foreign concept. An elusive thing that everyone else seemed to have. And help is work too. Usually, it’s women’s work.

I felt like I’d be beaten up, and the bruises were ugly — the purple-green of jealousy and bitterness. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do. More work. I formed a virtual support group made up entirely of “friends” and folks I’d “met” on the Internet — Mothers who were also struggling. Or who at least remembered struggling. Who didn’t look at me with confusion or contempt, and who quickly became Friends, instead of “friends”. And it’s become something else entirely. A coven. We are witches. We make somethings out of nothings. And now, we help each other.

I screamed for help and no one answered, so I did it myself.

And I know I’m a broken record over here, but … the group is work too. Helping myself and helping other struggling Mothers is yet another job. I am the group’s sole moderator (which is fine and what I wanted), but I feel an obligation to read and reply to each and every comment. It’s work I like, and work I chose, and work I needed, but … you see where this is going.

It is a lovely little group. One that (knock wood) has managed to avoid the usual problems that seem to plague feminist spaces online. We have not imploded. We have not devoured each other. New people occasionally join and are welcomed. We talk longingly about getting together IRL.

Elizabeth is four now. She sleeps. She cries and fusses and worries much more than seems “normal”, but it’s not what it was. If I prod at the places where those newborn hurts were, there is still a little jealousy, still a little bitterness. Just beneath the surface, it hurts a little when I press down, but it’s not so bad. You can’t see the bruise.

I have time again now. Or do I?

I should have. I should have so much time I should be making fucking bread right now. Is that right? Flour. Have it. I had it before the stores went bare. I always have it, always have everything. Keeping things organized and in stock is one of my special talents. It’s work I’m good at.

Do you need batteries?

Do you need toothpaste?

Do you need a hug? A washcloth? A needle and thread?

Yes, I have tape. I have glue too. Would that be better? I have so many kinds! I can fix, I can mend. I can make whole again.

If there’s a storm (and there’s at least one every year) I have power banks, cables, candles, and cans. Aspirin, and Motrin, and Tylenol, too. I have a small gas stove and butane. Take more batteries, there’s lots, and flashlights that don’t need batteries. (I got them special, just in case, because I knew they’d be needed.)

I am always ready.

It is possible that readiness is just in my nature, but it is also work.

We are, right at this moment, down to our last roll of toilet paper, but have no fear. I know where to get more. I’ve already made time. I have a plan.

This is my job (one of my jobs). And I am very very good at it.

Thanks to this pandemic we have been isolating at home for more than eight weeks.

My husband started a podcast. Seemingly overnight. Just a few weeks ago. He and another man (another successful academic, also likely married or partnered, because that’s the key to succeeding at academia — be a man, ideally white, and get yourself a “wife”) were struck with the notion, they each ordered $100 microphones (or, no, actually, I ordered the mic because ordering is my job) and in a blink, there were four episodes up. Five? I’ve already lost count. He is out in the living room, recording one now.

I am lying next to our daughter in the dark, her hot, wet, feral child breath on my neck, her little, sleepy razor-blade fingernails pressing into my arm, typing this on my phone with my thumbs. I can hear him, just barely, under the roar of the sound machine that I’ve been forced to sleep with for the past four years, laughing loudly into the mic I ordered at whatever his cohost or their interviewee is saying, and I wonder at that. How on earth does he do it? How has he managed? So much work, produced so quickly. He has a new hobby? A hobby that includes laughter? I cannot see how.

Then again, he is a man. He has a wife. What am I saying? I know how. We all know how.

Knowing things is work.

My little coven has a secret subgroup. Just 15 people. We call it the incubator — a place to nurture and grow and talk about our professional projects. Get feedback. Give feedback. Many of us have similar backgrounds in journalism, writing, teaching, and art. We are, all of us, workers, struggling to find time to do our work — to do ALL the work. That seems to be the main subgroup subject. We have such an incredible abundance of work, and very little time for work.

It’s a heartbreaking space. We do the work with a smile, because of course we do. We make heavy loads look light, pop them onto our heads when our arms get tired.

But smiling is work.

One friend recently posted about receiving a maddening performance review from her corporate day job:

“I’m struck by how arbitrary it all feels. We got scores and I asked what I could have done to get a higher score and my manager was like, ‘Hmmm, I’m not sure. I can’t think of anything.'”

Another comment: “[Remember] the job I took … that fabulous girlboss who hired me announced her last day was yesterday. My selfish reaction aside, she left because a year ago, she was hired to do a role she never got. Instead they hired not one but TWO execs from the boy’s club. I can’t blame her. But I’m devastated … I wish she could take me with her. 💔”

It’s depressing. We are supposed to be creating, workshopping our creations, incubating our ideas and our plans, but instead, it seems like all we have the time or energy for is commiseration.

“I can’t say this publicly, but I am getting so pissed because my husband is getting responses left and right to job applications and I’m better qualified than him and never get anything and fuck this blatant misogyny.”

“I think I’m reaching the end of my rope with my job, which is emotionally devastating to me. But I’ve become the punching bag, and a recent reorg basically takes me back three steps with no outlook for growth. This is a terrible time for this, and I’m so stressed out and exhausted as is. My performance at work has always been top-notch, but I keep getting punched down for the most asinine reasons.”

“How do you all do it? I get to a point with childcare and housework which takes priority and I just can’t do any WORK work to push my business and as a result it’s not where I had hoped it would be.“

Funnily enough, I’ve also wanted to take up a hobby. A podcast, no less.

The irony, my goodness. But in contrast to the project happening in my living room right now, I’ve been noodling my own idea around for ages. Incubating it. I actually posted about it to the incubator. My idea was that it would be about work. Specifically, maybe, about women’s work. Because I’m trying — always. fucking. trying. — to make more time for my own projects, so I wanted to talk about that. I wanted to make work that maybe wouldn’t feel like work, out of talking about work. Lol. Lolsob.

I keep a copy of Grace Bonney’s In The Company of Women next to my desk to inspire me. It’s about work. It’s about women’s work. I never have time to open it.

I have a career I carved out of nothing, made manifest from the ether. That is a big thing, but it took a lot out of me. So much witchy magic. I don’t know if I can repeat the trick.

The coven has been playing with ideas. Titles. Thoughts. Incubating my work-themed podcast. A few of the comments:

“Episode one: all the extra work women do during a pandemic.”

“I feel like there’s a ‘Nine To Five’ take here.”

“Love this. I think we chatted a while back about a podcast. Once this week is over and I’m not parenting 95% (despite X being home!) and teaching all day, I might have more thoughts.”

“Something with toil in it … Toil and Trouble.”

“IT NEVER ENDS.”

That last one landed with me. A title suggestion. It never ends.

The work. The scrabbling for work. The thinking about work. The trying to find ways to finish the work so I can do the other work. The bathroom is work. Instagram is work. My beautiful daughter is work. The house is work. The shopping is work. The driving is work. The dishes are work. The cooking is work. The yard is work. The roof is work. Eating is work. Sleeping is work. The work is work.

This blog? This blog is work.

It’s work I never seem to have time for, because it’s work that’s just for me, work I actually want to do, work that might possibly maybe sorta kinda if I’m lucky make me happy? Make me feel fulfilled and productive and valuable and something else … Something else that I think women are supposed to want to be. Something else we are supposed to be working towards. Something I can’t remember right now. I’m sure I have it on a list somewhere, I’m sure I have it in a drawer. Just give me a moment.

I am always ready, always prepared, very much willing to work.