A different pace

Recently i faced utter and total burnout and despair, after discovering that no matter what others might be doing, saying, thinking, working on etc., i have to set my own pace for how i want to actually improve the lives of women and my community. So i found myself going for a meeting with a small community group of younger women and men, enjoying it because of the sense of progress after each meeting, which somehow is lacking in my professional space.

But this sense of contentement with setting my own pace, turned into some frenetic soul searching after what had seemed the perfect career advancement in recent times, turned out to be little more than overseeing a foreclosure! Full of administrative matters and so little time to engage in actual thoughts of how our contributions are/can change the lives of the communities we work in. It was such a hollow feeling; no amount of good wishes about this advancement could make up for the feeling i got, that, i was been given something as it was sinking, ending, winding up etc.

So i got caught up in serious soul searching. . .maybe i should have pursued a different line in this work; perhaps then i could feel more engaged in the activism and actually welcome some light admin duty! Instead i'm stuck in what feels like heavy,duty, bureaucracy, dotting i's and t's and feeling like crap, because i'd so much rather be inputting into ongoing activism around critical issues for equality which is what got me this position in the first place.

On and on this soul searching went. Forcing me at times to just walk out of the office, lest i burst into tears of utter frustration.

Then yesterday, there was a breakthrough in the humdrum associated with the minutiae that is a bureaucrats life. I had a chance to put forward a sentence that combine admin minutiae and results for gender equality . . .all rolled into one. Today i managed to do the same thing and i feel relieved to know that, there are ways to keep everyone (including the resisters) focused on why we are trying to get the admin minutiae right. . .that it's not administrative matters for the sake of admin.

The soul searching has led me to this: there are many ways to contribute to the cause; there are equally as many ways to ensure that your feet are on solid feminist, equality ground while occupying a space that in many instances is filled with compromise and bureacuracy for the sake of bureacracy. For the first time in about a month, i appreciate where i'm located at present, to do this work. And have decided to make use of my position with a bit more respect and for where it can take this cause.

The lesson: it is so important to set a pace of ones own, otherwise risk slowing oneself when those around you slow down and trying to speed up when others do so and finally you are just one exhausted sista! Pacing myself is my new mantra.