Occupying one's post-academic 'non-academic' time

This is intended to be a short post. Sometimes I kind of start that way and end up going on a bit more than planned, so apologies if I head off in this direction.

Over the last couple of days I have had a bit of a strange sensation about some the ways in which I occupy my 'free time' now. Most of my days don't really afford me with massive amounts of free time, because I am obliged to care for my dependent children and keep up with the usual domestic tasks of (chaotic) family life. While my two are older now, 12 (soon to be 13) and 16, and the level of 'care' is less intense than it used to be, I have discovered that the list of parental responsibilities is still long enough to sometimes feel exhausting and endless. On top of things like having to make sure they are keeping up with standard stuff like school work, getting out of the door on time, showing up for school etc., I am constantly trying to teach them the skills they need to actually 'grow' up and look after themselves so that they manage at some basic stuff on their own. This, as many parents of teens will know, is a harder, emotionally draining task, than giving them a bath and putting them to bed with a story. There's all the other stuff like the ongoing moral teaching we try to do - we want them to be decent people, caring citizens, in a modern world where aesthetics, surface fashions and consumption often overtake some important values like how crucial it is to treat people fairly and with respect. Their school does a pretty good job at this but I do find myself having lengthy discussions about the use of certain kinds of language that have become acceptable in 'common-sense' discourse (things like when the kids have used the term 'chav', which in the UK is used as a derogatory term to describe 'working-class' people who dress, talk and act a certain way) As I my younger school self almost certainly would have been perceived as a working-class chav to middle-class kids like my own, I take certain offence here and want them to know about it. While most of the middle-class school kids in our neighbourhood wouldn't dream of using racist or homophobic language, most of them seem to think it's okay to make jokes about 'chavs'. Much tiring parental work is still to be done.

Anyway, I use this just as an example to illustrate some of the investment that often cuts into my so-called 'free' time at home after the list of other chores like cooking, cleaning and laundry are sorted. Others in the house also help with these things - I am not the only one- but perhaps I end up taking more 'time' with these chores than others! So, what is left? I do enjoy my television drama hours for sure, but when not indulging in this (getting my way with the evening TV also involves a series of struggled negotiations with three others!) I am ready to get on with some reading. In my 'academic' life, this certainly filled a lot of time with lots of note-taking, writing, revising, and so on. When there was ever a 'spare moment' for reading on the weekend, the eyes turned to my pile of library books that I 'had' to get through. I could never do enough, there was always more and I did it willingly.

So, after having my summer holiday at the end of July and having gone through a series of fun novels, I am at this new point in September. The old me would be collecting a stack of library books now and downloading articles for work-related purposes and reading in the evenings. I would enjoy the intellectual stimulation, but it always took a further step when I'd find the brain working overtime and then interrupting sleep. Now I have a new job which involves some research activity and source searching, but I do not feel inclined to use what I now consider my very precious down time to do it. It can certainly wait for my contracted office hours. But I find myself now pondering what I will do with this 'precious' time? When I've done my bit of virtuous exercise and had a drink with a friend or gone out shopping (not for food!), what kinds of questions and challenges do I want to be presented with? I do love to read, but more than fiction genres. I have enjoyed reading scholarship but don't want to create and anxiety for myself where I start to conjure up all sorts of feelings about what the academic world was like for me. There are those works that go in between academia and the popular spheres. After having just read Siri Hustvedt's non-fiction work Living, Thinking, Looking, I can see the possibilities for this kind of writing from a writer who completed a PhD in English literature a while back and decided not to aspire for the life of a professor, and declares that this has enabled her to see so many intellectual possibilities outside her field of study.

My aspiration I guess is to get to a point in my new work experience where I can feel challenged enough intellectually without being drained of all of my sensibilities and yet also have something outside of the career that keeps me from feeling bored. But maybe 'reading'/thinking as an activity can play a part on my life alongside a whole list of other stuff. I previously mentioned that I kind of fancied the idea of taking singing lessons (I've been a closet singer for a long time now I think). This and a few other pass times I'm sure will be enough to keep me amused. I also think I am having these funny feelings at the moment, like okay, what's next, because it's September and for so many years before now, it was a time of continuous academic focus. Things have changed now for the better. I need to remind myself of this and I will just adapt to new ways.