“i couldn’t possibly justify that much time off work” – but we are working?
i keep finding this nebulous bridge that we cannot cross because each time we set foot upon it, it changes. like the grand staircase in harry potter, you never know where you’re going to land once you take the first step. while that scene feels magical and filled with endless possibility, i find the harsh reality of the presence (and absence) of people at a recent writing retreat less heart-warming.
this pervasive idea that the time to think and feel and talk and write is not worth doing, not in a capitalistic sense, is infuriating. i was on annual leave for this period, because it was not considered ‘work’ and yet, by the end of that week, a new manuscript for very important research on why children keep breaking their spines and coaches don’t know what do to about it now exists, thanks to my brilliant friend and phd student but also because the world stopped for a damn minute and i could collect my thoughts.
i. need. this. nobody really talks about what happens when you ‘enter the field’, as if academia is just sitting on the bench and waiting to do something practical. i once asked someone i adore if there is any scholarship left in our university roles, or has ‘academic’ been relegated to metrics and money, like everything else. a thought sparked by this letter in 2025, the idea that our pursuit of knowledge can be turned into a livelihood feels further and further away from the truth. you can hear it in our language, clear as day:
“i don’t have time” is the kicker, as the clocks of our existence wind down and we have forgotten to worry that this construct is anything more than a proxy for our being, a way to quantify the passage of living. “carve out time” pains me the most. this idea that who, what and where we are must be extracted, surgically removed from our realities, because our being knowing doing right now is incongruent to things we seek to know or find or be or do. inspired by this conversation, i wrote a poem about the qualms of being a scholar in this academic landscape, and it was published in a poetry journal at my new institution – an irony which they loved:
carving knife
is there a world where i could be a scholar
surrounded by books, an ivory tower
the cramped spaces i’d mock from the stairs below
a scientist bracing for the cold winds’ blow
if you’re willing to teach, maybe you could try
convincing the institute to buy back your time
beg, borrow and steal enough words to string a sentence
thrust through the publishing wringer, with a vengeance
let the metrics show you are worth keeping
and the quality of the knowledge you are seeking
pretend those comments are not misogyny, unfeeling
ideas crushed beneath the weight of this glass ceiling
the sandstone buildings that once provoked thought
have shifted, cracked, like dry hands, wrought
with the notion that we must produce to be worthy
no, i don’t think this world is for me
a place where i must carry a carving knife
smile like a jack-o-lantern, bury my strife
hide my hope, leave it hanging from the rafters
is this really the lifelong learning you were after?
how do you write a proposal for a conversation in a living room with a fireplace and rain battering the windows and rolling hills of green in the backdrop, not knowing where that conversation will go but knowing it will have infinite meaning just for happening? which bloody cost centre do we charge the joy of living together to? facetiousness aside, i really do lament this hyperproductive world we have perpetuated, that an outcome is worth any means except the ones that bring us wholesome joy and connection. that our time is policed into ways that it should/not be spent, that immediate tangible value as dicated by others is the only metric worth striving towards.
how about the metrics where i laugh until my cheeks hurt? where we learn how to check for tics and carefully remove them after trapsing through the wilderness? the gut instinct to stand downstream as someone leaps from one rock to the next, knowing that you’ll be there to catch them, and believing that to be true? to disturbing locals at the pub with our boisterous laughter and storytelling? to hundreds of candid photographs of people and nature and the sky and horses that were worth walking through stinging nettles for? to making coffee for each other each morning, taking turns making dinner, curling up in the corner with your friends, or shooing them away from the best seat in the house? to connecting with each other in a way that university campuses cannot recreate, only the wild, lost feeling of being out in the woods.
how do those numbers stack up? every word i wrote was not paid for. does that make it less worthy? when you graduate from your studies and don’t take a lectureship role (or do, and have a horrific experience), how do you continue to support other phd students? you sell your soul to an empty contract with an institution that will hopefully support you and you keep showing up. you jump on supervisory panels for niche roles like the ‘friend’, the ‘weirdly obsessed with methodology’, the ‘qualitative research stuff’, and my favourite, the ‘who is this really for’ asker – especially when students are under the pump to publish. all done for free. not an ounce of compensation for keeping research advisors in line, for freezing manuscripts that are missing key assumptions and details, for endless virtual whiteboards and meetings and general conversations about life so students never feel alone. it is not the absence of money that is the issue here, but rather that we do not value these things in the same economic vein.
the space and time we created at this writing retreat felt like an alternate universe for a week. one where you can walk up to any human in the house and have a wholehearted conversation, regardless of their status beyond these walls. there are so few moments of pure entanglement left in our spaces because we have designed them out, the impossibility of meeting in a kitchen for a serendipitous chat or sitting on the floor as you lean against the legs of someone balancing their laptop. the subtle yet tangible shift of seeing people i know of become people i know and love. and yet the worries, the administrative monster, the mounds of marking follow us everywhere we go. even in these precious pockets of the world, we are left wondering what we are doing this for.
selfishly, i’m doing it for the look on your face when we realise our worlds are aligning, that something you know tangled with something i know can make a thread that is worth carrying on with. that when you say goodbye and leave the house (and i see you at the conference starting in two days), we are not the same anymore because our paths are crossed, and we are no better or worse for it, just different. what a wonderful way to kill some time.
this would not have been possible without the brilliant community and board of the Cluster for Research in Coaching (CRiC), who made this writing retreat possible. to my friend and infallible host Alex C, you are a warmth of human sunshine that can make any house feel like home, and we are so lucky to have you.
butterfly affect 
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