Work/life balance is not a dichotomy for me. My work is my life. It is my community’s life. It is both a passion and an interest of mine. My work never leaves my brain: it is always there, directing what I do and how I do it. It also shows up in how I look after myself and those I work with. 

Work/life balance during a lived-experience PhD isn’t that simple. I’m not sure that it should be, either. That does not mean that I should run myself into the ground. Unfortunately, this is an expectation of too many PhD courses. The PhD is presented as the centre of your life for the period of your study but as we all know health, family, and home are more important. Due to this pressure to centralise PhD study, the burnout rate for PhD students is ginormous. Burnout effects all postgraduate students, no matter what they study or where they study it. Does this manifest differently when you are studying with your own community? Probably. I’ve never done any other kind of research so I don’t know the answer to that. I also don’t know how helpful (or healthy) it is to make a hierarchy of different sorts of suffering.

Avoiding burnout is central to my mental wellbeing as a postgraduate reseacher. I need to lean into the way my bodymind works. It has taken a long time to understand and appreciate how my boydmind works and I’m still working it out. It’s trial and error, thankfully with more success than not. I have hugely benefitted from coming back to university as a mature student and getting my autism diagnosis during my undergraduate. My diagnosis didn’t mean I automatically loved and accepted myself, but it definitely set me on that journey. I understand more clearly what I need and what I want from study.

I need to take more time and plan ahead (I also like a sprinkle of spontaneity, thanks Attention Hyperactivity!). I need the right amount of interest, motivation and deadlines. If that doesnt exist I won’t do much due to a lack of interest. Too much of these? I’ll also do nothing due to overwhelm. This spreads to all areas of my life and its a hard thing to balance.

For annual leave, periods where I am “allowed” to not do that much (or rush around catching up on life admin!) I tend to still be thinking about my work. Protecting my annual leave is difficult. I can’t simply have a vacation from my life and community. I can’t simply switch off. Task-switching is an issue here, so too is labour under capitalism that would have me (and everyone else) producing and working all day every day to help create capital.

Throughout my research and PhD journalling, I have noticed how I go between different understandings, level of energy and enthusiasm, and understanding what research is best for me and my community. The question of doing research in historically ableists and transphobic institutions is always front and centre. This criticality is great, and necessary, but it is also exhausting. I’m looking forward to the winter holidays, to spend time with my lovely little family away from university. Ill still be reading about crip theory, or intersectional feminism but I”ll be doing it for me not for The Boss.