Friday Open Thread (with work unfinished)

Dear friends!

This was my first week back at work in the New Year, and it was a doozy. I’m teaching Monday through Wednesday (three courses!), and then neck-deep in other projects the rest of the week, while trying to make sure I schedule in something called … What is it, what’s the word … Ff…ree? Free time? I d’know, sounds fake.

But! That said, an uncomfortable realization I’ve had about myself recently is that I tend not to count things as “work” unless they’re completed tasks. This is … terrible? This way lies (LIES!) feelings of unworth, inadequacy, general badness, burnout, trying to grind myself into paste to feel like I’ve finished something because otherwise no work was done. (Let us draw a blind for now over any implied erroneous equation of work and worth. That’s a whole essay for elsewhen.)

So I’d love to know: what did you work on this week without finishing? It can be literally anything, as little or as much detail as you please. Let us recognize our work-unfinished* and celebrate it and each other.

*Funny how “work-unfinished” feels so different from “work-in-progress”, isn’t it? When they’re so often the same.