Letting go: Fretting over e-mails

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

I have stopped procrastinating over “important” e-mails.  For one, I don’t have the time to sit on and then revisit things, and for another, the anxiety around ruminating, drafting, saving, re-considering, and then finally sending the e-mails got to be too much.  Finally, as the journal has grown, and as I’ve gotten busier, I haven’t had the professional luxury of waiting to move on things.

When I first started working in an e-mail culture, I would come into the office three or four days a week. I would go through my e-mails, flagging, and then making a “to do” list on a Stickie on my desktop.  I would answer the quick “in house” questions, and forward others.

Then, I would turn to other work.  For especially tricky e-mails, I would wait. I might e-mail someone else to gather information, I might ask aloud in the office, I might draft something and save it.  In this job, the e-mails I was least likely to answer immediately had to do with money, new contracts, asking for something, or with a big responsibility attached. Early on, I would print these e-mails out to write on them, and “keep” them. Keeping the paper copy made me feel more secure. This drove my friend/boss Nick crazy, and I eventually had to stop.

With the journal, nearly every e-mail, it seems like, there is some “next step.” If not, then I am dealing with famous/important people, or with tricky (funding, money, friends, collaboration, cultural issues) topics that keep me from feeling comfortable just typing something out and hitting “send.”

I cannot tell you how many hours of sleep I have lost, or waking hours wasted, fretting over an e-mail. My colleague Josh sends out e-mails like waves of fresh air. Constant, a strong stream. I marvel at his ability to write and send, write and send.

I asked him about it, and he said he also feels nervous e-mailing certain people, or e-mailing about certain topics. He says he goes in spurts: once he gets started writing and sending, he sends out batches.

Josh also reminded me that for first-contact e-mails, it might be important to be extra careful, but at this point, dealing with our board members and staff and such, people know me, and they already think that I’m smart and great, so I have less to worry with. He asked, “What’s the worst that could happen?”  (Funny, my favorite therapist often asked that.) “I’d make a mistake,” I said. “So then you’d fix it,” he replied.

I’ve been having to e-mail much more quickly lately, with no time to ruminate. At first, this was a bad thing; I would wake up nervous later, nervous that I had said or done something wrong, or e-mailed the wrong thing to the wrong person.

When I first started having panic attacks, I read somewhere that the body can only keep up with that level of running for so long. Eventually, it will peter out.  Small comfort in the midst of one, but comfort still.  Similarly, I can only spend so many hours in the middle of the night fretting about e-mails. Eventually, it began to wear off. For the umpteenth time, I would remind myself, “If you made a mistake, you’ll fix it. People probably think you’re smart and nice anyway. It’s okay.”

So far so good. I’ve sent e-mails to important people, e-mails talking about funding/money, difficult staff-relations e-mails, e-mails asking for things…  I think I’m getting used to it.  Besides, don’t I have enough to do without over-thinking e-mails?

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Josh and me walking up a hill in Atlanta, towards our panel.

My panel went well.  After months of preparation, planning, worry, and details. In the weeks before that day, everything else was on the back burner. I could barely keep up with non-AAR related phone calls or e-mails. I took three days off from school in two weeks (probably all I will take in the year) to keep caught up.  It was a wonderful weekend, and the panel was fantastic.

We spoke on the “challenges and promise of inter-religious dialogue” and have heard back that what we’re doing is truly radically inclusive and the cutting-edge kind of work in which people are interested, but don’t always make work.  We had a packed room at several points during the talk, and a camera crew from a major Muslim cable channel.  I was inspired by several of the voices on our panel, and truly enjoyed moderating the questions and answers.

Several in the audience commented on how inspiring it was to see as many women on the panel as men, and on the fact that Josh and I together have a collaborative working relationship. We are what we say we do.  Others noted that a decade ago, this panel wouldn’t have existed, and expressed excitement that our work is part of a growing movement.

Here are the introductory remarks I made, to introduce myself and our project:

“I’m Stephanie, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary. I’m a co-founding editor in chief, with Josh, of the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, and I teach middle school in a public school in the Bronx. Academically, I’m interested in writing and piloting a curriculum for multi-religious studies for secondary school students.

Two and a half years ago, I got an e-mail from a rabbinical student in Israel. He said, ‘What are you all doing with interfaith stuff at Union?’ I was in my third year at Union and as it happened, there was a great deal of energy around interfaith work, and I e-mailed him back with lots of news and ideas. We began swapping ideas, and imagining a network for seminarians, a newsletter, a publication.

As we began to call for staff and board members, though, it came to our attention that there were few academic journals focusing on inter-religious dialogue. At every turn, with every new conversation, we discovered energy around the idea for our project.

We raised money, pulled together an esteemed board of scholars to serve as our reviewers, and found a staff. We issued our first call for submissions before our website was up.

Our mission has always been to foster difficult and fruitful conversations amongst those from different backgrounds and faiths. We ourselves come from different traditions, and we collaborate as co-leaders. This is not easy—it has taken many, many conversations—often difficult—about our vision, our ideas and experiences. One of the reasons we believe in the power of dialogue is because we know firsthand how dialogue with one another powerfully informs our ability to lead this organization.

One of the things I’ve learned in this work, that is directly tied to our mission, is the power of listening. Especially: the one with the most power must take the position of listening, and of speaking last. One challenge of creating opportunities for dialogue is that many of us—here in the West, educated, literate, elite—are very comfortable sitting at a table and criticizing one another, and offering point and counter point, and engaging in this kind of conversation.

Not only is this not true for everyone, but when we engage in dialogue, aspects of power differences and cultural practices change and charge expectations.

In our very first conversation, Josh and I talked about this. We said, ‘How can we invite everyone to this table, and how can we ensure that we’re not lead by our blind spots to ever think we’re being as inclusive as possible?’ This is a conversation we continue to have, after every issue, during board meetings, as we continue to grow.

It’s uncomfortable to be constantly asking, ‘What are we not? Where are the voices that still need amplifying?’ but we cannot fulfill our mission unless our posture is truly attuned to listening to others.

Finally, I want to mention an idea that I learned when training to become a schoolteacher. Vygotsky teaches us that whenever we encounter something new, we encounter disquilibrium—the sensation of something that doesn’t fit with what we already know. Children experience this all the time, every day—one can’t truly learn something until it’s experienced–it’s part of the learning process. Adults, however, don’t like this feeling; we like to think we know everything already.

As you know, there is so much conflict, and energy, and pain, and interest around religion right now. For some people, exposure to other religions is frightening, or threatening, or dangerous. Even in communities that welcome dialogue, misperceptions and confusion happen.  I believe, and we believe that teachers and preachers and leaders and pastors must learn how to shepherd their students and congregations through this disequilibrium, through it with the knowledge and understanding that it is part of human development, and part of a possible development towards increasing peace and understanding, and true relationship.  It is the mission of the Journal to provide resources for those leaders.”

Other recent Journal links, in case you’re interested in my work in this field:

A series of interviews and a written piece I recently did for an historical Muslim-Jewish conference: “Tending a Cooperative Spirit,” with four interviews, and “Seminal Moment at JTS.”

A review of an evangelical graphic novelization of the Bible, “‘Good and Evil,’ the Graphic Bible, Considered with Dismay.”

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Today’s new words

I’m currently doing the final edits of the third issue of the journal.  These are the days when I wish I had only _one_ job, and could do this work without feeling pressure from all sides.

But, on the upside, it’s exciting to read brand-spankin-‘new scholarship, and new ideas, and to read concepts and words new to me.

Today, I had to look up the following words, either for the first time (in most cases) or for a refresher:

umma: the Arabic word used (often in Islam) to mean “community,” especially, “community of believers.” In inter-religious work, sometimes used as a Qur’annic example of the potential one nature/community that is possible in all believers. Pleasingly, the same word (אוּמָה) is “a people” in Hebrew.

tontines: hard to explain. A kind of investment, or annuity thing.

multifariousness: having great variety, diverse

metaxy: an/the in-between, or middle ground

alterity: otherness, from the Latin “alter”

imparative: “bringing together” from Panikkar, from the Latin “imparare”

chronopolitics: in a world view, overemphasizing time to the detriment of space (I think)

homoousios: same substance (especially: the holy/hard to define substance _we_ are made of)

One of my oldest habits from college is to write the words I don’t know in a reading at the top margin of my page.  Later, when I’m going over my notes, I look up all the words at once, and write definitions there in the margins.  The best days were when I used the OED.  I still write words I don’t know in the margins of articles, or in my calendar, and I’m doing it now as I go through the several hundred pages of this issue to edit.  I love that there are still so many new words. I also love how it always happens that once you learn a new word, it starts showing up everywhere.  Like, has it always been around? Where have I been, not noticing it?

Oh, I also have recently learned the word “shred” as it pertains to guitar playing. It’s hard to get a definition for that; it’s one of those, “Is this shredding?” “Is this guy shredding?” question words. I’ve been having to seek out examples and non-examples to help me refine my definition. So far, I know that Peter Buck (from R.E.M.) does _not_ shred, although he could if he wanted to.

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Iron lung

That’s what it feels like, to imagine everything I have to do, and the free hours I have in a day.

I’ve been doing better.  I don’t check e-mail when I’m working on specific tasks, I’m procrastinating less and less, and I am getting better at not feeling guilty for resting.  But there’s still so much to do!

A related thing that happens is that I feel jealous, and bitter, about my classmates that don’t work at all. I work nearly thirty hours a week, outside of my full class load.  I’ll be in class, thinking about how I did my reading on the train, or rushed through a translation, and look at them, thinking: they don’t work; they only have to study; they had all week to do this.  And I feel that jealousy is not only sinful, but deflating, and bad for one’s heart.  It also limits the possibility to have True, authentic connections with others.

How can I avoid feeling jealous for the time I don’t have?  How can I make the time I do have less frenzied-feeling?

I guess there are some people who don’t know–in this day and age–what an iron lung is.  I had to explain it once to someone at work.  I saw one once in a science museum.  Kids with polio, who couldn’t breathe, would have to live inside them.  The lung–the tube of the lung–would press pressurized air in and out, against their lungs, literally forcing them to take in breath and release it.  I can’t imagine: I looked at the iron lung, the cold contraption in front of me, and wondered what it would be like to live every day in one. Photographs of hospitals, row upon row of them, are especially frightening.

So clearly I don’t feel as if I’m _actually_ in an iron lung, but I notice my breathing is shallow, my mind darts to various deadlines, despairs at the ones that will be late, and prioritizes based on fear and stress, instead of what I would truly like to do.  My own freedoms, to think and read and be creative, to _choose_, are gone.

How. To. Breathe?

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To-do

Here are things I would like to complete before Friday morning.

1.  Back a from-scratch chocolate cake for my former floormate Millard, who was ordained last weekend

2.  Re-write my CV

3. Check out (as in borrow from a library) Said’s _Orientalism_ and begin reading

4. Mail three insurance forms and a thank-you note

5. Call Sprint and complain about/revise my plan; call a local Episcopal priest re premarital counseling

6.  Send deposits to the wedding photographer and florist (with note to the florist)

7.  E-mail: the former president of my school re the new Journal I’m founding, three people re Student Senate, and my church re the rehearsal dinner

An assortment, one not really related to the other.  I really dislike making phone calls.  Getting stamps is also annoying, and precludes everything I need to send by post.  Writing my CV should be enjoyable, but I lost the first one and wish I could just find it.

Tomorrow I don’t have class because it’s Fall Break.  So ostensibly I should be able to get everything done.  Friday morning I have a “meeting” (IM) with my Journal co-founder in Israel, and then off to work.  So tomorrow is The Day for to-do lists.  Perhaps also if I _schedule_ in puttering time, it will also still feel like I’m having a Fall Break.  I think no matter what, I’ll take a walk around the neighborhood–I want to see all of my favorite sights now, at the height of Fall.

(from one of my favorite spots)

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