I have been trying to think about abundance and gratitude and all the good perspective things that help make life a little easier.

Maybe this is influenced by the sun finally reappearing in this cloudy, drizzly country.

Maybe it’s influenced by my students’ Theatre Festival and the fact that I have been living in a theatre, doing tangible theatre things like programming lights and helping students write cues in prompt books and switching hinges on doors so they open in the opposite direction.

Very. Tangible. Things.

So much lovelier than phenomenology and hermeneutics.

And I am exhausted at the end of each day because I am physically out of shape and also mentally out of shape for essentially three weeks of 10 out of 12s, which are really like 12 out of 12s with helping students during breaks.

But I also won that silly little award last month. And my first journal article was published.

I have a summer of too many vacations coming up again which is sad for my wallet and happy for my heart.

This time a year from now, if all goes well, my thesis should pretty much be written. I should be submitting it around now for review.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Still like a pinprick, but I can finally see it.

And all of these things have me thinking about enough and what is enough? And why isn’t it endlessly obvious to me that I have so much more than just enough?

Also, what’s enough when it comes to work? We talk about boundaries all the time during the PhD process. In my earliest orientation workshops, I have vivid memories of the current PhD students telling all of us that the hardest bit is balance and, for pete’s sake, to make sure we have a hobby.

I remember feeling… like, wtf, I want to know how to do the PhD and now I’m like… lol, yes, this is the crucial element of the PhD. It would be my top advice to a new starter too.

So really, what would be enough for me here?

• I’d like to add some more teaching experience to my resume. Tick.
• I’d like to have a single author journal publication.
• I’d like my workshop to be complete enough that attendees learn something new, and potentially for academic institutions to hire me to present it once I graduate.
• And I need to write this flipping thesis. This is the only bold, italic, underlined requirement of the whole thing. In theory, this alone could be enough.

I have pretty much no interest in doing a post-doc, which is the last academic-y thing that exists out of working in academia after this degree. So I don’t have to worry about looking shiny and appealing for those sort of applications.

I mostly want to very part time adjunct, ideally remotely/online, over the next few years while centering myself back in industry stage managing and event managing. That’s all teaching based rather than research based – so not leaning 110% into publications is fine there.

If I aimed for a full time job in academia, I’d aim for a lower rated, middle of nowhere full time gig that is more teaching focused than research – and then I’d reevaluate this list to make sure I hit the minimum requirements for research.

But why does it feel so gosh-darn lazy to just aim for enough?

By putting this limits of enough on stuff like work though, it seems to lead to abundance in things like relationships and rest and self-care and all the actually lovely things in life.

I feel like the few folks who are deeply passionate about their careers, who get those sorts of benefits from work, have managed to convince us all this is the way. I also feel like this where the pressure is to be endlessly happy, passionate and excited about work which feels dreadfully false to me most of the time.

I mean, I have loved stage management for most of my career, and there are some genuinely sparks of passion and excitement at the things we create, but plenty of time I’m puzzling over a spreadsheet or telling an actor they need to start using deodorant and I don’t feel that this needs to be reframed in job applications as moments of great passion. There are moments where I do the job well enough and move on.

A PhD absolutely feels like a thing that is 90% do the job well enough and 10% sparks of excitement and passion.

But maybe I’m doing it wrong. Perhaps I should begin to focus my gratitude a little more in this area.

What’s your take on finding that delicate balance between striving for more and recognizing when you have enough? How do you navigate the pursuit of excellence in your career while still prioritizing other aspects of your life that bring fulfillment and joy?