It is often believed that motherhood kills art. It doesn’t. You just find new ways of creating (in my case, writing) and reaching the audience.
I was supposed to read my piece “My Young Boss” as part of the Forward/Backward performative reading event by Aarhus Women Write but traveling from Copenhagen to Aarhus with a 5-month-old didn’t work out this time due to the complicated logistics. Instead, I sent this recording, which was played during the performance. The piece also appears in our anthology. If you’d like your free copy, let me know. I have some copies to give away.
My Young Boss
I am an ambitious woman. I have a PhD. I have switched careers multiple times, trying to achieve something bigger, bigger, bigger. I believed that I’d get there, if I fought through biases and discrimination. But I have been undervalued and overlooked. This year I finally found my dream job. I perform it with my body.
I work eight hours a day. Plus-minus. I work odd hours, also at night. I have no weekends or holidays. I often get tasks with short deadlines. When I don’t meet them, my boss screams. She sometimes screams even way before the deadline. Or with no reason at all. Her communication skills are poor. I’m lucky if I have lunch breaks but eating while working is a regular occurrence. I have to put up with a lot of shit. Literally.
And yet I am irreplaceable. My single colleague is unable to perform my most important task, purely because he doesn’t have boobs. He hates to be woken up at night to perform the tasks assigned to him. So I end up doing them. Despite all of this, I wouldn’t change this job because I am the whole world to my boss. I am responsible for her survival, wellbeing and development. I nurture her and soothe her and help her grow into an independent human.
But I can’t stay in this job forever because I have a fixed-term contract. I have to get back to earning money elsewhere to pay someone else to do my current job. I would rather stay where I am.
I used to dream of being a professor, a leader or a CEO. I wanted to get to places so difficult for women. Now I’m even more ambitious. I want to raise a decent human being. And it’s probably more important.
What’s Next?
In the evenings, when the baby goes to sleep, I’m working on two things. One of them is an essay about AI and why AI won’t replace literature. The second one is a translation of a YA novel from Danish to Armenian. I will return to both separately in my future posts.
