Toxicity at work makes it hard to deal with real-life
Fascism is at our doorstep. My wife is a mathematician, and she has a deep admiration for the great mathematician Emmy Noether. A Jewish mathematician during the Nazi uprising, Noether was forced to resign, yet she continued to teach by inviting her students to her home. Most days, my wife seems calm. She does her work, comes home, and kisses me, eager to make dinner and enjoy the evening wind-down. She said that work is a distraction.
I envy her. I feel constantly stressed. Right before I go to bed, I lie there with my own rumination. I make dinner, and my head is reeling with all the things I have to do.
My current situation is not great. I make my silly mathematical models with silly theoretical bugs. I wonder if this is a valid use of my time when innocent lives are being sent to a death camp. My parents are immigrants (naturalized citizens). I am an Asian American woman who was given citizenship by birthright. I'm legally married to a woman. I'm afraid of everything I am being taken away from me. I have more to lose than I thought.
Work is no sanctuary. This metaphorical ivory tower is on fire as much as the real world is. I'm constantly pressured about my productivity. I'm being belittled by my current boss for not having a paper finished. He frequently shits on me for being a fourth-year postdoc. I find no joy in doing research. The sense of discovery is overwhelmed by this nagging question of: will this be a paper that I can have done for this job market? Then I'm like, what job market? The academic job market will probably be even worse with the current NSF and NIH grants being removed. I was eager to join government research, but that's all been axed.
I wish work could be an escape. I wish my research could be my way of dealing with the absurdity of fascism. Karl Marx talks about the alienation of the worker from their own labor. I do my work, but I feel like it's not driven by my own drive. I do my work because I'm afraid of being belittled.
There's this powerlessness that permeates both through my life and work. I feel like it feeds into each other.
Tell me, friends, what do I do?