Four lives, one body

I envy secret superheros and villains. They only have two lives. You know, the "by day he is..., but by night..."

I have at least four lives, depending on how I think of them.

• Postgraduate student
• Hub at the heart of a family/household
• Community activist
• Worker-director

Oh, make that at least five lives, because sometimes I like to flop in a corner and just be me.

So far, so normal for many older postgrad students. We often blog about balancing and juggling, and avidly read tips on how to prioritise. It's not easy, but we do it.

But I like to push the boundaries a bit further. As part of the richness of being me, I live and work as a committee within my head. This way of being brings immense strengths as long as the committee are able to function as a whole.

Living as a committee is sometimes termed a disorder and can be seen as a stigma. But that implies there's something intrinsically wrong with living this way. It is definitely a different way of living. For example, sometimes I need to switch off from engaging with the people outside my head before answering a particular question because I have to do a quick check of how we all want to answer. But it is also a supremely effective way of thinking and working. How else could I/we bring multiple, overlapping but different, perspectives on whatever I am researching? How else could I/we divide up thinking tasks within my/our head and process multiple strands of thinking at the same time? (That is the coolest aspect of being me, even if it goes with a slight tendency to forget that I only have one body, which brings me back to the importance of "me" time and looking after ourselves...).

It can be time-consuming making sure all is well within, but at least it means I avoid the standard mature postgrad challenge of prioritising "me" time. I know that if I don't, I have about six weeks before anarchy will reign within. Which, ironically, probably makes me less prone to imploding than most multi-tasking postgrad students; I simply don't have the luxury of being able to push so hard that I risk burning myself out. I know where that leads and I/we don't want to go there again.

I pulled this post just before hitting "publish" last week, because I was worried about even this minimal self-disclosure about having a mind that works differently from most peoples. But I've reflected on the risks and decided I'm willing to take them, so here we go.

There's a lot written about the risk of self-disclosure in academic life when your brain is wired differently from what's accepted as "normal". But I don't get it, at least not within a qualitative research world where "normal" is as meaningless as any other statistical term, It seems more of an asset than a problem. If there's one thing that frustrates me, it's not being able to get my head round something, that feeling that I'm missing something obvious.

I'm curious as to what you will make of what I've said - that I'm different, that I hesitated before disclosing it - and that I see it as a "disclosure" rather than casual conversation.

So if anyone feels like satisfying my curiosity, please go ahead :)