AustLit

'Hard work is etched in my bones. I see it in my mother’s restless hands, the way she jiggles her knees or bites her fingernails when she sits down to rest. I saw it in the spotlessness of both my grandmothers’ houses – in the way that they never sat down until everything around them was pristine. As much as I long for the order of these houses, I have learned to sit in the chaos of my home and look only at the screen or book in front of me. But the restlessness has stayed with me. I check work emails both earlier and later than I should. I work early in the morning and later in the evening. Before I had a child, my ideal working hours would have been roughly 8am to 7pm. I’ve been forced to truncate my hours into more or less 9 to 5ish, squeezing in extra hours when I can.' (Introduction)