What I Do Versus What I Like To Do

Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I put on a skirt and heels. I grab my bag, kiss my boys, and drive five miles to the university.

I put on music before the start of class. I always have a pen in my hand. I call this habit my teaching tick. We talk commas and rhetorical strategies and topic sentences.

I call my husband as I walk to the car—he asks about my class, I ask about our baby. Fifteen minutes later I am home, and again I kiss my boys.

In the morning, I drag myself out of bed to the living room where I lesson plan and grade papers until my baby wakes up.

It is a nice gig, this teaching two nights a week. It takes a sacrifice of time from Joey, and some lost sleep from me, but it is worth it. Most of the time.

It is something that I do, and it is something I like to do, which is not always that same thing. Recently I have been thinking about this disconnect—what I do versus what I like to do. It sparked when a new visiting teacher asked what I like to do and I didn’t have a good answer.

Part of the problem with answering this question is that so much of my time goes into mothering. There are plenty of thinks I like about mothering—reading books, cuddling my baby fresh from the bath, tickling his little toes, making him laugh. But the answer could sound a little creepy: “I like tickling little toes. What do you like to do?”

And then there are things that I do and spend time on, but don’t particularly like. Some things I have to do—like fold laundry—but other things I just do, and they cut into the time I could spend on what I like.  

Since then I have been thinking about what I like and how much time I dedicate to it. I like teaching, but I also like reading, writing, visiting with friends, playing with Jackson, dating my husband, taking gym classes, and finding/cooking/baking new recipes that end with a comment from Joey about it being “hearty” or “the best X I have ever made.”

This year, I want to spend more time on the things that I really like to do, and less on the things that I sometimes just do.