This too shall pass

I recall thinking, when G was about 3 months old, about how I worried her cradle cap might never go away, despite the fact that I was scrubbing it with olive oil and a brush, and despite our pediatrician's reassurance that it goes away for all babies. I remember thinking (but not really worrying), but what if my baby is an outlier? What if she has cradle cap into her teens? Granted she'd have hair before then, and there are far bigger fish to fry than cradle cap, but this memory comes back when I think about milestones and what moving targets they are.

I think about these in my work life; I'm an academic with looooonnnnggggg lasting projects, some so long that they just sag against my neck and shoulders like old and decaying albatross carcasses (wow, what a rather gross or bleak depiction of cancer epi studies!), and I'm constantly having to create timelines, either for my many advisors (think bosses) or my own nagging anxiety. Point is, the deadlines (usually self-imposed and always unrealistic) keep shifting... backward. So the draft I thought would be ready in May isn't ready until July, the analyses that I should have finished weeks ago still loom undone. But not for lack of trying, slaving really, away at the computer until my eyes are bloodshot and my tendonitis flares. It's just that life (and well-meaning) coauthors get in the way, making things take longer than they "should."

But what is this "should" anyway? Hard work and good results take time. So does development! And each one of us has her own internal clock, but we forget this innate truth and compare ourselves to some higher standard of "should." So-and-so has this much done, these many publications, this much accomplished by this date, so I "should" too. Or, so-and-so's baby (or Baby ABC in book XYZ) is already smiling/rolling-over/crawling/walking/talking so mine "should" too. Whatever happened to variation? Diversity? Individual pace?

It's always been there, always will be, but so many of us subscribe to this idea of the "should." Yet, before you know it, the paper gets written, the cradle cap passes, and your baby sits up!