
I’m a horse trainer and I love my job but horses are terrible conversationalists. To me, they are the most beautiful animal on the planet but they care little for discussion of art or literature – or discussions on anything at all really. Horses evolved to run away from danger – which means they are always alert, always mobile, ever watchful. In some ways they’re a lot like turbo charged, furry rally cars with manic toddlers at the wheel.

Image:supplied.
The year my third child went to school I started taking my dog for walks during my lunch break. One day I realised that, not only was I talking to him, I was also pointing out things of interest ('look at that cloud, it looks like a rabbit wearing roller skates!') and I decided that the time had come to start making some space for my own thoughts amid the chaos of family and work commitments.
I’m terrible at jigsaw puzzles, can’t stand small talk and suck at baking so I thought post graduate study would be a great way to restore a self esteem dented by my significant parenting skill defecits. As I now know, a PhD is the best way to annhiliate any shred of self confidence and ego that you might posses and is not, as I had hoped, just a handy way of being excused from some of the more boring minutiae of parenting… I pictured myself smiling serenely with six years of excuses up my sleeve, “Mummy can’t come and play dollies/zombie wars/dinosaur families right now, children, because she’s writing her thesis.”
The reality involved a great deal more chaos than serenity and a large measure of guilt.
