Hopes and goals for 2025

Predictions

This year feels like it could have bigger changes than we've seen in years. We know Adele will start middle school next year, though we don't know where. She might end up at a school nearby that we think will be an easy transition, but maybe not.  

After many great years at a job he loves, there are changes on the horizon at Jon's work that make it pretty likely he'll look for a new job this year. 

And after years of assuming we'd never want to leave this city or even this house, the idea of moving nearby has taken hold as a longer-term possibility. This year, it might mean prioritizing some work on the house with an eye towards what might help it sell down the road and starting to get a sense of the local market. I doubt we'd actually move this year.

We don't have many family trips on the calendar this year like we did at the beginning of last year, but we will visit my parents at the end of the month. I hope my work travel isn't quite as concentrated as last year, but I do have... (counting)... probably at least nine work trips. Oof. 

I plan to do a lot more cooking in 2025. Jon and I were both pretty miserable about cooking last year, so my Christmas gift to him was 3 months of taking care of dinner. I hope that this commitment will inspire me to try new things and get out of the food rut we've been in for months. We'll see what happens after those first 3 months!

Hopes

I want to keep up monthly hikes with Adele. We're working towards her being able to hike a particularly difficult trail. I also plan to keep hiking monthly with the dynamic group of women who have been my mentors for a decade now. I've had to play a bigger role in that hiking group now which I don't mind.

I expect to grow as a manager/boss this year. I'll be adding at least two new people to my direct team and a peer colleague. I'm excited about turning over direct responsibility for more of the the things I've been holding down for years, but I know that will be an adjustment. 

I should probably advocate for another title change, but I might just keep putting it on the back burner out of... fear? cowardice? I'm not sure what I'm so afraid of. 

Speaking of fears, I have a complicated family issue that I've put on the back burner for years but I've asked my therapist to hold me accountable to make progress on it. I've been seeing the same therapist since 2023 which has especially helped me deal with work stress and grief about my sister's death in 2009.  

For my health, I plan to keep tracking my sleep and trying to understand what circumstances disrupt my sleep. I don't want to feel so much stress in my body, which means being proactive in anticipating and mitigating stress.

I want to do another solo trip at some point. I did weekend trips in 2022 and 2023, and in 2024 I did a longer retreat-type trip without family but with many other women. 

I want to keep dancing regularly this year. It feels so good to use my body when I spend so much time with mostly my brain.

I've still never tested positive for covid, and I'm still hoping to keep it that way. After Thanksgiving, I had a cough for about a week that I suspect was walking pneumonia from a kid who coughed in my face. I've had a few "off" days here and there, but I am thankful to generally avoid illness, especially considering my intense travel schedule. I'm unashamed and undeterred to sometimes be the only person wearing a mask in a space when I feel it's a small price to pay to minimize my risk of feeling miserable. 

Goals

I have an unbloggable hobby goal again this year that I'll call completion and assistance (hopefully I'll remember what those mean). 

I have a few monthly goals in mind, and I hope the first one in particular will help set me up well for the rest of the year. 

January: Less of what doesn't bring joy

I want less physical stuff and fewer distractions in my life. This month, I really want to declutter my physical spaces, my inbox, and my attention. I already took the first big step: I archived all the emails in my personal and work inboxes. I haven't done this in a few years. As I get more comfortable with the idea that there are more requests for my time than I could humanly fulfill, I feel less bad about dropping some balls and letting go of those emails I really meant to respond to but haven't. If it's truly important, it will resurface, or I'll go looking for it. Now, as new things come in, I'll have just a few things to decide about at any given time. 

February: Clean out the pantry

Since I'll be doing more cooking this year, February seems like a good time to make plans for using up all the odd foods we've accumulated in the pantry and freezer, or get rid of them. 

March: Ask for yard help

One way or another, I need some help with the yard. March is a good time to make a plan for that, and I don't think I'll be traveling a whole lot in March. 

For the wider world, I'm weary and wary of our choice of leader. I want to do my best to stay focused and energized about what good I'm trying to do in the world, and support the good work of others. I remember that we have to bend the arc of history towards justice--it's not going to bend itself, and it's not going to do it overnight. For me, this means making some conscious choices about the causes I prioritize and letting go of guilt about not doing more on other fronts. I can't play all the parts.

Let's see how wrong I am in a year ;-) 

Happy New Year!

Reflecting on 2024

I'm usually very good at remembering trips as milestones throughout the year. This year, I'm either getting old or I exceeded some threshold, because it's all a bit of a blur. Between all the personal trips and work trips, I lost track. At peak of work travel insanity, I got on 13 different planes in less than 4 weeks. 

We started the year with two weddings on the calendar and ended up with four weddings and a funeral. 

Thankfully, I am ending this year less burnt out than the last one. I started the year so desperately needing a vacation, and thankfully I was able to take one. It was a great chance to reflect on what "enough" meant, and lean into the idea of working less.

That lasted for about... 3 weeks. Ha!

I did at times regain a sense of healthy balance, but I had a few really intense months where I took on a lot of extra responsibility at work, mainly related to hiring. I could feel the stress in my body again, and I know that is unhealthy. The good news is that some new additions to the team have really helped lighten my load.

Personally, Jon and I also started working with a financial advisor this year, which has been great at lifting some of my domestic mental load.

I've started to wonder if there are some physiological reasons and not just psychological ones behind waking up early in the morning with my heart racing. I first noticed it in 2023 at the height of my work stress, but it has continued sometimes this year. Wondering if it might be related to blood sugar and cortisol, I cut way back on sweet things for several weeks and started measuring my blood sugar with a simple monitor. With so many variables, I haven't found any clear patterns yet on what might cause my early morning insomnia, but I plan to continue collecting data. 

In many ways, this was a year without big changes to the fundamentals. Same jobs, same house, same school, same friends, same pet. This time a year ago, I wasn't sure our dog would still be with us. Thankfully, she is! Less mobile, but still happy.

Adele continues to grow into a delightful person, and she still thinks we're cool and wants to hang out with us. She has some wonderful friends and a growing sense of independence and responsibility.

The best new thing this year was taking up a new hobby—or rather, picking up a very old one. During a time of high work stress, I started dancing again. It's been over a decade since I danced with any regularity. I love it, and it's one of the times I have tried to protect and look forward to even during hectic weeks.

I was excited about Kamala & Walz and of course upset by the results of the election. I didn't get involved as early as I'd hoped, but I did volunteer for the campaign close to the election. I forced myself to go to sleep that night without looking at the news. When I woke up, I saw we were in The Bad Place. I am trying to preserve my sanity by tuning some things out without completely disengaging. I want to be intentional about what gets my attention and energy so that I can stay focused and effective on the causes I care about most and am best positioned to impact.

As (almost) always, I look forward to sharing my thoughts tomorrow about what's in store for 2025. So long, 2024!

Looking forward to 2024

I want this to be a less-is-more kind of year, like a life edit. I want to work less. I want to commit to less. I want to have less stuff.

In that vein, today I'm ending a hobby streak that I've cultivated over the last few years. I'm releasing myself from that commitment to make room for something else. 

I also stepped back my involvement in a volunteer role I've had for several years. I know it's the right decision for me this year.

In no particular order, here are some things I'm looking forward to:

• Total solar eclipse on April 8. We saw the one in 2017 and it was spectacular. 
• Family trips this spring & summer
• Two weddings
• Hiking every month with Adele (for real this time—it's scheduled)
• A solo trip or two
• Weekly family meetings (we're starting these this year)
• Hiring new people to distribute some of my responsibilities at work

There are a couple of dark clouds looming for this year. I fear it may be the last for our darling 13 year old dog. She suddenly aged a lot in the last year, and we found out she has degenerative myelopathy, which is untreatable. She still seems happy and she's getting around (slowly), but I know it will get harder for her. 

The other looming cloud is the presidential election. I will feel better from taking some concrete actions with other people, like sending postcards to voters or something like that. I'm not sure yet what form that action will take.

I feel like I spend a fair amount of time inside my own head, even when I'm spending time with friends or family. I hope this year to do a better job of being present in the moment, instead of distracted by what's going on in my mind. 

Let's see what 2024 has in store.

Happy New Year!

Looking back on 2022

I started the year with a dark outlook on the world. Here's what I wrote in January but never posted because it felt too dark and I didn't know where to go from there: 

 I'm feeling less inspired to write this than I usually am. The world just feels so... dark. For most of my life, I've thought I was looking back on history from a better place, where there are still so many problems but objectively more peaceful and prosperous than the previous 100 years.

Now I don't feel such optimism about our current state or path ahead. I'm afraid that we're well on a trajectory towards measurably worse lives: lower life expectancy, more trauma, greater inequality. These last 5 years have been traumatizing for so many people in so many ways—illness, displacement, discrimination, disasters. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February epitomized that darkness. I feel like I was right, and the name for this is sentinel intelligence. 

But I am mentally in a better place because I've let go of the expectation that we are on this inevitable upward trajectory. Clearly, I can't take that for granted. 

It can be easy for me to get overwhelmed by the world (it's like my default state of being). I'm the kind of person who wants to do so much, to help so much. But overcommitting and trying to boil the ocean leads me to be both unhappy and ineffective. So, in the last couple of years I've gotten better at at least asking myself what is the most important thing that I need to do? It means letting go of a lot of things and being more realistic and gracious with myself about what is possible for one human to hold.

So with that macro-reflection on 2022, here's the micro-reflection on my most immediate sphere of influence.

Home & Gardening

The big thing since I wrote my goals in early February was finishing the kitchen, which was already 80% done. By the end of February, we got it to about 95% and did the last finishing touches in time to host Christmas with Jon's family. We're loving it! 

The basement renovation has some issues and the contractor is going to revisit them in January.

Unfortunately, I did not get my garden motivation back this year and it has mostly been a wreck that I feel guilty about. 

Family

We did several small family trips and a big one. I saw all of my cousins this year for the first time in ages. Adele got to use her passport for the first time! We hosted a great Christmas meal. 

Adele is 9 now, in 4th grade, and so much fun. What a great little person. 

Unfortunately, one of my aunts passed away. An old family friend who was close with my sister also died from pulmonary embolisms, like my sister did. Both sad events.

Covid

After avoiding it for 2 years, it made it to our household. First Jon got it in the spring. A friend came over feeling a little under the weather but not thinking much of it. Adele and I didn't hang out with him, but Jon spent the whole evening playing a game with him and 2 other friends. The next day, the friend tested positive and thankfully told everyone. Jon was definitely going to get it. Thankfully, he started isolating in our room, we ran air filters, he wore a mask whenever he left the room, and he tested daily until it was negative. Neither Adele nor I got it from him, and he recovered in about 8 days. That one friend infected most people in Jon's friend group.

Then Adele came home from sleep away camp with it. Near the end of her session, we were notified of an outbreak. We had her test the night she came home, but I forgot to check it promptly. I looked at it an hour later and saw the faintest line. She tested again in the morning and it was more clearly positive. This was particularly stressful because I was about to travel for work and we were just a week away from our big family trip. Thankfully, Adele had a fairly mild case and tested negative the day before our trip, and I managed to avoid covid again thanks to filters, masks, ventilation, and isolation. 

We're all up to date on boosters and got them very soon after they were approved. Adele was boosted about 6 weeks before she got covid, and again this fall. We all got our flu shots, too. I continue to wear a mask indoors in public settings. We have eaten in restaurants several times now, which I don't love, but they mostly haven't been crowded and have been fairly well ventilated (see below). Jon isn't wearing a mask much anymore. Adele is wearing a mask sometimes at school, though often comments that few or no other kids are. The whole class is supposed to mask for the next week when someone in the class gets covid, but apparently that has been a bit lax. She likes these small KN-95 masks so I just try to make sure she always has one available. 

I also bought myself a few things for assessing and mitigating risk, especially while flying:
- Travel air purifier. I loop a rubber band around the handle and hang it from the arm of the airplane seat to point more filtered air towards my face.
- FloMask: I got this for wearing on the plane because it has a tight face seal (as long as I don't have to talk). 
- Aranet4 Carbon Dioxide Meter: This lets me easily get a sense of how well ventilated a space is because poorly ventilated spaces accumulate high levels of CO2. Turns out some of the most poorly ventilated spaces I was in this year were cars recirculating air. Use that outdoor air setting. 

I had quite a few "close calls" for covid exposure, even beyond Jon and Adele. There were several times when I hung out with someone who tested positive the next day. However, in most cases, people were testing in advance (i.e. they had tested negative earlier in the day even though they were positive the next day) and usually we were doing lower-risk activities like being outdoors or inside with masks (or at least I was wearing a mask).

 Travel

After 0 flights in 2021, I ended up flying six times this year, and four of those were cross-country flights for work. By the fourth trip, the mask mandate was gone so I bought the FloMask and CO2 monitor to better protect myself. On that trip, I was seated next to an incredibly talkative unmasked woman who didn't pick up very well on my cues. I had my headphones in listening to an audiobook on negotiation with my eyes closed and I only occasionally opened them to take notes. She still wanted to talk to me. I said as little as I could. 

We drove quite a bit to visit family this year, and Jon & Adele did a train trip while I had a glorious long weekend alone.

Career

In February I wrote:

I think it's going to be an intense year.

And indeed, my work this year has been dominated by a Very Hard Thing. What distinguished the intensity from other intense periods of work in my life was the sheer amount of strategy and tactics it required. For several months, I spent hours each week in conversation with my boss/colleague about our next steps. It's a special kind of exhausting to contemplate existential decisions for months on end and then navigate political landmines for months more in pursuit of this Very Hard Thing—all behind the scenes while also keeping up with the day-to-day.

Most of the pieces of fallen into place, some from luck and some from very careful effort and hard work. But we've made some missteps and miscalculations along the way, too. I should have read those negotiation books sooner. Trying to move quickly on some things might have backfired and cost us more time in the end. And we should have tried to even more in parallel rather than in series. But we'll never know how things might have gone differently.

As ever, one of the most frustrating parts of my job is when my boss/colleague and I aren't on the same page. In this high-stakes process, there has been a lot of that. We have agreement about the destination, but sometimes very different ideas about the best path to get us there. At our worst, we exhaust and frustrate each other going around in circles. But at our best, our different approaches and strengths are complimentary and we're a dynamic duo. 

What feels great is knowing I am making huge, positive contributions in my work, for my team, and in pursuit of our life-affirming mission. I was central to two particularly pivotal efforts in pursuit of the Very Hard Thing. First, I extensively researched and documented some numbers to make the case for the Very Hard Thing (and uncovered some dirt along the way). Then, I was able to confidently and calmly field most of the questions in a high-stakes meeting that unblocked a months-long stalemate. On top of that, I introduced a new organizing model that I think can scale with us as the team grows.

Frankly, I am kicking ass at my job. I've been here almost 5 years now and the metaphorical trees I planted and nurtured are fucking fruiting. 

While working on the Very Hard Thing behind the scenes, we've also had some clear successes this year. We finally added two people to the team! Unfortunately, neither of them is doing the kind of work that takes a load off of me, but I'm confident we'll get there next year. I did manage to minimize my effort in some areas that have required a lot of time but aren't the most important right now compare to the Very Hard Thing. I said no a lot, but in (I hope) relationship-affirming ways. 

Since I'm still keeping track of my working hours, I can quantifiably say I've worked hard. I logged 2084 working hours this year, which works out to 41.7 hours/week for 50 weeks of the year. That's 77 more hours than last year. Thankfully, it's nothing like the hours I worked in grad school. I'm working hard, but I also think I'm smarter about it. The Very Hard Thing took up 20% of my work time this year. 

In the process of playing catch-up on one part of my job that I somewhat neglected for most of the year, I realized that I find some of that work quite addicting. It means I'm really motivated to do it well (and I'm doing a great job), but I do have to be mindful of how that kind of work impacts my overall mental health and stress level. A less addicting companion to that work is data analysis. I don't get to spend a lot of time doing data analysis, but I do really love getting immersed in it and visualizing data. My foundational R skills from grad school are still useful. I had no idea I'd be using them like this! I just have to be mindful to stop at "good enough." I'm not publishing any papers, just looking for insights that will allow us to do things differently. 

Shaping the World I Want To See

Aside from my career, what else have I done this year to shape the future I want to see instead of just eating popcorn at the horror film? I should probably do a better job of tracking these things and be more strategic about it, but here's a few:

- Brought leftover meals from school to a local mutual aid group ("food rescue")
- Donated to a pro-choice mother running for office
- Donated to medical expenses for an international student
- Purchased items for a mutual aid group responding to the urgent needs of recent immigrants
- Submitted a statement against proposed anti-trans school policies
- Submitted a statement in support of creating a new hiking trail in a neighborhood with few trails
- Donated to local environmental organizations doing restoration and environmental justice work
- Helped with tree planting at Adele's school
- Volunteered with a habitat restoration project
- Donated to our local food pantry and nonviolence organizations

2022 overall

I really can't complain about our lot in life. We are financially secure, working satisfying jobs, loving school, spending time with friends and family, and reasonably healthy. More so than a year ago, I'm excited about the year ahead and I look forward to writing about it soon. Tonight we'll ring in the New Year with just the three of us hanging out and playing games. We are so fortunate.

Happy New Year!

...whoa, 2020

Now that we're halfway through the disastrous year of 2020, this is a good time to pause and reflect. On January 31, 2020, I wrote for my expectations of 2020:

I don't expect huge changes. 

 Um... 😳

Wow.

😭

I did not see this *gestures around in reference to the massive global disruption due to covid-19* coming on January 31, even though I was already following the news about the novel coronavirus at that time.

I was first warned about the then-unnamed disease spreading in China on Friday, January 3rd via email from a nurse responsible for advising me and my colleagues on travel happening later that month. I was warned again very seriously in person a few days later and told to cover my mouth and nose with "anything you have" if anyone around me coughed or sneezed. I listened but wasn't particularly worried.

But we did talk about it during the trip, and what it was like for people during SARS (1). Another person on the trip had been quarantined apart from his family for 10 days during that time due to a mysterious fever. That seemed like such a long time, and so serious. So exceptional.

As my trip was wrapping up, China was shutting down. People I collaborate with across Asia were taking it very seriously by early February. I came down with a cold in the middle of the month (about 3 weeks after returning) and was definitely paranoid that maybe I'd picked it up during my travels and it had just taken a much longer time to develop, but I wasn't that sick and from reading the news I was unconvinced that anyone would even test me because I didn't meet the criteria.

I spent a lot of the second half of February reading about it on Twitter, watching the science community react, and reading the news. I got more and more anxious with the lack of preparation and seriousness in the US. It was like watching the news of a hurricane leaving destruction in its wake and tracking this way, but every town and city in the path just planned to carry on.

Everything came to a head in March, of course. Jon was supposed to leave on March 14 for a much-anticipated week long trip with a friend. Based on everything I was reading, I did not think it was a good idea and we had several tense conversations leading up to the day when the shit actually hit the fan and everything was canceled, including his trip (much to my relief).

Adele's last day of school at school was Friday, March 13. I could see the writing on the wall and was sort of conflicted about even sending her the last couple of days that week, but it seemed like it would be a while before she went back so she went.

Do you remember those early days, when we had hope that it might be a month or two and then the kids would go back to school? Ha! Here we are, 3.5 months later with no school and no summer camp. I was so pleased with our proactive organization this year—we made all the camp plans and paid in February! So organized! So privileged to even be able to do that! Sigh.

We've taken the isolation seriously, and still are even as some things are opening up. We are incredibly fortunate to have our jobs (with pay cuts) and the ability to work from home, so we're doing the best we can. It sucks, but know it could be so, so much worse. I am thankful for everything we have during this wild 2020 ride.

Looking ahead to (the rest of) 2020

When I was in the home stretch of finishing grad school, pregnant, and working on my dissertation, I did a seriously aggressive purge of various subscriptions. My time and attention was so important that I needed as few distractions as possible. I thought I'd written about it at the time, but I couldn't find any mention of it around winter 2012-13. Anyways, I decided I'd start the year with a subscription cleanse.

January's goal: Unsubscribe from at least 31 things. The idea was kind of to do at least one per day, but I had a chunk of travel and knew that would throw things off, so I went with a numeric target for the month. I kept a list and just made it to 32 things tonight. I will continue unsubscribing from things, but this was a good start to the year.

I'm planning to do monthly goals this year to give me focus (and to release myself from the urge to try to do too much at once).

February's goal: a simpler photo organization system for all my digital photos
By the end of the month, I want to have a clear system for how I manage images from my phone and separate digital camera, as well as all my older photos which are spread across two laptops and possibly an external drive.

Right now I've got some photos duplicated on my current laptop but am not entirely sure which ones they are, I have a few different file naming systems, and I've got at least two different cloud backup systems in play but they aren't both including all the images. It's a mess, and my life would be easier if it wasn't.

Other expectations for 2020:
I don't think I'll have as much work travel this year as I did last year, and I'm ok with that. I probably already did my biggest trip of the year earlier this month. It was great, but the kind of work I did for that really isn't what I should normally be doing, so I hope it's an outlier in that regard.

I think we'll do some fun family travel this year, but nothing all that long or expensive. We've got the beginnings of a plan for a big trip in 2021 that I'm excited about. This year we need to see some family and friends, and hopefully get Jon and Adele's passports in use somewhere. A couple of plans to combine work and family travel already fell through this year, so hopefully something will work out.

As usual, because for some reason for the last decade April is my busiest month of the year, I expect April to be very, very hectic.

I hope to build some closer friendships this year.

I don't expect huge changes. As far as we can tell, we're all in very stable places (home, careers, school), so more happiness is a matter of maximizing our already wonderful circumstances to make more room for what's fulfilling and leave behind what isn't.

There's so much to be done in this broken world. I'm sorry I can't do all the things. I'm just trying to do what good I can in my little corners, and I hope you are able to do good in yours.

Looking back on 2019

Well, this is my only post for 2019, continuing the long, slow decline of frequency since the peak in... (checks blog)... 2008 with 204 posts! I didn't even write about my expectations and goals for 2019 like I intended. Why not?

I intended to have monthly goals, but I hadn't figured out what all of them were going to be yet. But I had the first two planned. January was going to be no backlog. My interpretation of that was something like "inbox zero" for new stuff where I'd deal with it each day. However, I promptly departed for a 2 week international work trip whereupon that plan went right out the window.

Sigh.

February's goal was going to be to buy our house... and we bought it in August instead. So that didn't exactly help me build momentum with the monthly goal thing. Those were bad goals. For 2020, my first goal is to have better goals.

So without a blueprint of ambitions and expectations laid out at the beginning of the year, I'll just muse on various aspects of my life in 2019.

Home & Family
The most noteworthy thing that happened this year is that we became homeowners! I'll spare everyone the boring complicated details, but we didn't move. It just took a long time to go from being renters to owners. Jon is still loving his work and doing a great job, so a couple of solid years with both of us earning respectable professional wages finally made that possible. We're so glad to have made that leap and thankful to everyone who played a role.

Adele continues her trajectory of awesomeness as a first grader. There have been some new struggles this year with friends, but all part of growing up. In the last year or so she has upped her game skills so we established a weekly family board game night. It's fascinating to recognize some of the odd affinities and hangups she has that I relate to from my childhood. I can tell that she gets worked up by the anticipation of uncomfortable things in a way that I did a lot as a child but Jon did not, e.g. taking medicine. She also shares my affinity for gnarly tree roots and making sets of M&Ms with one of each color.

Friends
This year I canceled a failing monthly event with neighborhood mom friends that I started about 5 years ago. I was bad at reminding people, but I also wasn't hearing from anyone despite the recurring calendar event. Sometimes no one showed up, which was kind of depressing for me. Jon is the kind of person who commits heavily to a small group of friends. He has about 5 close friends and at least any two of them are over at least 2 times per week to play games. I hang out with them too, but I also want my own group of close friends. The kind of sad truth for me is that I really don't have a close friend here. I know a lot of people and have a lot of friendly acquaintances who could potentially be closer friends, but I couldn't think of anyone I felt close enough to to invite to my birthday dinner. I work too much and volunteer too much and try to do too much around the house and don't do a good job prioritizing friendships. I skype monthly with my two best friends from grad school, I'm in close with a college friend who lives a few hours away, and I hike monthly with a few women, but sometimes I am sad that I don't have more regular hang out friends around here. It's not like there aren't cool people here. I need to do a better job in 2020.

Travel
I traveled for work in January, February, March, April, October, and November. Half the trips were international. For the first time since our honeymoon in 2009, we managed to combine a work trip with a family vacation. Considering how many trips I've done for work since then, that's kind of insane. It just either hasn't made sense logistically (especially with a kid), or been feasible financially. But this year, Jon and Adele joined me at the end of a work retreat and we made a long weekend of exploring a different part of the country.

Our biggest family trip this year was visiting Disney with my parents. Adele was such a fun age for it (almost 6). We also did a couple of shorter trips to visit friends and attend our college reunion.

Career
I'm established enough in my position now that this year I've gotten the highest profile invitations of my career. I did a handful of interviews and gave a couple of prominent invited talks. For the biggest, it was an entirely new talk for which I spent at least 60 hours preparing, and I knocked it out of the park. I've never received so many compliments in my life. That felt good. Then I slept for 11 hours straight.

Stuff and Attention
I watched Marie Kondo's Tidying Up and parted with a lot of clothes and books. I have a growing realization that I'm trying to fit too much into my life (in terms of my time and commitments), and cluttered corners of the house are a reflection of the same phenomenon, but with physical things. Watching Tidying Up helped me think about what I can be grateful for but let go. I'm trying to do a better job of not trying to hold too much, physically or metaphorically. I still have a lot of papers and misc to go through to decide if they spark joy.

This year I also read How to Do Nothing by Jenny O'Dell (so did Obama, btw) which got me thinking even more about the attention economy and how to make conscious decisions about my attention. I've definitely spent less time on conventional social media this year, especially Facebook. I have some complicated thoughts about my role in the attention economy but I really enjoyed the book.

Work & Emotional Labor at Work
Last year I reflected on some of the growing pains from moving into my dream job. This year has overall been much smoother with my colleagues, but I'm definitely feeling the stress of being at the interface of internal and external expectations. There are a handful of difficult external people who I've had to deal with, and the amount of emotional labor and time it takes to interact with them is exhausting. It has been difficult to know the best way to proceed in many circumstances and definitely caused me to lose sleep.

One night I had a dream that I was near a forest fire. For some reason, I thought I could get closer and still get back out safely (I can't even remember why). But in my dream, the fire quickly got more intense, and I was trapped and had to be rescued. I realized I was a fool for going in because I had not only endangered myself, but the person who had to come rescue me.

I woke up from this dream with the realization that I needed to set clear boundaries with the difficult person I was dealing with at the time. I took it as a warning that if I didn't, I was putting my team and project at risk by proceeding. Essentially, this difficult person was an unpredictable forest fire capable of inflicting damage.

I love my job. I care about it so much that I have a hard time not working. I'm almost always trying to accomplish more than is realistically possible in a week. The team had many great successes this year, but I've also wasted a bit of time on some things that kind of flopped. We didn't lose anything but the time we put into it, but I feel a little self-conscious about those things. However, I've more than succeeded in many other areas, so it's just good for me to hone my sense of where to put my effort and attention. I also think I did a great job foreseeing a potentially disastrous collaboration and cutting it off, though it caused me a fair amount of anxiety for months before finally made the call. I probably should have done it sooner, but I kept hoping they'd get their act together.

I don't like saying no or letting people down, so I sometimes have trouble setting boundaries for work and prioritizing. I should be more strict about that in 2020, for my own sanity and health.

Volunteering
I've also done a lot of volunteering this year. One of the things I volunteer for has a strong interaction with my work, but it's not exactly part of my job. Over the last year it's been exciting to see how it has grown into a movement, and I'm not having to manage all of the mental responsibilities for it anymore.

I'm also nearing the end of a long-term volunteer commitment and find myself looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. It's been a bit more stressful than fun for the last 2 years. Perhaps I should write a longer reflection on it at some point.

I've organized a lot of events. Some for volunteering, some for work, and I have less and less patience for it. It falls into the category of something I'm pretty good at but don't enjoy. I hate all of the little decisions about the venue, the food, the budget, etc. I should have a personal limit for event organizing and stick to it.

Ritual
I did a good job of committing to a particular ritual every day (~95% success). I plan to continue the ritual for the foreseeable future.

Health
Last year I noted my weight had crept up more than I was comfortable with (i.e. my clothes weren't fitting), so I'm pleased I managed to lose about 10 pounds this year (though it went up first before it went down!). However, I have probably had higher blood pressure this year than ever before, thanks to these aforementioned difficult people and generally working too hard. I'm not really exercising though, so that's not great.

Just before leaving for 10 days of travel in October, I made a frantic dash out the door for something that was urgent but not really very important, and in my haste I fell down a few steps onto the sidewalk. I scraped myself up pretty badly and hit my cheek on the concrete. I ended up with a spectacularly awful black eye, but honestly I'm grateful that it wasn't worse because I easily could have broken something. It was a wake up call for me. I took it as a warning to make sure I don't try to do too much, get hasty, and break myself (or my work) in the process and ultimately make things unnecessarily more difficult.

All in all, it's been a great year and I can hardly complain. We're incredibly fortunate. Wishing all who read this a healthy, just, and peaceful 2020!

Life in 2018

I wrote a record-low two posts in 2018 before this one. I still enjoy this medium for self-reflection, though I use it rarely now.

I mentioned just a few things that I expected for 2018:

Make monthly resolutions
I completely failed at this. I think I'll try again in 2019, but with a better plan. I hope!

Start my dream job
Yes! It's been more of a roller coaster than I expected, though. More on that below.

New job for Jon
Yes! He ended up changing jobs right after I did, and it's been a complete 180 for him. It's a great company and an incredible fit for his personality and skills. It's a great reminder that if your job sucks and you're depressed about it, there's probably someplace out there where you can shine. I'm so glad he's found that in his new job.

Big family trip
Yes! We had an awesome time traveling with several nieces and nephews for a week over the summer. They are wonderful people.

Big gardening plans
Yes! We put in a rain garden and a lot more native plants. I love puttering in the garden.

Many things about this year were predictable, but they certainly weren't boring. I worked really hard. Probably too hard (Jon would say definitely too hard). For the first half of the year, I was also working on a carryover project from my last job. Seeing that through was a lot of extra work, and it was a relief to have it finished. However, I was pretty crushed by my new boss's response to it. He thought it was so... unimportant. I've learned that it's very difficult when he and I don't see eye to eye, and I had a few particularly stressful incidents with him. I hadn't anticipated this kind of conflict, and there were definitely several times when I regretted leaving my other job when I did because of the stress with my new boss. I spent 4 years working mostly for and with badass women who gave me just enough guidance and independence to flourish. There's a different dynamic with my new job and I have struggled at times to understand how I best fit into the team. I feel it's on the upswing now, but I expect there will be other rough patches. I've contemplated getting a therapist or a coach or both.

I spent part of the year feeling somewhat socially isolated and feeling like I needed more quality social time with friends. We decided to throw a holiday party for the first time since leaving Big City and that was a big success. Although that itself wasn't a time when I got to have lots of the kinds of conversations I was craving, it was helpful for encouraging some new friendships.

My weight has crept up slowly for the last couple of years, and I know I've been less active this year. I need to eat a little less and be more active (the recipe for almost every weight loss plan ever). Sigh.

I didn't travel nearly as much for work in 2018 as I did in 2017 and 2016. I had just 3 work trips, and only one was international. We did a fair number of weekend driving trips to see friends or family, and that one big family trip.

I got a holiday card out this year for the first time since 2014. In years past part of my hang up was having "the photo" for the card. We've never had a professional family portrait, but sometimes Jon takes one that we pose for. I decided last holiday season that this year I should just pick some photos and get something done rather than getting hung up on "the photo". I had the cards made pretty early, but since last sending cards in 2014, it seemed half our list had moved, died, or added new family members, so updating it took quite a while and we didn't get cards out until Christmas Eve. Next year should be easier!

Adele gets more and more awesome. She's in kindergarten this year (Montessori) and her math skills are exploding. She's doing some simple mental addition and subtraction with ease. She's starting to read a little, learned to ride a pedal bike, loves to play and invent games, and tells people she's a scientist.

All in all we've had a good year and cannot possibly complain about our lot in life. The country and world... oof. I'm really hoping for some improvement (modest, realistically) on a number of fronts in 2019 with a change in congress, but I know we're just halfway to 2020 and how much more important that will be for political change in the US.

As usual, I'll post my expectations for 2019 and some goals in January.

Happy New Year!

Reflections on 2017

In January, I wrote my goals and expectations for the year. When I started grad school in 2007, I also wrote my career and life goals for 2017. Over the summer I wrote a post reflecting on a decade of blogging, but I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect on both sets of goals/expectations for this year. 

I'll start with what I wrote in 2007. In short, I described my career objective to become a professor a place like Small Friendly College, which would include teaching, research with undergrads, occasionally leading foreign study programs, and doing some kind of science outreach. I knew I needed good teaching experience, international experience, and to write my own grants to support my research. I got the grants and the international experience, but not so much teaching experience (in part because I was successful with fellowship applications). My decision to steer away from the liberal arts college professor path was motivated in part by wanting to be geographically narrow (to be near Jon's family eventually) and in part by realizing (mostly from conversations with SFC faculty) that I wasn't going to be terribly competitive for those jobs without a much stronger teaching and research record.

I've been able to play to the same interests articulated above and strengths I developed in grad school in unexpected ways and chart a very different path than the small-liberal-arts-college-professor way. There is a strong international component to my current work. My interest in outreach and an unconventional science communication opportunity helped my land my first real job as a PhD. It's really all of my side interests and ancillary skills from grad school that have gotten me to here, rather than my research itself. I suppose I expected the same to be true as a professor, so I've just applied it differently.

I'm most proud of my self-awareness in 2007:

At this point in time my ideal job is quite specific, and I’m not even sure it exists. However, the breadth of what I want to do to is great enough that I would be happy to pursue other careers that fulfill some, if not all, of my interests in other ways. I will remain open to other options that I can’t even imagine yet.

Not bad, huh?

I also wrote about wanting to start a family:

I do plan to start a family by 2017. I am not sure exactly how children will fit into the picture, nor can I realistically expect things to go as planned. But if I could choose, I’d like to have two children relatively close together to minimize the pre-school time period. When in my career I try to have children will depend on my research plans and post doc opportunities. Perhaps I will try to have kids between finishing field work and defending.

I did strategically aim to give birth between my dissertation defense and the end of my NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which worked out pretty well, except for the part where I almost died and then had a pretty rough start to motherhood while trying to find a job. We've decided to only have one child instead of the two we'd originally intended, but I'm feeling ok with that. Given the state of the world, it doesn't seem like the right decision for us to choose to have another child.

For my goals defined at the beginning of this year I wrote:

This year is not about being wildly aspirational—it's about modest changes to try and protect us (in the immediate and broader sense) in uncertain times.

I did well on the goals and elaborated on several in a post earlier in the year.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
DONE. He's not wild about the workplace culture, but it's ok. He's keeping an eye out for other opportunities.

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
DONE! 

Clear my inbox every month

Nope. I completely failed at this and my work email has now gotten a bit unwieldy too. I've practically given up on my personal email. I need to find a strategy that works for me, but in the short term I'm just procrastinating on it.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

Kind of. I wrote a reflection on a decade of blogging, but I didn't get it printed like I considered. I didn't find a way to print it that was easy and satisfying enough. I'd still like to do that someday. Suggestions welcome!

Read four books

DONE! I read a book about my field of work which included many people I know personally, which was pretty cool. I also read How to Raise A Wild Child because I want to make sure that Adele is well-connected to nature.

Financial
Pay off our car
DONE!

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
DONE! 

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
Nope. We have instead put more emphasis on saving for retirement. I'll re-evaluate the situation in 2018.

Activism
Carbon offsets
DONE. We've been paying a monthly fee based on our calculated carbon emissions from 2016. I am guessing 2017 would be comparable for us so I think we'll continue at the same rates for 2018.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
DONE. 

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-Wikimedia 
-ProPublica 
-GiveDirectly
-Southern Poverty Law Center
DONE! 

In terms of broad expectations for the year, I wrote:

I am less optimistic about 2017 than I have been...maybe ever. I am deeply concerned about Trump becoming president tomorrow and I honestly expect the world and its people to be in worse shape at the end of 2017 than now. I expect my family (immediate and extended) to weather this year due to our position of privilege (employed, mostly urban, socially connected, highly educated, white), but even still I expect our lives to be diminished.

I am afraid I hit the nail on the head. My immediate family is doing fine, but the world feels much less safe with the insanity of nuclear brinksmanship from two insecure leaders, no new gun control measures despite escalating casualties in mass shootings, and the mainstreaming of white supremacists. We continue to ignore the paths for action on climate change, despite suffering extensive damages from hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and fires exacerbated by our inaction. Measures making the dysfunctional health care system we have even worse and tax changes that will disproportionately benefit the incredibly wealthy and wreck the federal budget make me less optimistic for a thriving future of broadly shared prosperity in our country. I am sad for our country and the world.

I expect some big changes again in 2018, particularly with my career. As usual, I'll share more in a separate post after the new year.

Farewell, 2017!

Looking back on 2016

Overall, 2016 was an exciting year for our family. The good outweighed the bad for us, but I know many people rightfully had very different experiences of 2016. Each year in January I like to set a few goals and in December I like to review the year so here's a look back.

Here were my goals and expectations for 2016:

Personal
Read at least 4 books
I read 3, one of which was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. One was about a fruit (took me all year to finish—not exactly a riveting page turner but I wanted to finish it), and the other was an odd aforementioned field biologist memoir. As in 2015, I also read a lot of online news (print media to a lesser extent), but that doesn't offer the satisfaction of completing a book. I still have an ever-growing stack I want to read.

Make our backyard more playable.
Yes! We got it fenced and erected a makeshift play structure. Much improved!

Make peace with having one child.
Last year I wrote, "By the end of this year I'd like to confidently and happily say we're "one and done" if anyone asks." It took me most of the year, but I'm there. I might elaborate on this in a later post.

Career

Get another job offer.
I got four offers, including my first choice! It was hard to leave my great boss and interesting workplace, but this new position is a great opportunity for professional growth. It was also a raise!

Fix up my website
I hardly did anything beyond the bare minimum, and thankfully it wasn't necessary. But in 2017 I think it needs attention again in preparation for another career move.

Money

Get more life insurance
Didn't do this and didn't really investigate it. Probably should go on the list for 2017.

Move retirement investments & Jon's HSA to accounts with lower fees
We made progress on the Roth IRA investments but not the HSA. We moved all of my IRA out of  Pax World and into a lower-fee socially responsible index fund with some in another low-fee index fund.

Refinance or at least change the repayment term on my student loans
Due to other things that happened this year (see below), it didn't make sense to work aggressively on paying down my loans yet but I think we will be able to in 2017.

What else did I think would happen in 2016? 
-Adele is going to start preschool somewhere, hopefully at a Montessori school. 
Yes! She is at a wonderful Montessori school that we love, and it is mercifully costing us less than her daycare.

-Jon has been working on some long-term projects that will hopefully start earning more money this year. 
Yes! He's published now, but we're still waiting on the first royalty check and it's really more a labor of love than a money maker. Another project that took a lot of time and energy this year should be much smoother sailing next year and more profitable too.

-We're planning a fun trip this summer with my parents to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. 
We did this and it was wonderful. We explored a different part of the country and it worked well for the five of us to travel together.

-There's a chance I might get to travel somewhere exciting for work for a few days, which I would welcome.
Oh boy did I ever. I way underestimated this one. I went on TWO exciting trips before I left my old job and I've been on 3 trips to 3 different countries since I started in September. The recent travel has been a bit too much and I am looking forward to less travel in the immediate future, but I'm sure there will be at least 2 more work-related trips in the first half of 2017.

-If I do travel for more than a few days in a row this year, I think Adele will probably wean. 
Even with all of my traveling, she hasn't weaned. I'm fine with that.

-I don't foresee other big events or changes in 2016 right now, but I know that life can throw you a curve ball at any time. 
I knew there were decent odds that I might change jobs this past year, but when I wrote my goals we hadn't anticipated Jon make a big career change. We basically sent him back to school for a semester and took on debt to do it. Since we had excellent credit, we put the tuition on credit cards with 0% interest for 15-18 months. It was definitely a gamble, but the whole reason for sending him was so that he will be well-trained for jobs with much higher starting salaries. We put a couple of other big expenses on the 0% cards, including the aforementioned vacation with my parents. We unquestionably lived beyond our means this year, albeit in (mostly) calculated ways. 2017 should be the year of setting the balance straight (more on that in another post).

The last noteworthy thing to happen in 2016 was that my grandmother passed away on New Year's Eve. It was not unexpected and she had been mentally ready to go for a long time, but it is still a big change for my family, especially my parents.

I hope all of my readers are ready for a new chapter in your own lives in 2017. I am thinking about my goals and expectations and will post them soon. Cheers!

Using my new job to get to my dream job

I'm trying on the idea of talking about my dream job and really trying to make it a reality. The idea has been forming over the last several months and I've talked about it with a few trusted people, but I haven't really committed to it. I'm starting to think seriously, and put into writing, how I can use my new job to get to my dream job.

I've spent a month now in my new position. I'm still swimming in names and acronyms and trying to find my footing. It's in a new field for me where I'm outside my comfort zone and expect to learn quite a bit. I'll get to travel a LOT more than in my last job—I have 3 big trips in the next 3 months! But the best thing about my new position is that it's temporary (1-2 years) and they expect us to make use of the time, connections, and opportunities to find our next career move.

So I have this dream job that grew out of my last job. I can imagine all of these ways in which I could help expand and grow this movement and community that I'm really invested in. I think it would be personally satisfying and fun, but there's no one (that I know of right now) who can hire me to do this. Part of the task would be finding the funding to make it possible, which sounds stressful and insecure from a purely financial perspective. I'd be something like an entrepreneur, but more like for a non-profit (turns out non-profit entrepreneurs are a thing). I wouldn't be starting something new, but I'd be trying to make an existing thing much bigger. I think I can do it, but I'm also slightly afraid of the amount of responsibility I would take on and the influence I'd have.

There are two big ways in which I can leverage my current position to set myself up for my dream job. The first is by gaining a better understanding of the funding environment and opportunities. The second is to learn more about different organizational structures to determine what would be best to implement at the dream job. Additionally, I have the freedom and support to explore the broader community and make useful connections in other organizations.

The dilemma I've had recently is that this is, in some ways, a very narrow vision for what I could do with my skills, especially considering all of the professional connections that I'll make in this new position. I'm afraid to some extent of pigeon-holing myself by not thinking more broadly. I know that my current job will open doors and likely lead to opportunities that I can't even imagine right now.

Still, it's been a long time since I've had such a clear vision of what I want. When I decided to go to grad school, my goal was to become a professor at a small liberal arts college. I knew that goal might change, but the goal gave me something to aim for. Perhaps I should think of this the same way. The only problem is that I'll surely have to close metaphorical doors at some point on the road to my dream job or risk letting people down and hindering the movement rather than helping it.

I hope the necessary vagueness of my descriptions still convey the essence of what I'm thinking through. It always helps me to blog it through. Suggestions welcome!

A new job and other changes on the horizon

I've signed a contract—I'm starting a new job in September! I haven't given notice yet officially so please don't say anything publicly if you know me in real life, but my boss and close colleagues know I'm leaving. I have mixed feelings about it for a variety of reasons, but I think it's the right thing for me to do at this point in my career. 

We're also very excited that Adele will begin Montessori school in the fall and even more excited that it's going to be less expensive than daycare! She's so ready. 

Jon's programming course wrapped up well and he's been applying for jobs. Really hoping he finds a good one! 

As expected, spring was hectic. We had a lot of help from my mother-in-law with daycare pickups and some overnight stays for Adele during the end of Jon's course and my crazy time at work. We went on a great vacation with my parents and then I traveled for work. My garden and houseplants need some attention! Thankfully, we don't have much planned for July and August and my work is settling down. I'm trying not to say yes to too many things.

I thought this would be a good time halfway through the year to check in on my goals for 2016. How am I doing? 

Personal
Read at least 4 books
I finished one back in January but nothing since then. I'm behind! Time to get reading.

Make our backyard more playable.
Done! We fenced it and immediately started spending more time out there. Definitely the right decision. Still plenty of yard projects to do, but we cleared the biggest hurdle.

Make peace with having one child.
I'm working on it.

Career

Get another job offer.
Yes! One I accepted! See above.

Fix up my website
No, I managed to get a new job with only minimal changes to my website. Still needs an overhaul!

Money

Get more life insurance
No progress on this front.

Move retirement investments & Jon's HSA to accounts with lower fees
No real progress on this one either, but I may spend some time on it this weekend.

Refinance or at least change the repayment term on my student loans
Jon's course really changed the calculus on this one. I wasn't expecting we'd take on a lot more debt this year. For the time being, it makes sense for us to continue making the same payments on my student loans until we pay off Jon's course. 

Job lead

I've been corresponding with Dr. Evenbigger about being a postdoc with him-- a conversation that he initiated. But he's in Europe. There is so much to think about and so many unknowns, but this seems by far my most promising job prospect. It would only be for a year, but moving husband, dog, and baby to a new country where we don't speak the language is daunting. Although not as daunting as the job I interviewed for in April, since this at least requires no field work. With a breastfeeding baby and a still-recovering body, there is definitely no strenuous field work in my near future. 

Old connections

Waaaaaay back at the beginning of my PhD, on my first scouting trip to Ukenzagapia 4.5 years ago, I met another PhD student I called John (not to be confused with my husband Jon). I wrote about meeting him at a restaurant and then staying at the field station where he did his research. That was the only time we ever saw each other, but we kept in touch occasionally over email for a while since we were studying similar things in similar places. I hadn't heard from him in nearly 3 years. Recently, I got an email from him because he saw my name on the paper that just got published. It turns out that he now has a job in conservation that he loves- in Jon's Hometown. I've mentioned before that we'd like to move there, and he tipped me off to an opportunity that I'm definitely going to apply for. It's exciting when networking works!

On thieves and plans

When we have to leave research equipment in the field, we use a cable lock to secure it around a tree. These types of locks are not common (or available at all, as far as I know) in Ukenzagapia, and B and T covet them for locking their motorbikes. They asked what these locks are used for in the U.S. I said some people use them on bicycles, but you can't use it on a bike in Big City because people will just come and cut it to steal the bike.

T, after a brief reflection, made a keen observation.

"I think, in Ukenzagapia, the thieves are many, but the plan is small. And in America, the thieves are few, but the plan is big."

Keeping your belongings, I've learned, is largely about preventing crimes of opportunity because, as T so nicely put it, "the plan is small". People don't have bolt cutters or hacksaws. If you make it difficult to steal something, they might try and fail, but they generally won't go out of their way to do it.

All that said, people do have machetes. I don't know what exactly happened or how much planning was involved, but this week we discovered that some of our equipment was stolen. They cut through one of the cable locks and in another case broke the equipment to steal it because they failed to break the cable. I have a glimmer of hope that we might be able to recover some or all of it, but I'm not holding my breath.

Departure eve

I'm leaving tomorrow for my last data collection trip to Ukenzagapia. Woo hoo! I've got my bags packed (to the max, as usual) and my (new-to-me) iphone unlocked. I've redistributed all but the largest plants to friends so that my black-thumbed husband doesn't kill them while I'm gone. I've got a brand new laptop I'm couriering for Dr. K, a new laptop battery for a friend, and about 12 pounds of printed materials that I'm going to unload. On my way through Europe I'm going to buy a ridiculous amount of cheese for my American friend. Oh, and her son really wanted squeeze jam so I'm bringing a bunch of that too. Two friends requested ipods, which I am not bringing. I found a carryon sized wheelie bag at the thrift store which I'm using to carry a microscope and most of my electronics. I hope I don't forget anything too important!

Backups

I wrote a couple of years ago about my backup plan, but it's time to revisit it in light of new information.

While I was at the conference, I brought my MacBook to the local Apple Store to get a minor problem fixed*. My AppleCare extended warranty will expire while I'm in Ukenzagapia, so I wanted to be sure to get it taken care of before I left. They had to replace my whole display, which I figured would be the case. What I didn't expect was that they said it's a 4-5 hour task so I needed to leave my computer for up to 3 days! Still, I was ok with this because I had brought my external hard drive anticipating this separation from my computer. I use Time Machine to back up to 2 different external hard drives. I thought I'd be able to boot from my TM backup onto my friend's MacBook, but no. Time Machine backups are serial locked to the original computer. The only way to get your data off a Time Machine backup (according to the guy at the store) is a full restore onto a different machine (erasing whatever might have been on there).

So, I need a new backup plan. I will keep doing Time Machine backups, but I think I need to do something else too that would allow me to access important files via another computer. What do you do? Should I partition my back up drive and keep part of it for TM backups, and part of it for "manual" backup copies of the stuff I'd need to access from another computer in case mine fails?

Online backup options are out of the question right now because I can't do them in Ukenzagpia. I have some (mostly shared) files in Dropbox but I only have 2 gb. In Ukenzagapia I plan to back up to a third external hard drive.

*The Apple logo on my display became unglued. While this is mostly cosmetic, it does let dust in behind the screen, and I think it increases the risk of my screen getting damaged from behind. I really didn't want to end up with a shattered screen in Ukenzagapia!

Getting back in the groove

I'm certainly doing a good job getting my body back in the right time zone! I got home on Tuesday afternoon, went out for a belated anniversary dinner with Jon, and stayed up until 10 pm. On Wednesday I woke up at 5:45 (not bad), did stuff around the house all day, then went to trivia night and was up until nearly midnight. I slept until about 7:30 on Thursday, went to campus, and then went to a bachelorette party and ended up crashing at my friend's house and going home this morning. Tonight our friend is having a going-away-for-the-summer party, and on Saturday we're going to a wedding. It's a celebratory week.

I'm really trying hard to establish new home routines for myself now. Part of the reason I was able to do such an insane amount of work in Nyota was that I had a routine that didn't vary much, my life was pretty simple, and someone was cooking for me. It's much more complicated here and there are many more distractions (husband! puppy! houseplants! youtube! cooking! housework! - I had none of these in Nyota). I'm trying to simplify my life by scheduling things so that I just know when I do them and don't waste time and energy deciding whether or not I should do them (I do this a lot). So far I'm mostly doing this with things at home, but I think I'll do it with some school things too. I'm not the kind of person for whom routines come easily (I think I've blogged about this before), so I have to make a conscious effort to create and stick to them.

I'm curious, my readers, if you have created routines for similar reasons. If so, what have they been?

Mortality and traveling

Traveling nearly always makes me think about my mortality. I think this is fairly common. However, as I've come and gone from Ukenzagapia, I've become more and more accustomed to the routine and I have less and less fear creeping into my thoughts. When I left Ukenzagapia a year ago, I was mentally checking off all of the dangerous things I do. Last motorbike ride. Last bus ride. Last taxi ride. Last takeoff. As my plane neared the ground at Big City airport and tree leaves came into view, I breathed a sigh of relief thinking, "Ok, if anything happens to the plane now, I'm pretty sure I could survive". Last landing. I thought about writing this post a year ago, but I still felt too superstitious about writing my relief at avoiding death. But we're all mortal, and worrying about it certainly isn't going to make the time we have any more enjoyable, so it's time to get this confession out there.

End of season

My gosh. I think the past 3 months might have been the busiest 3 months of my life as I crammed in a crazy amount of field work. I feel like nearly every post I've written from the field this time has said this, but I've gotta say it again. I've gotten SO much better at everything related to doing research in Ukenzagapia. Everything! This was my best field season yet. I've set up a management system for Sam's project that I'm involved in, and I think things will keep running without me. My field assistants got a lot more computer practice, and will be emailing photos every month of the data sheets (for 4 different projects- 2 of which are wholly mine and 2 that aren't) before they can get paid.

My last two days in Nyota were run on very little sleep, some caffeine, and a lot of adrenaline. I had to prep tons of data sheets for while I'm gone and pack & inventory all of my supplies and equipment. My housemate Cam will be in Nyota until August, leaving shortly before I return in August. This works out perfectly for me and so I left nearly everything at the house in Nyota this time, and some clothes at my American friend's house in the city. As a result, I'm going home with 1 bag nearly empty and the only reason it isn't empty is because I'm bringing home stuff for Cam.

Unfortunately, my last night in the country was marred by robbery. I was walking back from the grocery store with Cam in the wealthy mostly expat neighborhood where my friend lives when a car suddenly pulled up very close and slowed down just enough to grab my bag through the window. Stupidly, I didn't let go because I didn't want the bastards to take my bag on principle, and so I got pulled to the ground when they sped away and dragged a short distance before the bag strap broke. I had my phone in my pocket and Cam carried the money in his, so the only thing they got was less than $30 worth of groceries. I hope they were sorely disappointed by their takings. The neighborhood is generally safe, but there are a few things I should have done differently. First of all, I should not have used a reusable grocery bag to carry my groceries. It was a cloth bag that obviously looked like a purse. Secondly, Cam probably should have carried the bag instead of me. He is much larger, though it might not have made a difference. Thirdly, I should not have been carrying the bag on my streetside shoulder. It made it so easy for them to grab. It happened so fast that I didn't even have time to shout and the only thing I thought was, "Don't take my bag you #@$%ers!" Neither Cam nor I got so much as a glimpse of the license plate. I got some nice road rash on my arm and my hip, which put a hole in my pants and my underwear. I was shaken up my it and I'm kind of sore, but all things considered it wasn't a huge deal. They didn't take much of value and I didn't get that hurt.

This departure from Ukenzagapia was more emotional than the others. I'm also probably more exhausted than I've ever been. I'm really becoming attached to Nyota, and now that the end is in sight with just one more trip, I'm thinking about what it means to wrap this up. I'm overflowing with gratitude for the people who have helped me tremendously, like my American friend and my taxi driver Violet. Furthermore, this is the longest that Jon and I have gone without seeing each other since 2004 and I'm so excited to see him again. Yesterday was our second anniversary and in those two years, we have spent 10 months apart. That's far too long. Thankfully, I have an incredibly patient and supportive husband.

I'm halfway home on my layover in Europe. I thought I'd be able to go to the first aid station and get some antibiotic ointment and new medical tape to bandage my wounds, but it turns out they won't help you until your fork over at least $40 for a consultation, so I just washed up in a handicapped restroom and will make do until I get home. Home. Home. HOME! I'm going home.