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!
Showing posts with label breastfeeding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breastfeeding. Show all posts
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Goals for 2016
I'm a little late on this again but I really like setting goals for the year, even if I don't achieve all of them. Since I started doing this in 2008, I think I've gotten better at setting realistic goals and focusing on what's important. I've been thinking about these for a while now and revising the list (that's part of the reason for the delay). So without any more preamble, I present my resolutions for 2016!
Personal
Read at least 4 books
I feel like this is kind of a silly goal, but I'm not sure I completed a book at all in 2015. I do a lot of reading online (mostly newsie-ish pieces) but it's been too long since I've read a whole book. I've got a stack of them next to my bed, and I'd like to finish that stack by the end of the year. I'm already almost finished with an odd little memoir of an entomologist that I got for Christmas (have I written before about how field biologist memoirs are my favorite literary genre?).
Make our backyard more playable.
I want our yard to be a fun and inviting play place for Adele. The first crucial step is getting it fully fenced. I wanted to do that in 2015, but the estimate came in a bit higher than I thought. Once we get that done, I can start some landscaping projects to make it more friendly for wildlife, kids, and our dog.
Make peace with having one child.
I wanted two and always imagined two (and so did Jon), but having gone through a frightening birth and a difficult recovery, Jon is set on one and it probably makes much more sense for us for plenty of reasons (especially financially). And honestly the older Adele gets, the less excited I am about returning to pregnancy and baby stages, but it does still make me sad. As most of my friends now are having their second or third, of course I'm excited for them but this jealousy also creeps in and manifests in strange ways. I've been giving away or moving baby stuff to "deep storage" for the next family member and that helps. By the end of this year I'd like to confidently and happily say we're "one and done" if anyone asks.
Career
Get another job offer.
It still feels very possible that I'll lose my job this year. If not, I'm not sure if I'll want to leave it, but I at least need to put some effort into exploring other options. I learned that the crappy circumstances in my workplace were much worse than I realized for much of last year. All of the anxiety I had about not having support for my project was completely justified. I think there are some power struggles happening and I could be a casualty of that. My day-to-day work is fine (as it has been pretty much all along) but these undercurrents of mistrust and insecurity undermine our ability to be effective. I expect that something big will change for my career this year, one way or another.
Fix up my website
I haven't done much with it since I got this job, but if I want to explore other options, it would help to spruce it up. I think I need to move to a whole different platform so it's not just a matter of making some updates to text. It's time for serious changes that might be complicated so I've been putting it off.
Money
There are a few kind of mundane but important things I'd like to do this year for our finances. Honestly the only reason I'm boring the internet with these is so that I've written it down somewhere and will actually feel pressure to get it done.
Get more life insurance
Jon and I both got term life insurance around the time we got married in 2009. We haven't increased it or made any other changes since our daughter was born, but I think it's time to increase it since she would need to be supported too.
Move retirement investments & Jon's HSA to accounts with lower fees
We have our modest retirement savings is in Roth IRAs with Pax World because we don't want to invest in weapons manufacturing, but I think there are other socially responsible options that have lower expense ratios. There's plenty of other things I'd like to exclude (private prisons and fossil fuels being highest on the list) but I need to choose my battles (ha!) or we won't have any retirement savings because I'll be too paralyzed by all of the options. As for Jon's HSA, it's something we opened a few years ago and at the time it was damn near impossible to comparison shop HSAs to find one with low fees, so we're paying $2.50/mo (Elizabeth Warren should add HSAs to a long list of financial products that need greater consumer protections). (As an aside, I think HSAs are total BS with incentives in all of the wrong places and I'd much rather just have single-payer health care).
Refinance or at least change the repayment term on my student loans
Since my loans were in deferment for several years of graduate school, we're still paying off my Bachelor's degree. A few years ago my loans were sold to Sallie Mae (now Navient) and I hate them so much because they make it unnecessarily difficult for me to make extra payments that reduce the loan principal rather than just pushing back the payment date. I recently learned (through some effectively targeted Facebook ads) that I could refinance my student loans. I never even knew that was a possibility. Our car loan has a lower interest rate than my student loans, so I'm going to look into it. In the end, it might be better to just reduce the repayment term on my current loans to pay them off sooner (thus paying less in interest overall). We should be able to pay more towards my student loans now and we're only about a year from paying off the car.
All of these money things are just tedious because they involve some amount of research and form-filing and it's kind of complicated. So, I need to make time to do it. Maybe I could tackle one of these each quarter.
What else do I think will happen in 2016?
Adele is going to start preschool somewhere, hopefully at a Montessori school. She's so ready; we wish she could start now but no programs start new students mid-year. Jon has been working on some long-term projects that will hopefully start earning more money this year. We're planning a fun trip this summer with my parents to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. There's a chance I might get to travel somewhere exciting for work for a few days, which I would welcome. After a few years of not wanting to travel much, I'm starting to get the itch again. I'm missing field work. I think it's highly unlikely I'll ever do as much as I did for my dissertation again, but I wouldn't mind leading a short course/trip in the next few years. If I do travel for more than a few days in a row this year, I think Adele will probably wean. I decided 2 years ago that if we were only going to have one child, then she can breastfeed as long as she wants. I'm still in no hurry to wean but I know I don't make much milk anymore. 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 am thankful every day for our health and safety.
May you all try to make our world a better place, however you can! Cheers to 2016!
Personal
Read at least 4 books
I feel like this is kind of a silly goal, but I'm not sure I completed a book at all in 2015. I do a lot of reading online (mostly newsie-ish pieces) but it's been too long since I've read a whole book. I've got a stack of them next to my bed, and I'd like to finish that stack by the end of the year. I'm already almost finished with an odd little memoir of an entomologist that I got for Christmas (have I written before about how field biologist memoirs are my favorite literary genre?).
Make our backyard more playable.
I want our yard to be a fun and inviting play place for Adele. The first crucial step is getting it fully fenced. I wanted to do that in 2015, but the estimate came in a bit higher than I thought. Once we get that done, I can start some landscaping projects to make it more friendly for wildlife, kids, and our dog.
Make peace with having one child.
I wanted two and always imagined two (and so did Jon), but having gone through a frightening birth and a difficult recovery, Jon is set on one and it probably makes much more sense for us for plenty of reasons (especially financially). And honestly the older Adele gets, the less excited I am about returning to pregnancy and baby stages, but it does still make me sad. As most of my friends now are having their second or third, of course I'm excited for them but this jealousy also creeps in and manifests in strange ways. I've been giving away or moving baby stuff to "deep storage" for the next family member and that helps. By the end of this year I'd like to confidently and happily say we're "one and done" if anyone asks.
Career
Get another job offer.
It still feels very possible that I'll lose my job this year. If not, I'm not sure if I'll want to leave it, but I at least need to put some effort into exploring other options. I learned that the crappy circumstances in my workplace were much worse than I realized for much of last year. All of the anxiety I had about not having support for my project was completely justified. I think there are some power struggles happening and I could be a casualty of that. My day-to-day work is fine (as it has been pretty much all along) but these undercurrents of mistrust and insecurity undermine our ability to be effective. I expect that something big will change for my career this year, one way or another.
Fix up my website
I haven't done much with it since I got this job, but if I want to explore other options, it would help to spruce it up. I think I need to move to a whole different platform so it's not just a matter of making some updates to text. It's time for serious changes that might be complicated so I've been putting it off.
Money
There are a few kind of mundane but important things I'd like to do this year for our finances. Honestly the only reason I'm boring the internet with these is so that I've written it down somewhere and will actually feel pressure to get it done.
Get more life insurance
Jon and I both got term life insurance around the time we got married in 2009. We haven't increased it or made any other changes since our daughter was born, but I think it's time to increase it since she would need to be supported too.
Move retirement investments & Jon's HSA to accounts with lower fees
We have our modest retirement savings is in Roth IRAs with Pax World because we don't want to invest in weapons manufacturing, but I think there are other socially responsible options that have lower expense ratios. There's plenty of other things I'd like to exclude (private prisons and fossil fuels being highest on the list) but I need to choose my battles (ha!) or we won't have any retirement savings because I'll be too paralyzed by all of the options. As for Jon's HSA, it's something we opened a few years ago and at the time it was damn near impossible to comparison shop HSAs to find one with low fees, so we're paying $2.50/mo (Elizabeth Warren should add HSAs to a long list of financial products that need greater consumer protections). (As an aside, I think HSAs are total BS with incentives in all of the wrong places and I'd much rather just have single-payer health care).
Refinance or at least change the repayment term on my student loans
Since my loans were in deferment for several years of graduate school, we're still paying off my Bachelor's degree. A few years ago my loans were sold to Sallie Mae (now Navient) and I hate them so much because they make it unnecessarily difficult for me to make extra payments that reduce the loan principal rather than just pushing back the payment date. I recently learned (through some effectively targeted Facebook ads) that I could refinance my student loans. I never even knew that was a possibility. Our car loan has a lower interest rate than my student loans, so I'm going to look into it. In the end, it might be better to just reduce the repayment term on my current loans to pay them off sooner (thus paying less in interest overall). We should be able to pay more towards my student loans now and we're only about a year from paying off the car.
All of these money things are just tedious because they involve some amount of research and form-filing and it's kind of complicated. So, I need to make time to do it. Maybe I could tackle one of these each quarter.
What else do I think will happen in 2016?
Adele is going to start preschool somewhere, hopefully at a Montessori school. She's so ready; we wish she could start now but no programs start new students mid-year. Jon has been working on some long-term projects that will hopefully start earning more money this year. We're planning a fun trip this summer with my parents to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. There's a chance I might get to travel somewhere exciting for work for a few days, which I would welcome. After a few years of not wanting to travel much, I'm starting to get the itch again. I'm missing field work. I think it's highly unlikely I'll ever do as much as I did for my dissertation again, but I wouldn't mind leading a short course/trip in the next few years. If I do travel for more than a few days in a row this year, I think Adele will probably wean. I decided 2 years ago that if we were only going to have one child, then she can breastfeed as long as she wants. I'm still in no hurry to wean but I know I don't make much milk anymore. 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 am thankful every day for our health and safety.
May you all try to make our world a better place, however you can! Cheers to 2016!
Friday, March 7, 2014
The challenges of being officeless
As someone who is still kind of drifting as an under-employed (but not unemployed!) PhD, I really, really miss having an office. There are two distinct but related problems to not having an office in my circumstances. Problem 1: working. Problem 2: pumping.
I am the kind of person who enjoys working away from home because it helps keep me focused on work. There are too many distractions at home-- even before Adele was born! I did write quite a bit of my dissertation in our guest bed in the final stretch last year, but even that was mostly on the evenings and weekends, or when I really needed to avoid people at the office. I still spent most weekdays at the office. In the fall I spent less time at my office because I was trying to work more at home because of Adele. It was easier to work with her around when she was less mobile. Even when Jon is watching her, it's hard for me to not be distracted by her if I work at home.
I've never been much of a coffee shop worker myself, but I have to say that I've started to appreciate the appeal now as a parent. Somewhere I can go for a time out of the house is great! But I need more than just a couple of hours here and there to focus on the big stuff.
So why don't I just hole up somewhere for the entire day? This brings me to the pumping. Last time I checked, Starbucks didn't have a lactation room. If I'm gone more than a few hours, I have to pump. I need an outlet somewhere private that isn't a bathroom. Ideally I need access to a sink, too. I have to bring the pump with me while I'm working, and without an office, I need to bring my computer with me while I pump. It's all very cumbersome and annoying.
In order to be out of the house all day and work, I have been researching the lactation rooms at local institutions (thank you for putting info about your lactation rooms online!) and strategizing where I can sit and work in that same building in between pumping. This hasn't been very easy. The places I've found to work aren't very quiet. Or I can't get online as a guest at the institution.
As a graduate student, I was really lucky and mostly had an office to myself. I technically shared it, but with people who never really used it. This meant that I could almost always pump there uninterrupted. It was wonderfully convenient! I just left my pump there and carried a little cooler back and forth with the milk.
Today I went to a seminar at a place I might as well call Hometown U. HU has designated lactation rooms which I've used before, but they are not in or near the seminar building. I decided I wouldn't bother trying to work there and leave the pump at home because of the hassle.
While at the seminar, I remembered that a postdoc had mentioned when I was there last week that she had a baby. Today, I asked how old her baby was (1 month younger than Adele!). I asked if she was pumping. (yes!). I asked where. She took me straight across the hall to an unused lab space of a new faculty member who was letting her pump there. She had her pump all set up. Then she took me to the kind and understanding faculty member whose lab space it was, and he promptly gave me a key to the room. All I had to do was ask the right person! Now I have a space where I can work and pump on days when I'm at HU.
A desk in a secure room and a private place to pump might just help bridge this gap and keep me in science.
I am the kind of person who enjoys working away from home because it helps keep me focused on work. There are too many distractions at home-- even before Adele was born! I did write quite a bit of my dissertation in our guest bed in the final stretch last year, but even that was mostly on the evenings and weekends, or when I really needed to avoid people at the office. I still spent most weekdays at the office. In the fall I spent less time at my office because I was trying to work more at home because of Adele. It was easier to work with her around when she was less mobile. Even when Jon is watching her, it's hard for me to not be distracted by her if I work at home.
I've never been much of a coffee shop worker myself, but I have to say that I've started to appreciate the appeal now as a parent. Somewhere I can go for a time out of the house is great! But I need more than just a couple of hours here and there to focus on the big stuff.
So why don't I just hole up somewhere for the entire day? This brings me to the pumping. Last time I checked, Starbucks didn't have a lactation room. If I'm gone more than a few hours, I have to pump. I need an outlet somewhere private that isn't a bathroom. Ideally I need access to a sink, too. I have to bring the pump with me while I'm working, and without an office, I need to bring my computer with me while I pump. It's all very cumbersome and annoying.
In order to be out of the house all day and work, I have been researching the lactation rooms at local institutions (thank you for putting info about your lactation rooms online!) and strategizing where I can sit and work in that same building in between pumping. This hasn't been very easy. The places I've found to work aren't very quiet. Or I can't get online as a guest at the institution.
As a graduate student, I was really lucky and mostly had an office to myself. I technically shared it, but with people who never really used it. This meant that I could almost always pump there uninterrupted. It was wonderfully convenient! I just left my pump there and carried a little cooler back and forth with the milk.
Today I went to a seminar at a place I might as well call Hometown U. HU has designated lactation rooms which I've used before, but they are not in or near the seminar building. I decided I wouldn't bother trying to work there and leave the pump at home because of the hassle.
While at the seminar, I remembered that a postdoc had mentioned when I was there last week that she had a baby. Today, I asked how old her baby was (1 month younger than Adele!). I asked if she was pumping. (yes!). I asked where. She took me straight across the hall to an unused lab space of a new faculty member who was letting her pump there. She had her pump all set up. Then she took me to the kind and understanding faculty member whose lab space it was, and he promptly gave me a key to the room. All I had to do was ask the right person! Now I have a space where I can work and pump on days when I'm at HU.
A desk in a secure room and a private place to pump might just help bridge this gap and keep me in science.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)