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!

Looking ahead to 2023

I am excited about 2023. I have big expectations and goals for my career this year, and feeling some energy to tackle a few personal things too.

The number one thing that I anticipate for 2023 is some changes for my career. In short, it's time to reshape by role. One of the highest priorities for early this year is to clearly identify what I want, and then ask for it. It's exciting but also scary. I don't see many models for the path I'm on, so I feel like I need to talk to more people about the realm of possibilities for more ideas. But if I'm honest with myself, the part that I'm most anxious about is compensation—how to even decide what's fair and equitable. Once I have clarity for myself, I am less worried about making the ask. I would like to find peace this year with my compensation.

Monthly goals
I want to try this again. I'm not going to schedule them yet and I'm not going to commit to doing all of them, but I'm putting a list of ideas I had here so that I will hopefully do some of them.

- Weeding every day. Maybe this will help me feel better about the yard this year.
- Exercise every day.
- Unsubscribe from 30+ things.

- Buy nothing
- Healthcare/selfcare month where I prioritize some non-urgent things I've been putting off.

- Financial planning month where I prioritize more things I've been putting off.

And a different kind of monthly goals:

- One big hike per month with Adele
- One clear action each month towards the world I want to see.

Other goals
There are some things that I'd like to do this year, and mostly I want to write them down so I don't forget.

- Unbloggable hobby goals. Hope I remember what this means.

- Print this blog. I'd like to have it in actual book form since it has captured so much of my life since 2007 (!)
- Go on a solo weekend retreat. I did this last summer and had a great time.

- Keep trying to avoid covid. Maybe I can get the Novovax booster. 

What else this year?

I am less motivated to reflect on many of the other categories that I usually do, in part because I have goals above for some of them, but mostly because the Very Hard Thing for work is taking up quite a bit of headspace for me. We haven't planned any big trips (and hardly any small ones), but I think some opportunities may arise. Two of my cousins are getting married. We might be able to tack a vacation onto a work trip (or maybe even two?!). But the timing of the Very Hard Thing adds a lot of uncertainty to planning. 

With so much focus on my career this year, I need to be mindful not to let it dominate spaces it shouldn't. I am so lucky to love what I do, but I am more than my career. 

Cheers to anyone who actually reads this. May 2023 bring you more of what fills you up!

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!

How to show appreciation for help with a Very Hard Thing

For most of the last year, I have been working on a Very Hard Thing at work. So very hard. So hard that it prompted me to read or listen to several books on negotiation. So hard that Jon and Adele can summarize it more succinctly than I can because I've spent hours talking with them about the ups and downs. So hard that I have at times exhausted the willing ears of my friends and family to hear about it.

This Very Hard Thing has a clear goal. I have been working on it very closely with one of my colleagues and a handful of other people who believe in this Very Hard Thing. 

At the beginning of the year, the idea for this Very Hard Thing existed, but it was just beginning to take shape as a real possibility, and we had no idea just how hard it would become. 

We are far from finished, but we did just have a major success. We're hopefully now at a point where we thought we'd be in June (laugh/sob). 

There are a few people in particular who have gone above and beyond for this Very Hard Thing. They have strained some of their own professional relationships and moved mountains in support of this. I am so, so grateful for their efforts. We've bonded through adversity. When I think about all they have done, I like to imagine how we might thank them at the end of this. I feel like I did during the hard parts of field work and my dissertation when I could visualize the destination and overflowed with gratitude for the people who made it possible in so many ways. This feels like that. My favorite part of my dissertation was the acknowledgments.

I imagine personally sending them enormous flower arrangements or boxes of chocolate and taking them out to dinner to celebrate the completion of this Very Hard Thing when it finally happens. There may be some opportunities to thank them more publicly, but mostly these are behind-the-scenes things that could never be fully acknowledged for political reasons. 

Flowers, chocolate, and dinner seem so generic; maybe I'll come up with a less conventional idea by the time this Very Hard Thing is finished. At the end of this difficult path, I just don't want to forget to celebrate everyone—generic or not. 

Looking back on 2021

While reviewing my expectations for 2021 from January, I noticed that the things I speculated on generally turned out a little better. But there were some big things I didn't see coming.

Covid-19

 I look forward to the year that this won't get its own category. This is not the year. 2022 won't be either. 

I don't think we'll get the vaccine until the second half of 2021 at the earliest.

Based on how slowly the vaccine rollout is starting, I'll be surprised if we get it before September. If we do, it will be thanks to effective organization of our local government. 

Jon and I were both fully vaccinated by mid-May, so I was overly pessimistic about the vaccine rollout for adults. I was also wrong about the local government role in the speediness. Once we got our shots, I was feeling optimistic that kids 5+ would be able to get theirs by late summer or early fall, so I was a little discouraged that it took so much longer than for adults and teens. Adele was vaccinated shortly after she became eligible in November as an 8 year old, and Jon and I got boosted at the same time. 

All things considered, I think it's unlikely for either us or The Neighbors to pick up the covid.

None of us got covid. 

I am definitely concerned about our parents staying safe. I really hope that they are all able to be vaccinated soon. It will be a relief once they've all had two doses.

Thankfully, all of our parents are fully vaccinated on a timeline appropriate to their age. They're boosted now too.

For the entire pandemic, largely because of the people I follow on Twitter, I feel like I've been pretty consistently at least a week ahead of the latest concern wave or covid trend, and sometimes it's a lot more than that. Twitter has consistently given me the best window into what's coming around the bend on this nightmarish covid road. Like delta—how could you not expect that to be a disaster in the US if you followed what happened elsewhere in the world? I found out about rapid over-the-counter covid tests in June and we've been using them for months when they were barely part of public awareness. I started using a KN95 mask (rewearing them several times) in indoor public spaces months ago. On December 17, I saw the vertical line trends for covid cases in London and Norway driven by omicron and we stopped spending time unmasked indoors with even vaccinated friends unless we all rapid tested negative first. My highest priority was keeping us covid-free until Christmas so that Adele didn't miss another family gathering (she had the flu real bad in 2019 and would have been devastated to miss it again). Just like those other places, our area has also had a vertical line of new cases. Rapid tests aren't perfect, but used right before gathering, they are better than no information at all. We have enough disposable income that we can afford rapid tests, at least when we can find them. 

My point isn't at all about personal responsibility. That only gets us so far. I only share the above because it's so frustrating to me that these messages and warnings either never made it to the people in power or they never thought it important enough to share widely.  

For months now, we should have been at minimum:

• Making better masks (non-counterfeit KN94s, KN95s, and N95s) more widely available (e.g. subsidizing the cost, distributing them at schools and indoor events), running campaigns about how to wear them appropriately and reuse them safely, and requiring them in certain circumstances (e.g. airplanes).
• Making rapid tests widely available, more clearly communicating their value/strength relative to PCR testing, and requiring them in certain circumstances (as above). Furthermore, we should be making it easier for new kinds of rapid tests to be approved which would help with cost and availability. If you're interested in learning more about how we should be expanding our use of rapid tests, follow Dr. Michael Mina on Twitter. 
• Aggressively supporting vaccination in other parts of the world (e.g. by sharing the vaccine "secrets" so they can be easily and quickly manufactured in other countries that have more limited vaccine access), further incentivizing and/or mandating vaccination in certain circumstances, and investing in the long, tedious effort of reaching and convincing those who are not yet vaccinated (especially pregnant women). 

Masks, tests, and vaccinations make everyone safer. We aren't safe until we're all protected, and there's far too many people left at risk (especially anyone ineligible for vaccination like kids under 5!). Framing this as largely about individual choice about vaccination is irresponsible, incomplete, and short-sighted.

Of course, there are some other big things that we should change too:

• Universal healthcare not tied to your job. Just make it simple. 
• Paid sick leave for all workers (including for vaccine side effects). 
• Subsidize childcare. Appropriately compensate and protect childcare workers and educators for the valuable work they do. 

If a pandemic hasn't made clear the value of these things, what will? Our system of healthcare and work is so deeply broken. 

Ok, long covid rant/reflection over.

School

I don't think Adele will return to school in her building until the next school year. However, there's a possibility that they'll start a hybrid schedule in the spring. I'm not optimistic though. 

I do hope they can return in person in August/September.  

School resumed on a hybrid schedule with 2 days/week in person in the spring, with full time in person since the fall. No one in our pod had to isolate due to classroom exposure. The kids and staff are all masked and it sounds like everyone is pretty compliant. The school also often ate lunch outside, has good ventilation, and did some random testing (not nearly enough IMO, but apparently it did catch one case).

Thankfully we've got our shared arrangement with The Neighbors. [...] I'm not optimistic about summer camps being a viable option so we'll probably maintain the arrangement with The Neighbors for the next 8 months. 

Adele did attend a few weeks of day camp while The Neighbors went to see family for a month. I intentionally scheduled her camps for the beginning of the summer because I saw how the delta variant was spreading in India and southeast Asia and surmised that as summer went on the cases would grow rather than continue to decline even with many people being vaccinated. Later in the summer we shared childcare again with The Neighbors. This school year we take turns carpooling to school with them and sharing after school supervision (i.e. play time).

Career

I hope that by the end of the year, I will have at least a couple of new colleagues because we've been able to grow the team.

NOPE. :::laugh/sob:::

However, that involves convincing my boss that it's a good idea (his idea) to grow the team. I've been trying unsuccessfully for almost 3 years, so this might be a fool's errand. 

I did manage to convince him, so now we're on to the other hurdles. Sigh.

I also hope my salary will at least be restored to its pre-pandemic cut level. 

Yes, thankfully.

If I travel for work, I'd be surprised if it happens before September. 

I did not travel for work.

Jon's work might have more changes this year [...] I think he'll work from home for all of 2021.

No major changes, except he got a big raise which was a wonderful surprise. For the last few months he's gone into the office just 1 or 2 days a week so he's still working mostly from home.

I kept tracking my hours again this year which totaled 2007. I have about 10 annual holidays so 2007 hours divided across 50 weeks is 40.1 hours/week. I did take some vacation time (didn't tally how much) here and there. I'm working hard but making sure that I set boundaries, and tracking hours really does help me with that.

I still love my job. Some of this year was a roller coaster, but more ups than downs. I'm beginning to see some fruits of a long campaign to get us thinking on a longer timescale. 

Home

We've worked one biiiiig project this year:

We want to renovate the basement. For real. We've been talking about it for years. I think we can do it this year. 

The basement is almost done! We hoped it would have both started and finished earlier, but I'm told this is par for the course. 

We probably also have to find a separate shop space for Jon's tools. 

Shop space hasn't come together yet unfortunately.

We took out a personal loan for the basement project but are now (I hope) are very close to refinancing to lower our mortgage interest rate and pay off that loan with a cash out refinance. 

Volunteering

I am a little sad to end a 9 year commitment [...], but mostly I will feel relieved to be finished.

I wrote about this at length here. I intentionally haven't picked up any new commitments and I feel great about that.

Family

2021 was a far better year for seeing family!

I hope to see my parents again by the end of summer, hopefully after they are fully vaccinated. 

We saw my parents four times this year which is way better than the zero times in 2020! 

Adele would love to go fishing with Jon's dad 

This didn't happen but I hope it will next year.

Hopefully we'll be able to host Thanksgiving this year for Jon's family! 

Yes! We were thrilled about this, especially Adele. Jon has a big family. Part of our motivation for trying to get the basement done this year was so that we'd have much more usable space for this gathering for almost 20 people. The basement wasn't finished in time, but it was finished enough that we ate down there at a big long table. Everyone did a rapid test earlier in the day before coming over and we did the same again at Christmas. Getting tests for everyone was a bit of a scramble, but we managed.

Friends

Vaccines made this a better year for friends!

I hope by the end of the year we'll be able to have friends over again (not just The Neighbors). 

One Jon and I had 2 shots plus 2 weeks, we started seeing friends indoors again unmasked if they were also vaccinated + 2 weeks. 

I also have a tiny glimmer of hope that we might be able to spend a few days with my good friend and her family at their family cabin this summer (we'd sleep separately in a tent and nearly all our time would be spent outdoors).

Adele and I did go to the cabin and it was lovely! I had my own space but she slept with their kids. We rapid tested before arriving and again midweek because by that time delta was spreading and we had visited a museum the previous week where we were the only people wearing masks. 

I won't be terribly surprised if we have another stretch of time where a friend lives with us again 

We had a friend (the one who almost lived with us in 2020) show up on short notice. We thought she might stay for weeks or months, but it was unfortunately just a few days. 

With the basement still under construction, guest space is more limited so we haven't had anyone stay until just yesterday when our friend who lived here last year came back to visit.

I plan to continue the monthly calls with college friends and grad school friends. 

The college friends one is sporadically attended but I'm still glad for it. The grad school friends one continues to be a great source of joy and friendly advice.

The World

I hesitate to speculate much, but I want to hope that the new administration will be well on the path of undoing what damage can be undone in a year. It's going to be a tough few years ahead.

Well, the January 6th insurrection didn't exactly set 2021 off on the right foot. That was terrifying and infuriating. 

We started this year in a deep hole, and we aren't as far out as I'd hoped. I have no regrets about supporting Biden since life choices in life are rarely about perfect and almost always about better, but I am especially disappointed that we aren't further out of the covid hole. Especially ever since omicron appeared, it's felt like we're at least two steps behind and the political excuses for our lack of preparedness have felt deeply irresponsible. You can't fight a pandemic with hope and vaccines alone, especially when so many people have essentially joined an anti-mask, anti-vax death cult. There's so much more we can still do rather than throw up our hands and say "how could we have predicted this?" But I wrote a lot more about that above.

Monthly goals

I didn't do the best job with these and unhelpfully didn't do a good job keeping track of what I did do. But here's my recollection.

January: Find a contractor for renovating our basement. We can't do much else until we do this.

We made progress in January, but the bids came in way higher than we'd hoped. After trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to get more (and more reasonable) bids and hemming and hawing for a few months about the cost, we decided to go for it with the contractor that had the second-highest bid but inspired confidence. Ultimately we asked ourselves, a year from now, are we doing to be happy we did this, or regret it? Although there have been many, many problematic and/or annoying things along the way and it's not over yet, we don't think we'll regret it. It's a huge improvement. So, I guess this was "done" but not in January.

February: Read about how other people organize memorabilia to come up with a sustainable system that I will start implementing.  

Um, I honestly can't remember if I made any progress on this in February. I just have so many sentimental things (papers especially) that I have a hard time parting with. We purged a lot while packing up the basement, but we'll need to do another round when unpacking from storage too. I did find that watching organization shows motivated me to get rid of more things, but not in February. But a system? Not really done.

September: buy nothing

I hadn't planned this one in advance, but I found myself over the summer doing a lot of online shopping as entertainment. Some of it was related to the basement renovation but none of it particularly necessary. This was just for me personally (not the household), and the goal intentionally wasn't spend nothing. So I could buy myself consumable treats and I got a massage, but the goal was not to buy any new stuff. It felt like a good mental reset.

I think there was a month that I unsubscribed from 30+ things again (maybe in March?) but I can't remember.

2021 overall

2021: better than 2020, I guess? It really took a nose dive in January, had some high points during the covid lows, and is ending the year on another low note.

I know there's probably just a few of you reading this blog, but I still enjoy writing it on these rare occasions. Thanks for being part of my life. 

Looking ahead to 2021

Writing some expectations for 2021 feels both more difficult and more important than usual. I have some new categories that I couldn't have predicted a year ago. 

Covid-19

I don't think we'll get the vaccine until the second half of 2021 at the earliest. We're relatively young, without preexisting conditions, and have very low exposure risk. We are appropriately low on the vaccination list. Based on how slowly the vaccine rollout is starting, I'll be surprised if we get it before September. If we do, it will be thanks to effective organization of our local government.

Given our current circumstances, our risk of contracting the virus and developing covid-19 is low. Our low-risk points of possible exposure are carryout delivery, grocery or other store pickup, occasional (~1x/mo) and brief (<10 min) in-person grocery or other store trips, unlucky outdoor transmission from strangers while walking/hiking/running, outdoor transmission from friends while hiking and talking (masked) for up to 2 hours (up to 1x/mo), or extremely unlucky outdoor transmission from masked, distanced conversations with friends or family (~3x/mo, up to 30 min at a time). When it's nice enough outside to open all the windows for ventilation (for her protection and ours), I'll ask our housekeeper to return. She wears a mask and we close ourselves off in rooms that she doesn't enter. The Neighbors spend about an hour at a doctor's office once a month for a recurring treatment. Otherwise, their points of exposure are very similar to ours, with less carryout delivery and possibly more time in the grocery store. Right now I can't think of any other known exposure risks. If the kids return to school in person, that will unquestionably be the biggest exposure risk. If we can succeed in renovating the basement, workers in the basement would be another risk.

All things considered, I think it's unlikely for either us or The Neighbors to pick up the covid. But, if one of us gets it, probably all seven of us will get it. This is why we all take the bubble so seriously. 

I am definitely concerned about our parents staying safe. I really hope that they are all able to be vaccinated soon. It will be a relief once they've all had two doses.

School

I don't think Adele will return to school in her building until the next school year. However, there's a possibility that they'll start a hybrid schedule in the spring. I'm not optimistic though. Thankfully we've got our shared arrangement with The Neighbors. I do hope they can return in person in August/September. I'm not optimistic about summer camps being a viable option so we'll probably maintain the arrangement with The Neighbors for the next 8 months. 

Career

I hope that by the end of the year, I will have at least a couple of new colleagues because we've been able to grow the team. Hopefully, that would mean a bit of change in my scope of work that would leave me slightly less stressed. However, that involves convincing my boss that it's a good idea (his idea) to grow the team. I've been trying unsuccessfully for almost 3 years, so this might be a fool's errand. I also hope my salary will at least be restored to its pre-pandemic cut level. 

If I travel for work, I'd be surprised if it happens before September. 

Jon's work might have more changes this year because he found out on Dec 31 that his boss (whom he loves) is leaving. At this point it's too early to tell. I think he'll work from home for all of 2021.

Home

We want to renovate the basement. For real. We've been talking about it for years. I think we can do it this year. We probably also have to find a separate shop space for Jon's tools. 

I spent the first few days of 2021 organizing a lot of my stuff in our room. It was a mess. I don't think I had really tried to tackle it in a big way in over a year. I semi-organized a lot of papers into boxes that are still meant to be further organized (and more importantly, purged). So this isn't complete but rather a first step. But it's a big one that I feel good about. 

Volunteering

I normally travel 2x/year for my volunteer responsibility, but now it's all virtual through the end of my term. I am a little sad to end a 9 year commitment without seeing folks in person one last time, but mostly I will feel relieved to be finished. It's a very tough time for the organization and I will still be involved, but no longer in a leadership capacity. Because of changes over the last several years, I have the longest institutional memory in the group, and I also have copies of some documents that were otherwise lost. One of the boxes I need to go through is meeting documents from the last 9 years to decide what to share for the group's archival purposes. 

Regional travel

There are some neat parks within a couple hour's drive that we haven't visited recently or ever that I'd like to see in 2021. I also have a tiny glimmer of hope that we might be able to spend a few days with my good friend and her family at their family cabin this summer (we'd sleep separately in a tent and nearly all our time would be spent outdoors). We didn't do it last year, but I hope maybe we can this year. We went in 2018 and 2019 and it's magical. 

Family

I hope to see my parents again by the end of summer, hopefully after they are fully vaccinated. Adele would love to go fishing with Jon's dad, once we're comfortable that's a mutually safe activity. Hopefully we'll be able to host Thanksgiving this year for Jon's family! 

Friends

I hope by the end of the year we'll be able to have friends over again (not just The Neighbors). I won't be terribly surprised if we have another stretch of time where a friend lives with us again, though at this point we don't know. I plan to continue the monthly calls with college friends and grad school friends. 

The World

I hesitate to speculate much, but I want to hope that the new administration will be well on the path of undoing what damage can be undone in a year. It's going to be a tough few years ahead.

Monthly goals

I want to try these again after having some success with them last year.

January

Find a contractor for renovating our basement. We can't do much else until we do this.

February

Read about how other people organize memorabilia to come up with a sustainable system that I will start implementing.  

Other ideas for future months:

• Exercise every day (like last July)
• Get better at ping pong (might be easier once the basement is renovated)
• Stay on top of our finances on a weekly basis
• Read a book (there's so many on my shelf and new ones coming out that I need to make some progress, other than the family book club)
• Plan the big 2022 trip
• Unsubscribe from 30 email things

Hopefully I'll post again in March or April with an update on monthly goals. I write that only half- expecting it to materialize. We'll see!

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!

Starting my dream job!

This has been a long time in the making, but I'm about to start my dream job.

Back in 2015, I mentioned at the end of the year that I had envisioned my nearish-term dream job. I talked about it with a few close colleagues of mine, and then got up the guts to tell the person whose buy-in was absolutely essential to make it happen. We talked about it some, but there wasn't much to be done at that point except talk about it hypothetically.

Over the next two years, we kept talking. Before leaving my job at Exciting Non-Profit (ENP), we talked about a lot of organizational strategy, and I pushed with my questions until I realized that I hit the limits of their thinking and planning. I saw directions that I thought they needed to go, but I didn't know how to help them get there.

When I changed jobs in 2016, I shifted focus considerably, away from direct involvement in the type of work I had been doing at ENP and wanted to return to later. The new job had a specific emphasis on professional development, so I told my boss about my career aspirations. I was super nervous about choosing such a specific job at which to target my skills development, but she was amazingly supportive. I started talking with other people about it, and giving that dream a voice. I wrote about it when those feelings were fresh, just when I was starting to commit to the dream in some sense.

I feel like I should take a moment here to write about what a cool experience the last year and a half has been. I haven't written about my work nearly as much as I did in my job at ENP. I think it's mostly because it has been much less stressful! I haven't had looming anxiety about getting laid off (this job has always been a short-term thing) and I haven't suffered under leadership decision paralysis (well, not too much). I managed to keep a foot in my previous work on the side while exploring this new area.

Even though I've had a very specific job in mind, this experience has radically broadened my perception of what I can do with my career.

I've learned how to be effective in a totally new professional space with new organizations and new key players. I got to work with some incredibly talented people and definitely felt many times like I was punching above my weight. I was flattered that my work had their attention at all. I watched some great leadership in action, and I started taking notes. Seriously, I started writing down things they did. I watched many awesome women diplomatically negotiate difficult, influential personalities.  One woman did a remarkable job of leading a group by laying out the social contract for their deliberations and inviting everyone's feedback and buy-in. I had great working relationships with my closest colleagues. And on top of all that, my job had awesome travel opportunities...almost too many. I traveled to seven different countries and four different states in 18 months (10 trips in all).

Once I got the hang of the new field of work (about 6 months in!), I could imagine myself continuing in that career. I see plenty of opportunities to make an impact and I honed some of the knowledge and skills to make a difference. There are exciting things happening, and I am sad to be stepping out just as many things are taking off.

But I never wavered much from the dream job I first articulated in 2015. I went to all of these meetings and professional development sessions with two minds: one on applications to my current position, and one on applications to my dream job. Many times my mind was buzzing with ideas for the latter. It's like everything that I absorbed was filtered through "how can I use this for my dream job?" I observed every meeting and workshop not only for content, but for process. How did they organize the committees? What tools are they using?

Over many months of conversations, my ideas about what I would want to work on evolved. I realized more and more that I had a unique skill set and perspective to bring to the team I wanted to work with. I thought I was going to have to find the funding to make this happen, but then an opportunity came up a bit sooner than I was prepared for. After deliberating with many people about the timing, I decided to go for it.

That person who I anxiously told about my ambitions in 2015 is about to become my boss. This is happening!

2018...let's do some big things

I'm writing this much later than I would have liked, but still trying to squeeze my thoughts for the year into January—barely!

Last year, a friend of mine did monthly resolutions instead of year-long ones. I find this idea appealing, though I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do each month. February is really the only one I have figured out.

February is going to be about getting my email under control. My goal is to get to inbox zero for my personal email and basically stay there. I am recruiting an accountability buddy who I can check in with.

My friend said she liked best the monthly resolutions that involved a daily action rather than less habit-forming ones, but I think I'll probably have a mix of both. I like the idea of setting a goal of tackling a big, looming, one-off thing in a particular month.

There are other big things to look forward to in 2018, especially related to jobs.

I am going to start my dream job! More on that next month. *grins*

Jon is also going to change jobs, though he hasn't found his dream job yet. His current job is a terrible fit and he's actively looking for other opportunities.

We have a big trip planned with our nieces and nephews over the summer and I have big gardening plans.

I am still discouraged about the state of our country and world, but I am trying to find hope and make change in the places where I can.

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!

A decade of blogging

I started blogging 10 years ago, right before starting grad school. This blog chronicled 6.5 years of grad school (approximately 13,507 hours of work) and the 3.5 years since officially graduating. During that time, I lost 3 close family members, got married, spent over a year doing field work in Africa, got a dog, had a baby, moved to a new city, and had three different jobs as a PhD. This has been an eventful decade.

For the first few years, I blogged several times per month (or even several times per week). It was an opportunity for me to reflect on my experiences and practice writing. Looking back on many of my early posts in the writing of this, I am struck as much by the things that haven't changed as much as the things that have. I still love Small Friendly College just as much as in 2007 (and the post made me teary again). I see major parts my current self in these older writings. In some cases, I captured events that I see now had outsized importance in shaping my current career, like a workshop on science communication and an interdisciplinary project. There are threads and early hints of the ideas and concepts that are hugely important to my present work, which makes me feel like I'm in the right place now in my career.

In some ways, I don't think I've changed substantially, but I've learned so much about myself in the last 10 years. I've grown. I wrote in 2009 that I needed to be more of a badass. I most definitely am. My moments of greatest badass-ness are probably still finishing my dissertation before my daughter was born, then giving birth to her and going through (and recovering from) serious complications. To finish my dissertation, I toughed it out and kept my eye on the prize with intense focus to the exclusion of everything else non-essential. When recovering from childbirth, I refused to accept my limited mobility and searched and read until I found the right people and resources to help me heal. During grad school, and especially during field work, I became aware of my common mental traps and I'm much better at avoiding them now that I know the signs (like being indecisive). I am nothing if not resourceful, and as my personal networks and knowledge have grown, I have an ever-growing pool of ideas to draw upon. This last year in my new job has especially helped me realize and appreciate the breadth and depth of skills and networks I have, and given me many more ideas for how I can leverage them to do good and awesome things. I, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants—in life as well as in research.

My favorite genre of books is scientist memoirs (e.g. Richard Feynman), especially field biologists (e.g. Jane Goodall and Robert Sapolsky). I love reading about the adventures that happen in the pursuit of science. I love reading about how they live their science-y lives, what their families think, how they raised kids, what went wrong, and how they overcame adversity. Their stories have helped me imagine what my life could be. Blogs by scientists about their lives scratched a similar itch.

Blogging was also a community, and the other women in science bloggers were my mentors. I learned so much from them. I read blogs of more advanced students describing drama in their committees (I learned years later that managing your committee is a classic example of "managing up"). I read about postdocs applying for faculty positions. I read stories of scientists in all career stages struggling with chronic health issues, infertility, and difficult relationships. I was unquestionably better prepared to be a good graduate student and navigate the potential job market afterwards as a result of the science blog community. I'd like to throw some nonspecific thanks out into the universe to the dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers from whom I gleaned wisdom and advice. Thank you!

While blogging during grad school, I accidentally discovered the identities of a few bloggers I followed, and a few people discovered me (one person anonymously and mysteriously tried to "out" me). I made real life friends because of this blog, and it was a way to re-connect with a handful of trusted people that I invited to read it. A few of you are still reading. Thanks for following my sometimes vague and pseudonymized adventures!

I watched, always with sadness, when other bloggers decided to call it quits for one reason or another. More often, they didn't have closure and just stopped writing, or I just stopped reading. Probably kind of like this—I stopped writing so often. In part I blame the declining popularity of RSS and therefore the declining options for good feed readers. Somewhere along the migration from one feed reader to another, I lost track. It has been a long time since I regularly read other people's blogs, so my blogging is overwhelmingly an introspective exercise.

It would probably be fitting, after a decade of blogging as an "aspiring ecologist", to declare this the end. But I imagine I'll still want to blog occasionally, and I'm frankly not motivated enough to set up another blog, so I'll stick with what I've got. Those of you who are friends in real life know where to find me, and if you've been reading this for years and still don't know who I am but want to be friends in real life, drop me a note.

I'm excited about the next 10 years. I've got big ideas that have been simmering for a while now. With the right combination of preparation and luck (there's always luck), it could be awesome. Or, more likely, I'll end up doing something 10 years from now that I can't even imagine at present. Let's see where the next decade goes!

Five whole months into the year

This is my first blog post in the current presidency. I clearly lost track of time and didn't realize the last time I blogged was January 19. I even blew right by my blogiversary, which was apparently May 17. I had it in my head as June, but I think that's because that was when I figured out how to blog as Karina Anirak (I had a brief stint under a different account). TEN YEARS. I basically started my graduate education TEN years ago.

There are a couple of things I have on my mind lately to blog about, but for now I want to do just a short check in on my goals/expectations for 2017.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
"This is the most important thing that needs to happen this year and it will make all of the financial goals below much easier!" DONE! There was a bit of a false start a few months back, but he now has a full time salaried job with opportunity for advancement. Once he finishes the trial period, he'll be eligible for benefits too. This is a huge first for us to have TWO predictable, livable incomes. 

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
DONE! We're all set for about 5 more years.

Clear my inbox every month

"I granted myself email amnesty at the beginning of the year and I think I need to do it on a regular basis." I think I did it once so far this year... but it really needs to happen. Ugh.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

"I want to do something special to celebrate...maybe get this printed as a book!" Not yet! I think I'll write a 10 year reflection post by the June 22 date of my first non-introductory blog post. I have a lot to reflect on, including these goals for 2017 that I wrote in 2007! I just stumbled across it looking through my oldest posts; I had completely forgotten. 

Read four books

I've read one so far. I know I can do this if I buckle down.

Financial
Pay off our car
DONE!

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
We just paid off one of the cards at the end of its 0% APR period, and the other one ends in October. We're almost there! Our credit scores have been noticeably recovering from carrying pretty high balances (thankfully all at 0%).

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
"Once we're sure we have the credit card debt paid for, then we can shorten the repayment term for my student loans to pay it down aggressively..." Not there yet.

Activism
Carbon offsets
"The easiest way to do this is probably by estimating our emissions and spreading it out over monthly payments." DONE! I added up all of our air travel and other emissions estimates from 2016 and now we pay a monthly fee to a carbon offset company.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
"This will take a bit of research, which is the biggest hurdle." Turns out direct mail works sometimes, because we went with the company that sent us mail about the opportunity to switch to wind power, and they seemed ok. DONE!

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-wikipedia (we have given to them in the past, but lapsed)
-Pro-Publica (nonprofit investigative journalism)
-An organization that very efficiently transfers donations to extremely poor people (I believe that wealth inequality is a huge problem)
-Southern Poverty Law Center
DONE! On January 20, we set up modest ($5-10) recurring monthly donations to all of these.

With Jon getting a salaried job, many other things are falling into place. Perhaps next month I'll think about whether or not to stretch myself a little more in some of these areas since we've already met most of the goals.

I have a pretty good work life balance since starting my new job, and if anything this spring I've been stressed out by my non-work commitments that should count for some kind of "fun". That has toned down thankfully in the last few weeks, but as ever I am trying to find the balance. Adele turned four and is almost done with school for the year. We currently have an international student from Small Friendly College who decided it was too risky to return home for the summer living in our basement for a couple of months while he does an internship. The fear is that they wouldn't renew his visa to let him back in the country for the fall semester, so he stayed here. I'm sad that's the world we live in, but glad that we can help in some small way. Onward!