It's been a wild month in some ways.
Getting the postdoc to do actual field work, data collection, analysis, and modeling is great news. It's disturbing to think of moving yet again, and taking such a deep pay cut, but in the long run, it is definitely the right thing to do, and once I get through the waves of transition, will be much better for my mental health and overall health than the teaching job, which has been feeling increasingly unsustainable and exhausting.
I'm still loving living in the Big Evil City, but I'm so worn down by work that I rarely even get to go out and enjoy it. I have a three day weekend this weekend and I have been sleeping most of it so far. I didn't realize how mentally exhausted I have been. It will help when I start getting back into physical shape, but so far I have had zero motivation even to do that much. It's been a depressive stretch for sure, with even small tasks like getting a haircut or scheduling a dental appointment or an oil change for the car seeming monumentally impossible.
I also got hired to be the editor of an annual journal, connected to my field, which is great, but yet another learning curve of new skills and ways of interacting in the world that I have little familiarity with. Not a problem, but definitely daunting.
I have been too involved in social media lately and definitely need the emotional and mental break that taking a bit of distance will provide, so that's another change I want to make. I want to create a buffer of about 90 minutes or so before bed to improve sleep time. We'll see how that goes. I feel like I am full of great ideas and great plans to make my life better, but I have lacked the skills to translate these into action.
The last article out of the dissertation was submitted on December 4 and I just checked the status. "Required reviews completed," says Editorial Manager, but the manuscript has not been returned to me for revisions yet. I assume it will be returned soon. Fingers crossed.
The below pic is the study site where I will be working starting at the end of May.
Things are currently feeling very tumultuous, chaotic, and permeated by stress and negativity at my school job. I'm not sure exactly why everything feels so stretched thin, irritable, cajoling, antagonistic between faculty and admin, and between faculty and students. It is probably yet more of the effects of the pandemic, combined with what feels like an enduring lack of trust and communication.
I have noticed an amusing pattern with some of my friends on social media who express a desire to be in a relationship, and seem to have chronic problems forming one. They are, at the same time. oddly brittle, judgmental, self-centered, negative, pessimistic, and stubbornly unwilling to meet people where they are. It's tempting to say to them, look, from the outside, obviously all of your difficulties in this area or at least most of them are a result of YOU, not other people. Of course, I restrain myself.
Meanwhile, I have been doing a ton of background reading on the main study species for the upcoming postdoc, the iconic saguaro. It's interesting to be yet another in a very long line of botanists who have studied this species, which is rapidly becoming a model organism. I had no idea, for example, that isotope analysis of spines had been undertaken in order to make inferences about climate cycles and CO2 uptake. There is a vast body of existing literature. I think the research questions that I will be answering are going to have to start out as narrowly circumscribed as possible, in order to contribute anything novel or useful. The data is time series survey data from a site that was designated in 1903, and from transects that have been surveyed periodically since 1964. I think the main goal is going to be some population viability analysis and predictive modeling of the localized impacts of climate change.
If it were possible for me to start immediately, I would. I felt deeply that I had to honor my commitment to the teaching job, and, fortunately, the lab where I will be working respected that. Things have been mostly okay at the school since informing the necessary people, but there's always weird energy around pending change, and I think a few people have some trouble with my decision. Too bad.
