It's fairly ridiculous in two ways: 1). how easy it is to archive all kinds of media now, digitizing vinyl albums, cassette tapes, scanning documents, backing up files; 2). how ridiculously complicated it can get, for unexpected reasons.
For eaxmple, I am on the verge of getting rid of my old computer, the one I used for almost 100% of the PhD, from about 2015 to 2020. I have already backed this computer up to the cloud, and to one external hard drive, but there's so much on there that remains important to me that I wanted to back it up one more time to another external drive. I bought a WD 4 TB drive and figured, great, I'll back up the old warhorse, and then get rid of it.
But no: in an archetypal tale of modern life, of course WD has ended support for their old backup software which of course worked like a charm, and partnered with a shit company called Acronis, and their software does not work one bit (which took me four hours to learn). Top it off with the hard drive throwing "fatal hardware failure" errors. Ugh. So I'm returning it, but I can't get any of that time back.
Meanwhile, my former committee member contacted me and asked if I would take the lead on a very interesting molecular phylogeny and biogeography project, which I couldn't turn down, even if there is no funding (at the moment), and the conservation committee I am on for a certain non profit corralled me into exploring the ins and outs of proposing a species for listing in CITES Appendix II, which is a great idea but we definitely lack the necessary data, studies, evidence we will need. I am still working on draft 3 of a manuscript out of the postdoc, and article for one of the journals I write. I'm eager to get away this weekend to spend time with M, and yet I wonder if I will have the mental discipline to put all of this out of my mind for a few days. I did not have that discipline from 3 to 5 a.m. overnight, while I was awake and feeling stressed out like mad.
I am taking a break from the madness of managing digital transitions to look at some field work pics from May 2017. The above is a Ferocactus flower from Cerro Colorado.
My gear for a long trip out to the islands in Bahia Magdalena.
The panga ride from Puerto San Carlos to Cabo San Lazaro is a very complicated endeavor involving a trip across the bay to Puerto Mag, portage to Bahia Santa Maria, and a long panga ride to Cabo San Lazaro.
The stark coastline at Cabo San Lazaro.
Extremely windy spring weather on the exposed rocky coast.
Fruit on Cochemiea halei, one of the main study species for my PhD.
I miss field work. It's too bad there is no money in it, really. I always funded these elaborate, expensive trips using small grants of $3000 or so.
I get so rattled by these phases of multitasking all happening at once. Several people want to meet with me next week. It seems like maybe a spring pattern. People emerge and suddenly there's a shit ton of nonsense going on. I am looking forward to down time for sure.