Maybe I should start a think tank

(Tangentially, I wrote a Scary Mommy article recently: 10 Things That Surprised me About Having a C-section. Let me know what you think. More on that front to come.)

***

After a lengthy, meandering series of patio discussions recently with M, it was actually two conversations with friends (you know who you are!), a job posting, and a scheduled job interview that pushed me from aggressive hedging (it’s not just an oxymoron, it’s a lifestyle!) into the realm of needing to act.

This is about the job thing again.

The morning unfolded like this:

1. I received an email telling me I have a 3 hour job interview lined up for tomorrow. For the job that I was just telling M last night I think I may neither be qualified for, nor want.
2. I told a friend that I couldn’t meet her for lunch tomorrow, because of it. She asked about the job and then kindly said that it sounded “intellectually beneath me”. That gave me pause.[1]
3. I told a long distance friend about the job interview and she said “Great but… that’s not really what you want to do, right?”
4. Money, I told them both. We still haven’t paid off the twins’ medical bills (etc.)
5. I saw a posting by data & society looking for a research manager. My heart started beating faster. I’ve wanted to get involved with them for a while. I read through the entire posting, and when I made it to the bottom I saw the dreaded words: “This is not a remote position. You must be able to work full time from Data & Society’s offices in the Flatiron District.”  I must be in good company trying to find remote work…

I paced around my house, feeling depressed. Dropped a quick email to danah, who I went to college with and who sits on the advisory board for d&s – and who by no means has the time to reply to an email from me.

Then the twins started screaming, and I had to disconnect and try to juggle tandem feeding of two fussy babies. I may have sworn a few times.

The twins were kind enough to do this while I wrote the blog entry.

Ok. So I’m in Houston. I have a PhD in anthropology with a focus on media/technology. I’ve spent the majority of my career in the academic world. There are no positions here for me, and only money buys me the time to work on my publications (need to not be doing other jobs full-time, including watching the babies).

Maybe I should start a research group. Or a think tank. Or freelance research until I can find enough work to start the group. I know so many underemployed or unemployed PhDs. Adjuncting is unsustainable, financially. Not everyone can move, so we could all work from where we need to be- providing on-site researchers around the world for our clients.

Please share this with anyone who might be able to help with this mission. Anyone I can connect with on this would be a valuable ally.

 

1. I don’t like thinking anything is intellectually beneath me- but I know what she means. Not challenging enough, not aligned with my professional trajectory, whatever that is.

The Body Will Deal With What the Mind Won’t

So I mentioned I contracted the flu, right after Christmas. And unfortunately for me, I then had to drive the car my parents gave me cross country (well… North to South, not cross). I told you guys all of this. Anyway, when I went to see my shrink last Wednesday, the day my divorce was finalized, I was still coughing in the morning. That night I wound up meeting a guy I know who’s also going through a divorce (and with whom I have a lot of sexual tension, but I’ve told him I just need to be friends). We drank beers, and I bummed two of his cigarettes but didn’t really inhale. No really, I’ve been doing the “just suck it into my mouth” thing since I actually bought my own packs of cigarettes (age 18-19), and so I didn’t think weed did anything for me because I… never actually inhaled it. Like Bill Clinton.

But I digress.

The next day my chest felt a little tight, and I felt really low energy, but I chalked it up to staying out late and drinking three beers. And I went to a 90 minute, intense hot power yoga class. With a live DJ, even. They wanted us to hold wheel pose for 5 minutes, and I just couldn’t. The next day my chest was hurting even more, but I again went to yoga and felt like everything was much harder than usual, like the instructor was deliberately torturing me. By Saturday I felt as though my body had been stuffed with bags of sand, and the pressure in my chest was intense. It felt like someone was pushing down on me, hard. Like anxiety, but deeper in my chest cavity.

Having not received the necessary documents from J, I had no insurance of my own yet. And actually, I was surprised to find that I’d been off his insurance since Dec 31. I was stuck- with the pain growing worse, I searched for an urgent care clinic, cancelled my evening plans, and drove to a strip mall clinic that turned out to be closed. I sat for a while in the parking lot searching for anything open and nearby, and though the Bellaire ER didn’t have any statements on their website about accepting uninsured patients, I desperately made my way over there. I was the only patient in the entire building that Saturday night.

I had to turn down an X-ray, because it was just too expensive out of pocket. Without that, the doctor guessed that I have pneumonia, or bronchitus. Or bronchial pneumonia. A jolly nurse made me pull down my pants, so she could give me a steroid shot in the butt (IN THE BUTT!!), and I was left in the examination room for a while to drink my free Keurig coffee and contemplate how I’d gotten sick AGAIN. Or never really gotten well, I suppose. From not being sick for years, I descended into a string of bad colds and other ailments around when J and I decided to divorce, and I haven’t been able to go more than 1-2 months between illnesses since then. A short time later, while I waited for my antibiotics at the 24-hour CVS, (rather than going to watch movies with B), I contemplated whether this was my body’s way of forcing me to confront an emotional pain that I otherwise compartmentalized, and only dealt with in those brief moments when my sorrow managed to get away from me, to leak from beneath its lid.

It’s Thursday, and I’m done the course of antibiotics, but my chest still aches and my limbs feel heavy so I have gone almost a week with no yoga class (SIGH). I’ve been so exhausted and ill that I’ve spent most of the week on the sofa, convalescing. If this is my body’s way of healing my “soul”, then so be it. But considering how long this particular illness has been dragging, I hope it gets everything out of me for good this time.

(On a hippie friend’s advice I bought this sub-lingual B vitamin stuff at Whole Foods. Taking it is like pounding a shot of espresso, since I don’t usually drink caffeine. But even through the manic-hyperactivity, I feel the chest pain lingering.)

***

I just started reading the newest book by my former advisor. I put it off as long as I could, but I need it for my dissertation. I find it unbearable to read him, so GOOD is his work. He makes me want to give up, convinced that there must be enough brilliant anthropologists in the world already. I mean, good work seems good to me in a way that I cannot access; I have trouble remembering things- names are a particularly sticky spot. Names plus their major theoretical contributions are even more difficult. I’m good at imagining. I’m good at wordcraft. But I’m not good at details, just like my mother.

I am impatient with people in my daily life who think they’re smart because they haven’t really had to test it by matching wits with the absolute smartest in our society- no, the world. I’ve actually gone on a few first dates with such people this year. Accustomed to walking around feeling smart because of the company they keep, they have no idea how tired is their logic, how thin their justifications, how stupid they really sound. And I’m NOT a jerk, I’m not. I don’t let on that I’m thinking this (maybe that’s still being a jerk?), but try to gently challenge their arrogance. I don’t have the luxury of arrogance, unless I’m self-deluded. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone manages to be arrogant in academia anymore. Maybe it’s just personality. Maybe it’s that everyone is just deeply insecure and arrogance is the default posture of some.

Anyway.

In his acknowledgements, my ex-advisor thanks the woman he met around the time I first met him, and who became his wife. She’s an artist/art prof. There is something about the way he thanked her that made tears well up in my eyes. I want that. I want a creatively and intellectually stimulating partnership grounded in the fiercest of love. I might have actually met that person recently… he’s a playwriting/theater professor. I dream of writing some heartbreaking homage to him, (or if not him, someone else), when my dissertation becomes a book.

I am a bad anthropologist

I’m totally behind on updating this, but when given the choice between starting to pack (and where am I going to even put the open suitcases in this apartment?) and writing a blog entry, blog entry it is!

I also made coconut pudding and updated my Amazon wishlist. I should shower But no! No! No! I will write this first and stop allowing my attention to hop around like a monkey.

I have this constant fear with my fieldwork that I’m not doing enough. Anyway, I’d been attending a workshop related to my project for months, and on the last day I presented my group with their thank you gifts. (Really, this embarrassed everyone involved, apart from the Sensei, who apparently gets so many thank-you gifts that she practically chucked mine in the corner as soon as it was in her hands.)

Sensei (I’ll call her S-san) had announced that we were to all go out drinking together after the last workshop. But at the end, my group made for the door-  I assumed they wanted us to go drinking, just the 4 of us. But I hadn’t given S-san her gift yet, so I said “just a moment” and took a minute or two to hand it to her, babble on about my gratitude etc. Then I hurriedly announced that I was going to tag along with the rest of my group, and excused myself.

Flinging open the heavy metal door, I expected to see them waiting there for me. But the stairwell was empty, and it was raining hard. And I had no umbrella.

Still, I just knew they were nearby, so I dashed to the intersection at the corner of the building, and saw …way…. in … the … distance, the three of them under their umbrellas, walking in the opposite direction from my train station.

Feh.

I retreated back to the covered stairwell of the building, and stood there. Well, now what? I AM AN ANTHROPOLOGIST. I AM SUPPOSED TO BE BUILDING RAPPORT, I told myself. Oh well, I could go home. And so, holding a paper shopping bag-as-umbrella over my head pitifully, I started towards my station.

Then- “argh, no, you idiot.  You should be drinking with the rest of the crew”, came a voice in my head. I stopped. I looked back. The rest of the workshop was all still in the office. But… going back would be awkward. I started toward the station again.

“NO! WHAT KIND OF RESEARCHER ARE YOU?”

I wavered… literally turning in circles in the street. I walked back to the front of the building. I stopped. I walked a few steps back towards the station.

“GAHHHHHH”

I stood there, staring up at the office. 5 minutes passed. One step back, one step forward. I’d try to leave and then think of a good question to ask everyone once they were good and hammered. I envisioned the part of my dissertation in which I’d use it to… something. Make some important point I’d come up with later. After we’d all gone drinking.

Tightening my face in a childish expression of determination I said out loud “That’s IT!”, startling a salaryman walking nearby (who, not knowing me, didn’t expect me to exclaim something odd out loud in public. To myself).

I marched back up the stairs like a super-hero, and flung open the office door. Everyone inside looked up, pausing from their conversations. I felt the expectation of an explanation. “I, um, forgot my umbrella.” I mumbled, rubbing the back of my head like a manga character.

It’s a small office, so it didn’t take long to conclude that there was no umbrella belonging to me there. “Ah, uh, must have left it in the train then.” I announced. Everyone nodded. It had been an awkwardly long amount of time to justify a return-to-check-for-lost-items scene. I quickly glanced around for signs that everyone was about to go drinking.

Nothing. They were just sitting in their groups chatting. Shouldn’t have left to chase my group, but, well, I couldn’t help it now.

In English I might have just explained the situation and laughed at myself, but in Japanese I’m horribly shy, and tend to become mute when embarrassed. Which I was.

When I met up with T I talked him into going to a 270 yen izakaya and drinking cheap, cheap wine with me to take the edge off my anxiety. I regretted this plan when I couldn’t sleep a wink that night and had a splitting headache for 24 hours after that as well. Oy.