Week 73
View from the Houseboats
Whew, it’s one of those weeks where the feelings are deeply mixed. There’s been vacation time, shifts in work intensity, changes with Delta, and grief stuff surfacing.
As some of you know, I skipped writing last week because we took a few days off and took Theo backpacking in Yosemite, near May Lakes. All things considered, it should considered a success, though, as with most parenting, it had some really hard parts. Theo loved hiking and listening to audiobooks on headphones (primarily Star Wars, but also Zootopia and Raya and the Last Dragon and Winnie the Pooh). He hiked 3-4 miles everyday, mostly with his pack, and he and Sam fished (unsuccessfully). We navigated daily rain and thunderstorms. Per usual, I felt like we hit our stride on day 3, our last day, not least when we realized we needed to stop for a snack break every 30 minutes. It was really nice to have the extra down time and be in the mountains.
Last week and this week, the intensity of my summer has slowed down (or changed) as the students working with me have gone back to school and a number of my projects reach transitional phases. This has given me a little more thinking time, which has in turn reminded me of the essentialness of thinking time for creativity and research. I wish funders supported more thinking and writing time. Or perhaps they do, but Bay Area prices don’t allow us to claim that needed time because the costs of salaries are too high for budget limits. It’s making me think hard about how to adjust my research ambitions to the practicalities of this environment.
On the other hand, I’ve accepted 3 journal reviews this month and have two letters of recommendation to write, which is perhaps more service than prudent in a single month. As I’ve said before, I try to accept only one journal review a month (if that), but two different journals sent me papers I really wanted to read…and so I made different choices Here’s hoping I can balance it out over the coming months.
We’re also processing how to adjust our behaviors to the newest data about the risks with the Delta variant of COVID. As many have said, including my department chair Bob Wachter, it’s a different ballgame. I am so grateful that the vaccines are working to dramatically reduce risk of death or hospitalization from COVID – this was a great visual of that evidence. Yet risk tolerances differ based on whether your individual/family goal is avoiding death/hospitalization or avoiding getting infected at all. There are many stories now of fully vaccinated adults getting symptomatic COVID and passing it to others who are fully vaccinated and not, like this story from a Hopkins professor and this story about UCSF & ZFGH faculty, including one of my K scholar friends who reports that extensive contract tracing indicates she was infected while outdoors, either while masked or while eating outside. One of our neighbors on the dock also tested positive, having been vaccinated early in the pandemic. I liked this twitter thread about why vaccinating the unvaccinated (and in the meantime, masking up) is important than getting booster shots. In our household, we’re shifting to wearing surgical masks or KN95s instead of cloth masks when around other people, including outside, because we’d prefer not to get COVID at all. We’re also planning to get rapid PCR tests before driving to visit family later this month.
Grief has been present too. Thursday afternoon I learned that one of my grad school professors, who I had periodically reconnected with since coming to UCSF, whose work I admire greatly, and who led a study whose data I often use, died suddenly. I also started working with a new therapist with different methods for grief processing, along the lines of what The Body Keeps the Score describes, and its…intense.
So whatever you are feeling or processing this week, know that you are not alone. Things are shifting rapidly, there is still great uncertainty, and it’s a transitional time of year anyway.
Other interesting stuff on the internet
Bandanas with great designs where 10% of price is donated to a cause
New online community for ambitious professional women who are Jewish
Pod Save America (co-founded by a classmate of mine from Williams) episode with Dr. Ashish Jha about the latest CDC evidence
Hoping you are all well
-Krista