Week 74
View from the Houseboats
I will stipulate from the start that there are many rational reasons for anger and gloominess right now. The Delta wave of COVID, with more unvaccinated kids getting COVID especially where masks are not mandated. Wildfires are growing, smoke season has started, and there are massive heatwaves across the US. Impacts of global warming are inevitable at this point, with a small window for avoiding worse outcomes. With the new census data reported, Democrats will redraw 84 House districts while Republicans will redraw 187, which could lead to a level of gerrymandering insurmountable by organizing. I am grateful to live in an area and work for an employer with high rates of vaccination and implementing new protective policies against Delta (vaccine and mask mandates, more remote work, etc.), and that many groups are facilitating political organizing.
Yet despite this broader news, my day-to-day life is pretty darn good right now, especially when I reflect back on where things were a year ago. August 2020, we were a month into Theo being back at daycare, with lots of behavioral issues in the adjustment period. We were starting to get over our exhaustion from the intensity of juggling work-life integration from doing work and childcare full-time. I was finally creating a viable home office for long-term WFH, and Sam and I were negotiating how that worked and felt like in our small space with no doors. I was slogging away at long-term writing projects but without a sense that the progress was progressively forward.
In contrast, Theo’s pretty delightful and interesting these days (not without meltdowns, but just so much better than age 3.5). Sam and I working at home is working well, in that way where I can’t remember the last time we had an issue. My mother now lives nearby, has a great relationship with Theo, and babysits to give us time to have dates and uninterrupted adult conversations. Likely related to those three points, Sam and I have finally made progress on some long-time goals. Professionally, my leadership and mentoring roles are shifting in ways that I enjoy and also that require stretching into new roles and relationships. I’ve also been able to contribute to or facilitate a number of peer-mentoring groups that seem to be providing community and support. My manuscripts are moving forward in ways that feel like consistent forward progress. My creativity has returned.
As usual, I’m asking myself, why am I sharing this with others. I tend towards a pessimistic brand of optimism. As I’ve likely said before, my AT trail name was C.B.W. (“CBDubs”) because I often said “it could be worse” as we were hiking up something or in conditions that felt terrible, often saying that a 12x400 track workout would be worse. I remind myself that I can overcome hard things by reminding myself of prior evidence that this is true. How do you remind yourself of your resilience and persistence?
On another note, I finally had bandwidth and motivation to achieve my goal of creating some theme-based posts on my website. I had figured out how to add a search function to the website, but thought it would be easier to find content if organized around themes…well, what else did you expect a qualitative researcher to do? I’ve posted some, and scheduled some, and I have plenty more content to add from the archives of letters. My plan is to roughly post one or more content-based post a week, and then add the link to these weekly letters, which will continue to be a little more freewheeling.
Other interesting stuff on the internet
This week’s UCSF Grand Rounds, back from summer hiatus early, which has a nice update on Delta. At roughly the hour mark, they provide helpful advice about how to think about travel plans during covid (PCR test 72h before a flight, a rapid OTC test immediately after arriving and 5 days later). Unfortunately, they spend minimal time talking about kids – the best discussion is immediately after the discussion of travel.
Ed Yong article in the Atlantic about how the pandemic ends
My new posts: a productivity post on setting goals; a mentoring post on modeling vulnerability; work-life integration post on priorities amid chaos; posts about grieving at work and honoring important dates
Hoping you are all well
-Krista