sebenikela

A status update:

- my postdoc contract ended the beginning of April, by which point I was very definitely counting down the days until I could escape from this dumb project I don't care about, and my bosses who gave no fucks about me beyond what I could produce for them. There's still unfinished papers I should help revise, but I'm finding it difficult to summon any fucks.

- since the end of April I have been living with my sister and brother-in-law just outside Baltimore. They bought a new house last fall that has a spare room over the garage and an acre of badly-neglected garden and orchard (well, "orchard", there's like a dozen trees of various types), so I am basically being their live-in gardener in exchange for room and board. This is actually a very enjoyable situation and a much-needed break from Regular Work. Sister and BIL also seem to be pleased with how things are working out, and Apollo the Dog is very pleased with having all three of His People around most of the time.

- Sister will be having a baby around November 1

- given the above, I am pretty attached to staying in the area in the medium-to-long term, and not very motivated to find a job in the immediate-term.

- I am not at all sure what I want to do in the "where do you see yourself in five years?" scale. I have pretty much zero ambition.

- I will however need some form of income soon-ish, so I'm looking around, if pretty haphazardly. I interviewed for an interesting USAID data science/impact analysis job in January but never heard back. I've sent applications out to a few other places in the general data science extended universe, particularly jobs that would allow me to work remotely. I'm not particularly excited about any of them but they'd be well-paying jobs I probably wouldn't hate. Haven't heard back on any of that either. I am seriously considering applying for hardware store/gardening/landscaping jobs, but I'm not at all sure my body will cooperate with doing that kind of work full-time (or even half time) in the heat. I'm also applying to USAID disaster relief type jobs, but that process takes like a year. Those would be DC-based but significant amounts of travel, which would be fun. I do miss traveling.

- I don't want an academic job. To be competitive for anything tenure track, I'd have to do at least one more postdoc and/or an adjunct-type teaching position, because I don't have teaching experience, and my background is eclectic enough that it doesn't fit easily into University Department Boxes. There's a few USDA jobs I've considered but then the application process includes like "what are your research priorities" and I just can't summon any enthusiasm for thinking about that. Also ditto on not fitting the pre-defined boxes.

- All this uncertainty is causing some degree of brainfuckery, as is the realization of just how badly Mali burned me out on....well, just about everything I thought I wanted to Do When I Grew Up, and this postdoc burned me out on some of the rest.

- Essentially, I'm in a strange position where my day-to-day is pretty good, low-stress, and fulfilling, but anything beyond 3-6 months out is a giant gaping ????????????

- Perhaps I should start posting garden updates to get in the habit of writing/posting things again?

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From:

kaberett

GARDEN UPDATES. <3

elusiveat

Great to hear about what all has been going on with you.

I don't know if this is of interest to you, but some years ago when the Ecological Society of America meeting was in Baltimore, there were a large number of presentations related to water health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. My understanding is that nutrient loading (and other runoff) is a huge problem for that ecosystem, so there might be interesting ag-related jobs at local nonprofits, maybe some research stuff through universities and research stations, in addition to whatever federal stuff is out there.

The USAID jobs do sound like a potentially good fit!