Continental drift of the heart

The Mistress of the Animals has a new series of posts up, on dealing with less than ideal job situations. Go read them, they are useful, and make good points. And, as is Potnia's wont, a very important meta-point: what, at any given point in your life, is important to you, and what, at any point in your life, is worth putting up with?

The twist is that what matters, what is important, what you need, want and value, does not remain constant, nor is it always clear to oneself. Some of our values and priorities are like the Hawaiian volcanic hotspot, arising straight from our core and remaining fixed even as immense changes pass over our surface. Yet these hotspots are few. More often, things we think are massive and perennial are like the summit of Everest: superficially imposing, but in actuality a temporary wrinkle on the surface of our ever changing selves. We often change without knowing it, only recognising much later that things we once valued, were once utmost priorities, have shifted to peripheral importance and we are in fact organising our lives and decisions around new mountains.

Ten years ago this month, I moved to America for the first time. What did I want ten years ago? What was important? So important that to pursue a PhD I could have pursued at home in less time, I traveled to America, willingly moving to a city I had never even visited to start a PhD with an advisor I had never met? I remember why I did it: a desire for adventure, and a fear of getting bogged down. I lived in central London. I had good degrees and a good job and I could easily see myself never moving far from where I had grown up, devoting all my efforts to keeping a toe hold in the immensely comfortable, yet predictable life I had in London. I looked at the life my mother had led, which, while far from easy, had involved travels around the world by the time she was thirty, who had lived in three countries, and I balked at how stayed the profile of my own twenties was becoming. The furthest I had moved from home was Cambridge, a 45 minute train journey from King's Cross. In my master's degree, I met a diverse cohort of people from all over the United Kingdom and further, whose path to that masters, while more winding, and perhaps less easy than mine, still had given them a host of life experiences that made me stop and think. So, I resolved to have my own adventure, and to go pursue all my dreams at once: America, a fresh start, and a Ph.D. I applied to four programs, was interviewed at two, got into one, and with the blessings of my friends and family, boarded a plane and landed in Baltimore airport on August 20th 2007, with two suitcases, an address, and the name of a person I'd never met who was going to pick me up and take me to my first apartment I had rented without seeing.

And what a fresh start it was. For the first week I slept on an air mattress on the floor, and had only my laptop perched on my suitcase as furniture. The very first day I had my first encounter with how little London had prepared me for an American city. I left my apartment in Mount Vernon in search of food and some basic housewares. Despite walking from North Avenue, to Lexington Market, to the inner Harbour, I could not find a home ware store, and returned home with four cheap glasses, and a an overpriced saucepan from the convenience store down the road. It wasn't until the middle of the week when my new fellow graduate students took me to the Target on the outskirts of the city I was actually able to buy what I needed. The first five years I lived in America were the  adventure I hadwanted. I lived in and discovered a whole new city. I made many new friends. I did field work in India and Wyoming, and travelled all over the United States collecting data, spending weeks in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York city. And yet, by the time the adventure ended, already, subtly, the need for adventure had been replaced by other priorities. The desire for some stability, to be able to build a life with my partner, and the growing realisation that my increasing desire to be back home with my old friends and family was getting less and less likely to be easily combined with my desire for a fulfilling personal and professional life.

Ten years later, America is no longer an adventure, even though I have moved away once, and moved back to a new part of the country. America is a reality in my life, a part of it far more profoundly than I ever thought, at twenty three, it would be. It looms like mount Everest, or like the width of the Atlantic Ocean, in my decision making. My priorities now do not feature America, they must accommodate it. My desire to see my husband happy and fulfilled professionally means we are likely here at least another six year, probably more. My desire to be a good son, brother, and uncle, means I must continue to find ways to fly home often. My desire to have a successful career in academics mean I must continue to work hard, travel, be flexible and take opportunities. America is the geographic and political chess board on which I try to make my moves. And I know it now, I know it well. But whereas once, the fact I lived in America was a goal in itself, that time is long gone.

Let's talk about my science

Let's talk about our lab's science. We're wrapping up experiments for the summer. Long, tiring experiments that have gone pretty well I think. I'm just finishing up the last part of the data collection which may form the preliminary data for a grant proposal.
(Good thing I have that spousal green card. Shit that's up for renewal this year. Didn't the DOJ just come out with a thing about federal protection for LBGT persons? I need to check up on that. Better get that re application started)
... Sorry got side tracked. As I was saying preliminary data for a grant
(Wait, what are NIH paylines now? And isn't the federal budget going to be slashed?)
... Which is good because scientifically I'm feeling ready to spread my wings as I've mentioned before. I have a couple of papers in review, two more about to be submitted and will probably get at least one more out to review by fall. One of the ones in review is entirely my side project, and the one I aim to submit is my own devising even if it's out of my PIs project. So I'm ready to start looking for paths out of the postdoc.
(In the context of a university sector in financial crisis and a flooded job market).
Of course, it's a bit tricky because the husband got into a pre med masters program locally
(So that's six years of education. What is tuition these days? How much do residents make? I wonder what medicine as a profession will look like in six years).
So I need to stay local for a bit longer
(All the local universities are in crisis because of a massively reduced state subsidy, a new funding formula, tuition caps, and debts accrued from unsustainable growth policies).
But I would like to remain professionally competitive enough to have the possibility of being back home in the UK with my family one day.
(I wonder where the UK will be in six years? OH GOD NO DO NOT THINK ABOUT THAT)
But yeah, I would really like to talk about my science.