On the other side

I feel like I need a complete life detox after being here. The schedule I’ve been keeping certainly gives me more energy, but I don’t think I can keep it up at home. It’s easy to get up at 6:30 when you go to bed at 9:30 or 10 out of total boredom. It’s not so easy when there are fun things to do and people to see at night. But I’ll be very glad to get back to a place where I can actually exercise – between getting mugged and this town being full of annoying people trying to sell me crap, I haven’t been walking as much as I thought I would when I arrived. And my diet has just been awful. Breakfast is always chips, an egg of some kind (often fried), sausage, and bread. Occasionally fruit. And it’s hard to eat healthy foods without a refrigerator and an oven/stove and without consistent means of getting to the supermarket. I’ve been watching Chef at Home and thinking of all the fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods I desperately want to eat.

So, I’m determined to actually go to the Farmer’s Market this summer and to eat well and exercise. And I want to do lots of things outside this summer and get out of the house and not be cooped up with the television. I also want to get to the office and be productive, because I want to get this dissertation hammered out along with whatever I do for work and the eventual jobhunting and conference abstracts and suchlike.

I’ve been fussing a bit about work for the summer and money. I’m waiting to hear from a few people about small amounts of work, which would be fine. I really want to visit Boston and ABQ, but I need to make sure I have the cash for these things (and that any accompanying passengers do too). I will hear about the CDC grant in late summer, probably. I’m extremely ambivalent about the grant. I’ll be thrilled to have a stipend and to be able to say I got it on my resume. But I don’t really want to come back here in the fall; I might be able to deal with spring, but even that makes me feel a little queasy. I try to put on a good face for people who ask when I’m coming back. I wouldn’t mind a two-week trip, but another two-month trip sounds just awful. I’ve also lost some enthusiasm for the idea of doing in-depth interviews about the radio program. I’m not sure we’ll really get the depth of information we’re interested in. And if we don’t have good results from the experimental design there’s really less justification anyway for expending more energy in this direction.

My travels here have solidified my feelings that I’m not really interested in a straight-up communication position. Comm is okay and all, but I really want to stick with public health and be able to see comm. as one tool out of many to improve health. I’ve seen so many huge systemic problems at work here that I can’t possibly pretend developing some radio programs is going to satisfy me entirely.