Category Archives: transitions

Endings, transitions and beginnings

This year has been one of heavy contradictions for me. It brought an end to 30 consecutive years of working in research in a structured 9-to-5 environment in offices or remotely for organizations, but it also brought so many unexpected opportunities and new beginnings. 

At the outset of the year, as my industry came under increasing threats of rapid cuts and dramatic changes, I was hungry to use my skills and life experiences in a different kind of way to affect those who were caught under the wheels of the rapid federal changes. A plan for a community conversation series seemed almost delivered to me through a series of flashbacks and revelations during an intense two-week period. Shortly afterward, I began developing partnerships and hosting these cathartic events. When I lost my job as a federal contractor amidst another flurry of cuts to contracts and personnel (the “April Fools RIFs to HHS), I was able to devote more time to the series.

These Community Conversation events provided a space for difficult conversations around the impact of the cuts and changes, as well as a way to learn and practice grounding techniques for managing anxiety, hold empowering discussions reenvisioning the support landscape for those affected, and share in soothing meditations. We left these spaces feeling heard, better connected, and more relaxed and restored.

Early in this journey, I was interviewed by another community advocate.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hJKpDYUbPt0?si=YZpizdPYm73jgwk-

By the end of November, I had conducted 15 Community Conversation events and three other career transition events, including a Careerchangeapalooza that proudly featured Career Change guru Rishan Mohammed of HiringCoach.ai. Some of the Community Conversations evolved into a youth-driven theme of Multigenerational Conversations about Mental Health and Wellness, and one event was more of a large-scale discussion forum with 10 breakout rooms. I led these events through partnerships with Transfiguration Parish, DC-AAPOR, AAPOR, and The Salt Sanctuary of MD, and as self-hosted events at local libraries and online. This work led to other opportunities I never would have imagined: co-leading a peer support group with a former FDA client, leading a weekly meditation series with the Salt Sanctuary and partnering with Brook Grove Retirement Community, where my daughter and I led weekly meditations, imagination sessions, and focus groups, and held countless conversations with residents and those in the rehab facility.

This was also a time for pro bono work, as I led and contributed to several qualitative studies in service of various partnerships and helped to prepare a statewide listening campaign on behalf of a consortium of local community advocate groups.

I felt deeply connected to my research and professional communities throughout this time. I joined MAFN, which turned out to be an amazingly supportive professional community, from monthly in-person networking events to online communities of practice. I joined the MRX PROs, with weekly sessions, discussion and camaraderie. I participated in AAPOR and DC-AAPOR events and attended the AAPOR conference with the help of colleagues. I learned more about the job-hunting landscape through the Insights Career Network. I met with countless peers in one-on-one networking sessions, learning about the passions and challenges of my colleagues and envisioning future collaborations. All of this happened against the backdrop of my unemployment. This morning marked the end of an era for me, as I attended my last mandatory unemployment session.

This period also led to something new and quite exciting! In September, I founded an LLC that is set to launch next week!

The coming year will be different. Some of these partnerships and Community Conversation events will continue, and a couple of new partnerships are on the horizon. The business will bloom and grow as a collective, and I’ll grow as a business owner through a business incubator program called Founders Rising!, and I’ll trade pro-bono work for paid consulting work. But this new year will be built on the foundation of a creative, supportive, challenging and transformational time unparalleled in my professional career. I’ve shared tears and laughs and intellectual excitement and so much more with my community members, colleagues, and friends and family this year, and more than anything, I feel so much gratitude to be at this particular point.

The COVID pandemic and lockdown brought another transformational period for so many of us, and we are still reckoning with its aftermath. The aftermath of this year will also linger. But may we continue to build on this new foundation to elevate each other through whatever challenges come our way in the future, stronger- as always, together!

Worldbuilding – or: What’s giving me hope?

It has been a minute since I checked in. In this very stressful time of change and transition, my experience has somewhat impossibly become one of hope and connection and new beginnings. Let me explain.

You know how, as a parent, caregiver or babysitter, when the home goes quiet you instinctively know you’ll need to find the child and see what kind of projects are underway? You tiptoe down the hallway to get a quiet peek into whatever room they are in, your heart in your chest with nervous apprehension. Well, take a breath. No need to feel nervous! But let me crack open my door enough to give you a peek at my current projects.

Watch your feet! My metaphorical legos are out. I’m still in a worldbuilding phase, but my focus has shifted a bit. Let me show you around this world that I am helping to shape.

Community support events. Community support activities had been my focus for the past several months, but recently I have pivoted in a few ways.

  • I’m no longer organizing independent events. I may organize something in the future, but for now I am focusing on my ongoing partnerships. These include AAPOR, DC-AAPOR, The Salt Sanctuary of MD and Transfiguration Parish.
  • I’ve discovered the WellFed community. If you haven’t, you should! They have fantastic events and activities to support the FiredFed community in a variety of ways.
  • Some of the community conversation events I’ve been hosting have shifted in topic. Most recently, we have focused on hosting multigenerational conversations about mental health and wellness. There is a big groundswell of support and interest in the topic, and I’m excited to see where it goes.
  • There is an upcoming forum for the AAPOR community to discuss the dramatic changes to the federal workforce and contracting environment. This conversation is deeply needed within our field, and I am really looking forward to this event!
  • The Salt Sanctuary of MD events include weekly online meditations and monthly conversations in the salt cave. Come for the salt cave and stay for the good conversation and collective peace!

Economic worldbuilding. I applied for my own LLC, and I’m preparing for its launch! The LLC will offer research and facilitation services and house a network for independent researchers and entrepreneurs. Building this network involves catching up and collaborating with some of my most favorite colleagues and imagining a way to get ahead of the rapidly changing research environment. I’m really excited to share with you what we are building! Soooonnnnnn

Large-scale community listening. This September, I helped kick off a huge community listening initiative that is a collaboration across AIM, PATH and the MD Just Power Alliance! During this kickoff, over 50 organizations pledged to conduct listening sessions with over 3500 people across the state of MD, developing a unified agenda that reflects the collective struggles and needs of many people across the state!

Sensitive Topics Initiative. AAPOR’s Qualpor group has a Sensitive Topics Initiative that has kept me busy in 2025! In May, we hosted a session and individual presentations related to distress protocols. I was able to combine a few of these together to present at the recent DC-AAPOR conference. This presentation included a deep dive into handling disclosures related to self-harm in research interview situations. And we have a few very useful projects underway, including practical guidance for when and how to develop a distress protocol.

Family business. One big change in 2025 has been involving my kids in the work that I do. As a working parent, it can be very difficult to be present in work and in family life, and one or both sometimes feel neglected. 2025 was the first year that I was able to collaborate with one of my kids on a variety of projects. She is unlikely to follow in my footsteps, but to be able to spend time together in this kind of way is a special treat for someone whose career has been such an important part of my life.

What else is giving me hope? I always look to the Daily Show, Josh Johnson, spiritual guidance from Iyanla Vanzant and the Nap Ministry and so many other voices. And then there was this interview, that inspired me so deeply!

Self-care. I am learning that self-care comes in many forms. It comes from making progress in small but effective ways on things that matter. It comes from knowing what matters to me and living into my values. It comes from building something in the face of an uncertain future. It comes from making and engaging with art and creative pursuits. It comes from connecting to community. It comes from the delightful messiness of community in practice. It comes from finding and embracing love all around me; recognizing the sources of support and the ways in which we instinctively care for each other and ourselves. It comes from gratitude for the people who have stepped into my life in unexpected, but wonderful ways.

In these times of stress, we somehow begin to see the best in each other. The stress is big, but the sources of hope are many. I wish that you feel supported, seen, recognized, purposeful, powerful and empowered, recognized, connected, loved, restored, and hopeful, and I hope that you have the audacity to dream, build and create at a time when so many external forces are trying to box you in. I wish you an unboxing. I wish you perspective.

And I will be in touch as more of the world I am building becomes ready for the light of day.

A dispatch from the field of life

Well, dear reader, I haven’t been blogging much lately, but I do have updates to share! (Look at me invoking my best Bridgerton voice)

I was recently interviewed for the Passion in Motion podcast. I’m really grateful to Mutsa Makufa for the great conversation, and I’m proud to share it with you. Mutsa is a talented interviewer with several engaging conversations around the massive federal shifts and resulting uncertainty on his channel.

It’s been a busy set of months with continually unfolding change and uncertainty. So many of us were caught under the wheels of change with massive federal cuts that continue to affect current and former federal employees and contractors in unprecedented ways. Please, let’s stick together. We are stronger in numbers, and so many of us are going through the same things. We have old structures to mourn and new structures to build, together.

I have a few upcoming events on my eventbrite page that I’m excited about! There are book events (both online and in-person) for people in career transitions. The book events have been nicknamed the ‘no wrong book’ book discussions because any kind of book is fair game. We may be reading skill-building books, other nonfiction books, books that offer comfort in myriad ways, or books for escape- and I greedily want to hear about all of them! Bring your stack and give us a tour. See what others are reading.

I also have two Community Healing Conversations planned; one online and one in-person. These are my favorite events because they offer a chance to listen and be heard, build collective peace and resilience, and find better ways to support each other during these times. These conversations inspire and fortify, and they feed my next steps as a community builder. Message me for details about the next in-person Community Healing Conversation in the DC area (it’s not on Eventbrite).

And there is an upcoming Careerchangeapalooza event through DC-AAPOR. I’m really excited about this event, because it grew directly out of a conversation during a Community Healing Conversation about how career support inherently must look different during this time.

All of these events rethink community support and career support to better accommodate our changing times. There are others in the queue through various collaborations. I’m excited to share them as they go live! Please come join us and please help spread the word! This is a space where everyone is welcome. Come as you are and leave feeling better connected and empowered!

On another front, I am in the early stages of building this community building effort and more (think: research consulting and community storytelling) into a small business. This is very new territory for me, and there is a lot to learn and to figure out. I am very open to advice and very grateful to my network for the advice I’ve already received. It’s exciting, but it’s also overwhelming. I’m wrestling with my best and worst selves to creatively envision a box of wonders that fit together nicely under one umbrella and bring my ideas into fruition through some labyrinthine administrative tedium. It’s not how I envisioned my summer; oh, how I want to be jumping into a cold lake on a hot, sunny day and justtttttt floating. But it’s oddly incredibly fulfilling. I want to hear about your experiences building something! What’s your business building story? Pull up a bean bag and join me in the comments!

Where the magic happens

The key to getting things done is doing them on your own terms.

This is a motto of mine; words I live by. A commute can be a pain, but what if I left a little earlier, took the scenic route, drank some good coffee and listened to a good book on the way? Dishes can be a pia, but with music? What if I focus on the bubbles?

As a researcher, I am often motivated by the power of noticing. As a moderator, this means providing space for the quietest voices to blossom. As an analyst, this means taking the time and care to represent all of the voices, not just the loudest or most eloquent.

I’ve often taken pride in my invisibility as a facilitator. I feel like I’ve done my job when I’m barely noticed, but the tone is set, the participants are at ease and the conversation stays on track through the subtlest of prompts and cues.

Today I’m kayaking. I enjoy racing through the water, but when I stop, I see birds hidden in tall grass, fish jumping, and the almost magical pops of light reflecting on water and trees.

My community work has also followed this model; amplifying quiet voices, endorsing those who seem tentative but I know to be insightful. Noticing.

This is my way of working, living and interacting in the world, and this is what drives me to do the work I’m doing now.

I have a voice that I have never hesitated to use. But I’ve learned that the world comes alive around me when I choose to observe. I trust that the same voice I use to advocate for others is well practiced and fully available when I need it, and with that trust I can fade back.

I’m in a transformative moment. I’m deciding what I want to build and that requires repeatedly doubling back to my principles. What do I stand for? What do I provide as naturally as I breathe or paddle? Who am I without institutional backing, when I’m free to create?

There is a large exodus in my field; people who have lost jobs and are beginning consultancies. For some, the path may feel more clear than for others. How can we support each other better? Connect more? Collaborate more? Grow stronger together? Are we all adrift? Could we paddle together?

When I finished my paddle today, I pulled onto shore and a park employee greeted me. I saw poop on both sides of the kayak and tried to point it out to her. She didn’t see me or hear me. She appeared to have already decided my words didn’t merit her attention. ‘Watch where you step!” I shouted, after a few attempts, and then watched her croc’d foot come down in a large pile of poop. In this world of paddlers, where we all sit under the same blanket of sky and listen to the sounds of birds that live freely amongst and between us, I choose to listen, to observe, to hear, to find pockets of magic and to step in poop as little as possible.

What is the real product here?

I was recently talking with a friend about my community conversation series. She told me that the real value in the sessions was in the data produced. I was shocked! Do community conversations produce data?

I have to say; this ruffled my feathers. The intention behind the session was always one of self expression, forming or reinforcing connections between people, fostering healing and resilience, and building community. If they were intended for data collection, I would have instituted a consent process and considered inviting ethical review. Data collection has a very different connotation in my field, and these are community based advocacy, not focus groups!

But I’ve been ruminating further on her words. Coming out of these sessions, there’s a clearer sense of what people are experiencing, how they are coping and what kinds of resources would be helpful to better support them at this time. And honestly, for any group that knows that some members are suffering, these are important outputs.

Are they data? No. Insights? No. Traditionally, they are none of these things. But they do provide valuable and necessary information that can be built upon to build better support systems and structures.

I’ve heard anecdotally from many groups of people affected by the sweeping government changes that they want to know what’s going on with their members and how to support them. I honestly believe that these community conversations are the answer to that; allowing both an opportunity to support people and an opportunity to explore a path forward through the chaos.

The value is on both one-off sessions and in repeated sessions within the same community. My mission is to build them in such a way that groups and people can benefit. It’s a slow process, as I figure out how to meet people where they are, and I’m always open to advice or interest!

Interesting in joining a session or getting involved?

Here is the mailing list:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrIlrlCJzm5E4ahoR_JOh6E-KaB1nbGyJ2SmdQqKL99JHrOQ/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=114493619372705360657

Here is the next online session:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1382445414449?aff=oddtdtcreator

Let’s be real for a moment.

Let me be really honest with you.

This community conversation effort is one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve ever been involved with. I believe in the groups and find them cathartic. The support I’ve received and enthusiasm for the effort blows me away, and I’ve had amazing conversations with people in my network about how to build them. I’m excited about the possibility of adding additional activities and opportunities to connect with art and nature and even do retreats!

But I have one big, perpetual challenge in bringing them to fruition.

For whatever reason, people heartily cheer from the sidelines and then don’t register for the events. People don’t seem to believe that these sessions are for them.

Some people are intimidated by the weight of the subject. But they haven’t seen the lightness that people walk out of these rooms with. Ultimately, the events feel like a wellness activity that leaves people smiling, laughing, relaxed, connected and inspired. We’re countering the weight, not basking in it.

Some people don’t want to talk about what they’ve been through. I get that. But it’s not school. You’re welcome to come and listen!

Some people care a lot, but aren’t directly affected. To these people I say we still need problem solvers, workers, concern and support.

And what is there to gain from all of this?


1) First, wellness. Skill-building. As a caregiver, I work regularly with anxiety and grounding techniques that have been transformative. I want to share what I’ve learned, because we are continually dealt blows. I want us to be ready for them as they come.


2) Connection to community. Community is bigger than us. It spreads the load on our shoulders across multiple backs. It allows us to care and be cared for.


3) A sense of where we are and how we can survive and even thrive in this fast-changing environment. The occupational and political landscape today is unique, and we will need to find new ways to handle it. If we can dream it, we can build it!

I don’t know, ultimately, whether this idea will grow the way I dream. But I’d like to believe that we can build community networks to support each other, grow in innovative ways, stay ready, heal together, and be inspired together by our common passions for learning, for art, for a natural world that is bigger than us, and for a good common humanity that still exists beneath the surface of this plastic, unfeeling society.

I want to believe that we can build something beautiful together!

There are two upcoming events, one in-person and one online. We’re working on more, different types of events, focusing on individual topics, sharing about books, making art together, being in nature together and more.

In-person event:
Community Conversation: Finding our Footing in this Uncertain Time https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-conversation-finding-our-footing-in-this-uncertain-time-tickets-1363624811519?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile

Online event:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-community-conversation-finding-our-footing-in-this-uncertain-time-tickets-1382445414449?aff=oddtdtcreator

Mailing list:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrIlrlCJzm5E4ahoR_JOh6E-KaB1nbGyJ2SmdQqKL99JHrOQ/viewform?usp=header


Please, come join us. You’re welcome! Come as you are. Bring your baggage. Lighten your load. Find connection and inspiration. Believe in us.

Navigating Career Changes from the Inside Out

Years ago on this blog, I wrote about approaching career changes from the inside out. I had accomplished the biggest career change of my life that way, by following my passions with my books, talks and extra research sessions and then blogging about them here.

Last week at the annual AAPOR conference in St Louis, an attendee in a session about Navigating Career Change asked about feeling unsatisfied with their work. This is a common motivation for switching jobs, but I chimed in from the audience as a voice of caution.

“I think about it like an unscratched itch,” I advised. “Maybe there is some part of you that your work life isn’t satisfying. But this is a horrible time to switch jobs so I advise you instead to find other ways to scratch that itch. You may still decide you’re ready for a change, but if, for example, you decide that you really do need your job to offer more space for creativity, you now have recent experiences to speak to as examples of you pursuing your creative endeavors.”

We expect our jobs to be our calling, our everything. And we give them everything. But we are so many things, and we need to exist beyond our work.

I’m at another point of career change. After nearly 30 years of working in my career- with the longest break being 3 weeks of maternity leave, I’ve lost my job as a government contractor as part of the deep federal cuts. I could look directly for another position, but I want to take my time with it. We only live once, and I want to take inventory of all of my itches before deciding how to scratch.

I want to build out this Community Conversations initiative, but I want to be thoughtful about it. I’m not trying to recreate what others have done, so much as build something new that fits our current needs. This requires intuition, reflection, patience, resilience, and determination. It means that some days are among the most fulfilling of my life, hosting cathartic community sessions or having really inspiring conversations with friends and colleagues, and some days I wonder why I’m adrift instead of staying on the career path.

This initiative was founded from the inside out, reflecting 

  1. my facilitation skills that I’ve learned through years of moderating, facilitating and community work, 
  2. my passion for building mental health that was cultivated through voices like Iyanla Vanzant, Pema Chodron, Rachel Cargle and the Nap Ministry,
  3. my profound interest in community based participatory research and the principles that guide it, and
  4. my love of strategic conversations, brainstorming and forming new ways to approach problems.

Forming an initiative from the inside out means that guiding our next steps is a continual process of self reflection. This means that a day spent at one of my favorite art galleries, taking pictures that I may able to use for an exhibit of my own one day, getting lost in the woods on its campus and finding new ways to engage with my surroundings is just as important as a day spent documenting the plan for the initiative, including the financial and communication aspects.

I always imagined my life in chapters, with a later chapter as a more wholeheartedly creative era. And I love the creativity I’m feeling now! But a change so dramatic as this requires some careful stewardship and navigation.

I’m not really sure where any of this is headed, but I’m confident that just as when I recreated my life before, these steps will lead me in the right direction. Because I’m scratching my itches!

Have you navigated big changes like this? Do you have unscratched itches? Do you have any advice or resources to offer? Please comment! Let’s continue the conversation.

Picture taken by me, in the grounds of the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, MD 5/22/2025

Professional Identity: Who am I? And who are you?

Last night I acted as a mentor at the annual Career Exploration Expo sponsored by my graduate program. Many of the students had questions about developing a professional identity. This makes sense, of course, because graduate school is an important time for discovering and developing a professional identity.

People enter our program (and many others) With a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. They choose from a variety of classes that fit their interests and goals. And then they try to map their experience onto job categories. But boxes are difficult to climb into and out of, and students soon discover that none of the boxes is a perfect fit.

I experienced this myself. I entered the program with an extensive and unquestioned background in survey research. Early in my college years (while I was studying and working in neuropsychology) I began to manage a clinical dataset in SPSS. Working with patients and patient files was very interesting, but to my surprise working with data using statistical software felt right to me much in the way that Ethiopian meals include injera and Japanese meals include rice (IC 2006 (1997) Ohnuki Tierney Emiko). I was actually teased by my friends about my love of data! This affinity served me well, and I enjoyed working with a variety of data sets while moving across fields and statistical programming languages.

But my graduate program blew my mind. I felt like I had spent my life underwater and then discovered the sky and continents. I discovered many new kinds of data and analytic strategies, all of which were challenging and rewarding. These discoveries inspired me to start this blog and have inspired me to attend a wide variety of events and read some very interesting work that I never would have discovered on my own. Hopefully followers of this blog have enjoyed this journey as much as I have!

As a recent graduate, I sometimes feel torn between worlds. I still work as a survey researcher, but I’m inspired by research methods that are beyond the scope of my regular work. Another recent graduate of our program who is involved in market research framed her strategy in a way that really resonated with me: “I give my customers what they want and something else, and they grow to appreciate the ‘something else.'” That sums up my current strategy. I do the survey management and analysis that is expected of me in a timely, high quality way. But I am also using my newly acquired knowledge to incorporate text analysis into our data cleaning process in order to streamline it, increasing both the speed and the quality of the process and making it better equipped to handle the data from future surveys. I do the traditional quantitative analyses, but I supplement them  with analyses of the open ended responses that use more flexible text analytic strategies. These analyses spark more quantitative analyses and make for much better (richer, more readable and more inspired) reports.

Our goal as professionals should be to find a professional identity that best capitalizes on  our unique knowledge, skills and abilities. There is only one professional identity that does all of that, and it is the one you have already chosen and continue to choose every day. We are faced with countless choices about what classes to take, what to read, what to attend, what to become involved in, and what to prioritize, and we make countless assessments about each. Was it worthwhile? Did I enjoy it? Would I do it again? Each of these choices constitutes your own unique professional self, a self which you are continually manufacturing. You are composed of your past, your present, and your future, and your future will undoubtedly be a continuation of your past and present. The best career coach you have is inside of you.

Now your professional identity is much more uniquely or narrowly focused that the generic titles and fields that you see in the professional marketplace. Keep in mind that each job listing that you see represents a set of needs that a particular organization has. Is this a set of needs that you are ready to fill? Is this a set of needs that you would like to fill? You are the only one who knows the answers to these questions.

Because it turns out that you are your best career coach, and you have been all along.

The holiday season and the post-degree process

I haven’t blogged much this month.

Yesterday I didn’t blog because I was wandering around my neighborhood with my kids and my winter boots, looking for the ultimate sledding hill that wasn’t just mud.

 

2013-12-10 13.03.42

I did get this cool shot of the snow melting:

2013-12-10 14.11.15

This past weekend I didn’t blog because I was trying to get some holiday shopping done. Holiday shopping is a mess of contradictions. The music and festive spirit are relaxing and wonderful, but the task at hand is to reckon with our wants. My goal lately has been exactly the opposite of this- to appreciate what abundance already constitutes my life and not to focus on needing or wanting more. This is an important part of my post degree process.

At the time of my graduation I joked with a close friend about expecting life to be like a musical, with the people around me singing and dancing my accomplishments and those of my classmates. For those of you still in school I hate to break your bubble, but there will likely not be a musical in your honor, as deserving as you may be.

Graduation is not the end of your work as a student. Your work will extend beyond graduation and in to what I’ve come to think of as an extra semester of undetermined length. This is the time when we try to make all of our hard work pay off. We learn that the world will not recognize our accomplishments unless we learn how to be our own best advocates, and we learn how difficult it is to advocate for ourselves across lines of field and areas of practice.

This process involves a reckoning between the idealized notions of our future that motivated us through late-nighters and all-nighters and the realities of our post degree lives. It also involves a surprisingly long transition from the frenetic pace of student life to the appreciative pace of real life. We learn how to channel the energy that is no longer focused on school work but free to roam across a wide range of interests and responsibilities. We forge a new set of priorities. We realize that we will not find jobs that are as well rounded as we are. We see that we are not frozen in place after our degrees but will continue the lifelong process of learning. We begin to find peace in the knowledge that what we have is enough. We may not have the yacht and the private plane, but we have food on our plates and in our bellies. And what we have is enough.

Graduates (especially in today’s employment market) have to wrestle with the responsibilities of post-degree life, the lack of recognition of their academic accomplishments, and the transition [back?] into the swing of daily work life. We have to transition from the big dreams of school life to the small rewards of real life. For me this process involves a compacting. It involves tightening the family budget and saving for bigger goals. It involves family challenges to see how long we can go between trips to the grocery store and the fun set of culinary challenges that rise from the emptier cupboards (Have you seen those cooking shows where the contestants are challenged to invent a meal based on a small number of random ingredients?). It involves decluttering my house to get rid of extra stuff, appreciate what we have and lessen our responsibilities (less stuff to clean!), and it involves spoiling my family with the time and attention I couldn’t give them before.

This all seems to directly contradict the goals of holiday shopping. I wandered through aisle after aisle of stuff that I couldn’t imagine needing or wanting, thinking of needs and wants as a kind of black hole where needing and wanting can simply lead to more needing and wanting. I’m not sure how my holiday shopping process will shake out this year, but I do know that my happiness and the happiness of those I love can’t be found on any store shelves.

For you students, recent graduates and professional researchers and other readers, I wish you all the peace and gratitude of the season. May the new year bless you with continued curiosity. May we never stop learning and growing. May the process and daily rituals of our lives be reward enough. We can’t anticipate the challenges 2014 will bring, but let us be grateful that we have the tools that we will need to greet them with.

And most of all, I want to thank those of you who read my blog posts. Thank you for your time and attention and for encouraging me to continue to explore. I hope to reward you soon with a rundown of some particularly great events I’ve attended lately!

What next, after graduation?

A question that recent graduates are often asked is “what next, now that you’ve graduated?” This is a different question for graduates in different stages of their lives. When I finished my bachelor’s I could answer with the types of jobs I was applying to and my plans of where to live next. In fact, I wasn’t one to leave these big questions unanswered: I moved and began a full-time research position within a few weeks of my last set of finals. I was eager to begin my life without school. Nine months later I began another research position, chosen because of the shear intensity and rigor of the interview (I had two interviewers firing questions at me, and I loved it. Crazy, right?). At this point, I’ve been at the second job for about 14 years.

What keeps you at a job for 14 years? This is an important question, because keeping with a job when everything is not fresh and new is a special sort of challenge. There have been a few keys:

1. Stay in the moment. There are quite a few different projects that I juggle at once, and I work on each project across multiple stages. For each of these stages in the research process, I have elements that I particularly enjoy. I try to focus on these key elements while I work on each project.

2. Know yourself. As a worker, I know that I have little patience for repetitive tasks. I tend to be very hardworking and productive, but when tasks become repetitive I quickly get distracted. If I can, I always delegate these tasks away. If I can’t, I juggle them with other projects that complement them, such as tasks that I need to spend more time thinking strategically about or tasks that either have a deadline or can be given a set of short term goals. This way, I feel productive and maintain my morale.

3. Feed yourself. I’ve also learned that I hunger to learn new things. I take advantage of every opportunity to learn new things, to share the new knowledge with my coworkers, and to integrate the things I learn into my work. This keeps my projects fresh. In addition to the standard, core reports that I produce, for example, I add new kinds of analyses or data. This makes the reports more interesting to produce, and it probably keeps them fresh for the reader as well.

4. Maintain relationships. I’ve been lucky enough to work with people I genuinely enjoy and to see them through marriages, graduations, births, deaths, as well as the silly packages they recieve at work. This helps to make work an enjoyable place.

5. Keep moving. Go to the gym, if you can. Go on a walk, if you can. Get up and stretch. Drink a lot of fluids.

Now, back to the question. “What next, after graduation?” For me, this is not a question with a clear, obvious answer. School disturbs the equillibrium of every day life. Juggling work, school and family left me on a constant cycle of challenges and [mostly] successes. How do you come down from that? What happens to that level of productivity? As a mom, there is a looming stack of laundry, dishes and other household tasks always waiting at the ready. In the past week alone, I’ve spent over 6 hours doing make-up gymnastic lessons (with another 2.5 hours coming tomorrow!). Life expands to fit any empty spaces. But given a trade-off between reading Blommaert and folding laundry…

I read a commencement speech by Daniel Foster Wallace that addressed the monotony of life and the power of being alive through the seemingly routine moments. I plan to do just that, but I was shocked to see it laid out in a commencement address. To be a student is to be saddled with the potential of what life could be, and that stands in such contrast to the smaller, daily joys of life without school. I often wondered how well prepared the students around me who hadn’t yet left academia were for life “on the other side.” Now I can see why some people choose to stay in school! If it weren’t for the many sacrifices my family made in order for me to go to school, I probably would have already enrolled in a PhD program.

The transition is surprisingly difficult, and I haven’t yet figured it out.