A Blog is Born

Just what this world needs - more blogs, right? Well, better too many blogs than too many other things... like... bombs or Ebola virus. That's just my opinion, though.

Speaking of opinions, I have a lot of them, some of which I will inevitably share here. Although, truth be told, I am not a shove-my-opinions down your throat type of person. This is not actually a blog about my opinions, which I'm sure most people couldn't care less about.

So what brings me here? Here is the thing: I love to write more than almost anything in the world. I have loved to write since, like, forever. I've kept a journal ever since I got my first diary when I was in fifth grade. I am now 39, in case you couldn't tell from my username. :) A few weeks ago, I started a blog about my hip surgery, because I was semi-laid up for a while (and still sort of am), and because I was reading a lot of other blogs about hip surgery and thought that the world needed another blog about hip surgery. LOL. Regardless, blogging has been fun. I suspect that's why so many people do it - it's fun.

The problem about having a hip blog is that I sincerely hope that in a few more weeks, I will not have much to say about my hip. The expected recovery time for my hip surgery is three months, and is has almost been one month. In two days, I get to start weaning off my crutches. In 11 days, I have to start teaching again. If my hip is still giving me enough material to maintain a hip blog once I start teaching again, I am in big trouble. I struggle enough with teaching already.

I struggle enough with teaching already.  

Wait. That sounds like the perfect subject for a blog, right? 

And actually, this is going to be a defining year for me in terms of my job. I will be going into my sixth year as a full-time faculty member at an undisclosed university (undisclosed for obvious reasons). I teach biology. My relationship with my job is complicated; it is a total love/hate relationship, with not much in between. Over the past year and a half, it has become far more hate than love, to the point where I don't know if I can do this anymore. And I need to decide on a direction for my future. Soon. On the one hand, I am "only" 39, soon to be 40. This means that if I am lucky enough to live and work until traditional retirement age, I have 25 more years of work ahead of me. 25 years is a long time. While there are many great aspects to my job, which I will write about in the future, I often find myself wondering if I can really do it for 25 more years. On the other hand, 39 is not that young. It is old enough that going back to school to prepare for a different career is not a decision to be taken lightly. I also have a husband and two young children - ages almost 9 and almost 3. Thus, decisions centered around my job are not All About Me.

So, just as I am going to start weaning myself off crutches on Monday, I also need to start weaning myself off blogging about my hip. However, I have another journey to write about, and it will also be a "recovery" of sorts. Truth be told, I am looking forward to it, and I'll consider it my emotional therapy. For one, writing helps me express things that I can't even compile into coherent thoughts in my own mind. Also, I am not trying to be all "woe is me" - that's never my intent - but I will say that I have been dreading this upcoming year like I've dreaded very few things ever before, including hip surgery. (In fact, hip surgery was a good distraction from my work stress.) Perhaps by blogging about it, I will see my job as an experience to be written about, rather than a daily exercise in Banging My Head Against A Brick Wall. After all, the things that make you bang your head against a brick wall usually make the most entertaining stories. Perhaps blogging will help me see my job from a new perspective, for better or for worse. It's also possible none of these things will happen, but there's only one way to find out.

If you are reading this, thank you for joining me as I navigate through the complexities of life in academia for another year. And who knows - maybe you will even learn a little bit about biology as we go along. :)