The unmarked road...

I have been at my new job for a year and a month now, but I noticed I have written very little about work this past year. I wrote about how I came about this project, and how unexpectedly my extremely bumpy road went smooth. The craziness in my life seems to be always family-related, hence I have been writing more about those tidbits. I started thinking of how to write about work, but nothing occurred to me. And then I had to fill out a Gordon Conference application and I hit a question I could not answer. Am I working in academia, industry or government? My first reaction was "none of the above" - but that was not an option...

I work for a non-profit foundation; we are a group of ~15 research scientists under a head scientist who started this whole thing. We are independent from the University, even though most of us used to be associated with it. We have federal funding and we rent public office/lab space in town. We work on basic science, generating knowledge that will hopefully lead to future applications. Not your standard research setting...

At first it hit me that I might have left the academic pipeline by mistake, but there is no reason why this job would prevent me from rejoining a university in the future. The more I think about where I am and how I got here, the more I see myself on this unmarked road. I took a turn off the main road, which was full of bumps and traffic. This new road was not on my map, and, having turned off my GPS years ago, I am not sure where it leads. It has only minor bumps, and seems to go straight for miles.

However, there are no other cars on this road and no speed limit. I have to set my own pace and that has proven more difficult than I imagined at first. I find myself enjoying the scenery instead of putting the miles on the car. I stop and look around; I stop to smell the flowers. I do not feel like I am losing a race; I do not feel like I need to drive through the night. I am moving forward, but not at a highway pace. There is so much more than the road on this drive. And as I do not need to watch out for traffic and speeding cars with crazy drivers, I can look around more. I notice the sky, I notice the fields by which I drive. But most of all, I enjoy the drive itself.

I guess my lack of anxiety is due to the fact that this road keeps going and my gas tank is three quarters full. Maybe in a couple of years I will worry about whether there will be an exit for the highway at the end. Maybe I will start wondering if there is a gas station on this road... but for now I have no worries. As long as I keep moving I feel like I am getting somewhere - even if it is not where I had intended to go.