a lot has happened (14 july 2024)

I don't know where to begin. There's so much I still need to process regarding graduate school, academia in general, the conferences I've been going to, interpersonal things, my health, and my plans for the future. I don't think I have a clear idea of what it all means to me and what I want to do, given all that's happened.

I'm writing this on my last night back in the Bay Area. This was my longest trip back since starting grad school in 2022 – I arrived June 19, and I'll be flying back to Michigan tomorrow on July 15. I did a lot in this one month back, including deciding to go to LA for Anime Expo at the last minute. This was also the longest I've been at my parent's place in several years (I stayed with them for about a month in 2017, and before that, the last time I actually lived with them was in 2008). It was tough being with my parents this long, but I made it through.

I don't want to go back to Michigan. Everyone knows this, and it's not a secret or mystery in any way. I've been extremely clear about how much I dislike Ann Arbor, especially in terms of the food, what places are open, what things there are to do, and how my health seems to be completely terrible whenever I'm there. I seriously feel so much healthier when I'm away from Ann Arbor – I don't have to be in the Bay; in the last few months, I've traveled to Seattle, New York, and Rio and my body just felt tremendously healthier when I was in those places. I had some serious kidney problems back in Ann Arbor that I never had in my life before, and I'd get flare-ups of rashes and fatigue in that city. But not anywhere else. Sure, I can imagine that the stress of grad school has something to do with it, but even when I was here, or even when I was in Rio, I was working through a lot in regards to my grad milestones, and though I was stressed, it didn't have the same sort of physical manifestations that I've noticed when being in Ann Arbor. I'm not sure if it's the city itself (allergies there are particularly bad for everyone across the board, so that could be a factor) or my diet there (the food there is just atrocious and I've struggled a lot with eating well there), but all I know is, being in Ann Arbor has been terrible for my physical and mental health.

I really don't want to go back to Ann Arbor tomorrow. At the same time, however, I do want to get back to my own space, my own apartment, my own bed, etc., and I do want to see my friends there. I don't hate this program specifically, and I do enjoy some of the research that I'm doing. So I think it's important for me to make it clear in my head that I do want to stay in the PhD program (for a moment there it seriously looked like I was going to drop out, and honestly at this moment it's still a 50-50 for me). I guess I have to imagine that if certain things were different (location and interpersonal issues specifically), things in my personal and professional life... aren't that bad, actually. In a lot of ways, I feel blessed, I feel loved, I feel lucky to be where I am, and perhaps it's turning 30 or starting HRT that's helped me get to this point, but I feel more content or simply just OK with where I am in life. I didn't really feel that way for most of my 20's, and either I was overworking myself (which led to burnout) or struggling to do anything because of that burnout. At this moment, I feel tired, but with support systems that have helped me rest and persevere.

In any case, I'm writing this now, because I want to capture some of these feelings that I'm feeling. I want to make it clear (to myself, now and in the future, looking back at this moment) that I do feel conflicted in many ways. It's not a clear "I want to continue this program" or "I want to stay in the Bay Area." I'm struggling to make somewhat contradictory feelings work out, and I'm going to need to spend time and energy in the coming months making decisions on what to practically do in order to sustain myself, whether that's in terms of physical health, mental health, career, and interpersonal connections. There's a lot that I'm juggling at the moment that's all slightly interconnected, but I can't let one dimension of things cloud my decisions for another. For example, just because I feel like my physical health isn't great in Ann Arbor, it doesn't mean I should completely write off staying in a PhD program. It does make things harder, but there are choices I can make to try to complete the program while not spending all of my time there.

It's far too expensive to come back to the Bay frequently, and I do think that frequent travel back would also make it hard to settle in one place and focus on my work. But being in Ann Arbor itself also makes it hard to focus on my work too, in other ways. So I gotta tackle these obstacles, and it will require some creativity and less-than-common approaches.

I don't know what the answers are, or what the "right" or "best" things to do right now are (not that my actions have to be optimized), but I just hope I can make it through these challenges while continuing to hold what's meaningful to me close to heart.