Monday, December 2, 2013

Holiday visits, small talk, and family

This is an incoherent post of thoughts going through my mind throughout the recent holiday weekend. 

With traveling for the holiday and visiting family and friends, the most common question that pops up is, "How's work?".  

I love talking science, but hate talking work. I always say, "work's awesome", then change the subject. A lot of this is because work stories are usually boring when I hear them, so I figure my work stories are boring. When I talk science or fun things at work (i.e., screwing off, travel, etc), then it's interesting. I prefer to talk about funny stuff, and external activities are more fun to talk about. 

I do this at work, too, which gets on peoples' nerves. We get into science because we love it (I hope), and so we love talking about it. But, do people want to know you got rejected from a journal or just obtained a big grant? Unless the rejection comes with a funny comment (my favorite rejection comment was: "This manuscript is unfit for this journal and any other one").  

This brings me to small-talk.  I don't despise small-talk since people can make it funny and small-talk is a great way to get into more in-depth conversation. My only beef with meeting up with extended family during the holidays is that family is forced and the small talk is even smaller. You choose your friends, not your family, and therefore you don't always have as much in common. So the work talk is inevitable since my family doesn't know enough to converse science. So, I steer conversations elsewhere: stories I heard on NPR, cool facts I discovered, etc. This is where the problems occur.  I'm pretty immature, and bringing up things I find interesting results in immature, but usually funny, discussions. Some extended family did not find this amusing this past weekend. My spouse says they're jealous of my success, car, etc. But why hang out with us then?  This brings me to my final point: I'm going to try to spend Christmas away from my family (except my spouse and dog, of course).  Maybe a mountain excursion. I have a limited amount of vacation time to spend away from the lab since I'm saving vacation time for interviews, and do I want to spend it avoiding work talk?

Part of my want to spend it away, too, is that I really don't like the city I live in. It's a major city with a lot to offer and lot close by, but the weather, personalities, traffic, lack of community, and the high and mighty attitude make me miss my old college town. 

Now starts a huge rant. If you don't like rants, stop reading. Part of why I started a blog was to chronicle PhD life and the faculty search. Writing is also something I find cathartic, and I write in order to rant and get things off my chest. Another part of the holidays is visiting my parents and the in-laws. My parents are incredibly high-strung. There's chaos and questions and hectic everything. But it's nice because I don't have to do anything. No responsibility at all. We get to watch some movies, relax, nap, hike. It's nice for the most part. Their house is reasonably big if we want a little solo time, and my mom cleans religiously and keeps the house well-stocked with provisions. Usually pretty relaxed minus the often chaotic nature, and since they're pretty smart the conversations are decent. Going to the in-laws is a little crazier. My parent-in-laws are lazy as fuck. They are only active when it comes to cooking. Most of the time they're sitting on their asses. And they're pretty unhealthy because of it. This is added on top of being in a very crowded small house: both small and packed full of absolute crap. And all members of the family other than my spouse have aggressive personalities. It's also tough to have the best conversations since current events, science, factoids, jokes, most things are not topics they're familiar with. I run out of neurons to come up with things to talk about though. A lot of TV watching goes on.  Because they have a little land, there is a lot of stuff to do outside at least. On top of all of this, the house always have some kind of issue. And guess who gets asked to fix things: me or my spouse. So it ends up seeming like work. Even my doggie doesn't relax as much. This is all coupled with the existence of kids whose parents aren't here because of neglect on the parents' part and CPS taking the kids away-and depositing them to the in-laws. I feel bad for these kids, but I sure as shit don't want to deal with them. I love kids, but only specific types. And I really don't have the patience to deal with most. Well, I'm about to head on a plane to my relaxing life of waiting for calls from search committees...

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