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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Hello 2017

I am back and happy to write an update on life, travel, baby, pets, diabetes and all that! Let's organize;

1. Life

A lot has happened, so I will touch upon just one major thing concerning my work. I resigned from my job. That's a biggie, no?? Somewhere in the late stages of pregnancy I started to question my resolve to drive for 4.5 hours, drop my daughter off at daycare for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week just to work a job I didn't love. To be quite honest, I was and am proud of my work as a researcher and I was a bit hesitant to resign because I have always worked hard to keep working and I know that many would probably think I have let a big career opportunity slide away, resigning after just a few months from a Harvard-affiliated position. Also, to be quite honest. I did not know at all as a first-time mom what it would be like to have a baby. Once I knew, I made the decision that was right for me. It is a little strange to stay at home most of the time, after months (make that years!) of dedicated work (career-chasing?) It is for sure a new stage in my life.

On that topic, I have just started pursuing part-time remote writing/ editing opportunities. I have amassed quite a few publications and feel that my experience will allow me to competitively apply for such work-from-home opportunities. Specifically I am looking at the available scientific/medical/technical writing jobs, but also more off-the-path positions, such as article writing, etc. What would be even more exciting would be to begin to steer my career into the diabetes realm. There are not many part-time remote opportunities that I am fit to apply for, so (as always) I am not sure what will happen in the future. Sometimes I wish that I could use my blog to attest to my writing skills for job purposes. However, this blog has always been a semi-anonymous adventure that is messy, un-spell and -typo checked, not very well thought out, unpolished, and thus generally unusable for such purposes. Also I break a lot of grammatical rules because my English teacher always said, once you know them all it's fine, because rules are meant to be broken! Not to mention the swearing, perhaps too-personal details, and verbal diarrhea on occasion ;) It is what it is. Life is always an adventure, no? I am also trying to pick up whatever freelance or contract work I can get, ranging from editing to translating (because I am fluent in Russian). I also looked into transcribing because I type about 80 words a minute, but it sounds kind of boring and like it just doesn't pay enough.

2. Travel

Funny thing. The name of this blog "My Life: A Long Trip with T1D" was always meant to have more travel stories in it! Since travel these days pretty much means getting everything together to get to the grocery store or to the pediatrician, B and I felt enough wanderlust to book an 8 day trip to Peru this spring! Just the two of us. Which sounds a little nuts maybe but I trust my mom's willingness and abilities to babysit for such an extended period and baby A adores her. The stockpile of breast milk in the freezer continues to grow. And I have arranged for my grandparents to live at our place to take care of our dogs and cat. I am so freaking excited. I know I will miss my daughter but I also know it's important to continue to do what you love, and we love to travel.

3. Baby

I just love her so much and she is so beautiful, smart and generally perfect (says every mom who ever lived I believe).





4. Pets

...Are neglected a lot of the time. But once the weather improves we are all resuming our hiking, which I know will please them to no end, so this is temporary. By neglected, I mean they are always fed and let out on time, but they are lacking training and exercise at this particular moment. I am trying to not give myself too much of a hard time about this, as I know they had it perfect before, and now it's just meh for them, but it will get better soon.

5. Diabetes

...Is on the back burner somewhat. I am wearing Dexcom to stay on top of it as much as possible and it helps a lot. My meter average is around 130 mg/dl and Dexcom Clarity reports an A1C of about 5.8%. I can be fine with that. It's weird not to be as obsessive over some highs as I was during pregnancy, but I am doing OK I think ;) I am still annoyed by some of the (what I presume are) breastfeeding-induced lows. These tend to happen during the night, in particular the early-morning hours, so again I am grateful for Dexcom, and as a result have been eating waaay too any sour patch kids (which live on my nightstand). New goals: schedule and eye and a dentist appointment in the near future. I have an appointment with a NP (who if I like her, will do my primary care) at the beginning of June. I just need the prescriptions and blood work really. We will see how that goes.

More to come, I'm sure.