The Excavation Site

Welcome to my website and very first blog post.

Thank you for joining me on this excavation. Let’s see what we unearth.

I have decided to begin this blog with a self excavation exploring the ways in which very personal aspects of my life have impacted experiences in my professional life. And, I have decided to do this via this web page and my social media accounts.

As I envision it at the moment, some posts will focus on simply how I navigate new professional experiences. For example, I am going to Tanzania for the first time this summer for research and I am so excited and have so much to learn. Other posts will focus on how I experience day-to-day professional spaces. Some posts will be light. Surface finds come to mind. They might be easier to get at but still provide valuable information. Some posts will dig a little deeper to examine finds from my personal life that present challenges as well as helpful insights in professional spaces.

This theme has held my fascination over the last decade and only seems to be growing more and more. Reasonably, many of us view mental, social, and emotional experiences as deeply personal. Yet, I don’t think it is really possible to leave these aspects of our personal life at home. In fact, I think the vast majority of us know that this is an antiquated notion. These aspects of our experiences and identity impact our interpersonal interactions. Professional success is oftentimes predicated on relationships, i.e. a person’s ability to establish and cultivate connections. We first learn how to do this in our personal lives and (effective or not) we take those skills to work. Furthermore, part of creating more inclusive educational and professional spaces requires acknowledging that those very spaces have been the source of trauma for many people which makes creating those important connections difficult and terrifying. Sometimes efforts to do so can be triggering and re-traumatizing. I think individual and collective efforts to heal and reconceptualize professional environments and how we navigate them hold potential for new and exciting possibilities.

For me, learning how to be an anthropologist in and of itself... not a problem. Fun and fascinating, in fact. The logistics of getting a Ph.D. challenging, brutal, but doable…. on its own. The biggest challenge for me has been the almost daily collision between the personal and the professional. And I think this might be the case for a lot of people.

Okay, here goes… the personal things: discovering late in life that I have ADHD, a history of eating disorders, social anxiety, being a survivor of SA, the associated PTSD and cPTSD that comes from these experiences, and, more recently, perimenopause. Being a woman factors into my experience as does being a Mom and a non-traditional student during undergraduate and graduate school. As an adult, I have had limited financial means. There is also the fact that I am cisgender and white. As a child, my parents had the financial means to offer me quite a lot of opportunities growing up and put in the time and labor to facilitate and support me in doing them. Having a close connection to my Italian heritage is another highly influential facet of my identity and experience.

I don’t know exactly why I want to engage in this excavation publicly. Despite feeling compelled to do this for well over a year, I have been scared to begin. A strong barrier relates to vulnerability. A more pragmatic barrier has been the pressure to clearly identify my audience and define the purpose for doing this. I mean, after all, isn’t that how we write research proposals, business plans, articles, books, and papers? Isn’t this a basic premise for launching a successful social media campaign? ‘Monetization’, ‘funding’, ‘clicks’, ‘likes’, ‘achievement’, ‘deliverables’, and ‘capitalism’ are words that come to mind as I write this paragraph.

Another barrier holding me back is the feeling that my ‘why’ has to be somehow bigger than myself. My ‘why’ has to contribute to the world in some way; it needs to make a positive social impact. Through various digital spaces, we are creating this voluminous freely available collective social memoir. I have been empowered by hearing others’ highly relatable experiences, seeing them succeeding and thriving, doing good things in the world, and doing the things they love and want to do with their lives. Admittedly, I indulge in the idea that by sharing my experiences, I too can empower people. I hesitate though. Arrogance is not a good look on me and is generally followed by rather uncomfortable and humbling experiences that provoke major anxiety. I doubt that whatever I share will be new and something that hasn’t been said before. That said, collective voices can be powerful and adding yet another voice to the chorus may be beneficial to someone at some point. Nonetheless, my ‘why’ can’t promise more than I can give and all I can give is me. If I am completely honest with myself, my ‘why’ is simple. As selfish as this may seem, I want to be seen. I want to share who I am and find and engage with other people who can relate to me. I want to connect.

Connection is a theme that runs through everything I do. Everything that I have done in research has been about collaboration. My community engaged work has always been about collaboration. The jobs where I have felt the greatest satisfaction and enjoyed myself the most have been ones where I have felt connected to the people I worked with. In my CV, cover letters, and such, I’ve labeled myself as collaborative, but really I think connection is the core value for me and it drives me to collaborate. I am interested to see the ways in which I will connect with you and others throughout this process.

Yet, connection is something that I struggle with greatly in deep and painful ways. As a result, I am scared to start this self excavation. Yet, I can’t shake the unrelenting urge to do so anyway. I have decided to trust that urge. And, I have decided to trust you.

And, I am giving myself a lot of flexibility. I give myself permission to…

… post (or not post) in various ways whether that be this blog, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, or anywhere else.

… take space as needed, to learn, explore, make mistakes, and grow.

… “feel the feels”. I cannot imagine that this expedition will be without some pretty strong and uncomfortable feelings and I acknowledge they all make sense even when I cannot make sense of them in that moment.

… have no timeline or schedule whatsoever. I will post as I am able and willing. I will avoid putting pressure on myself to post in real time or immediately after something happens. I will post with a frequency that is comfortable for me and be okay with changes to that frequency.

… experiment with content. If I feel compelled to share something, I will. In retrospect, if it doesn’t feel good, I give myself permission to change directions and revisit as I see fit. This applies to the seemingly less innocuous posts about work, research, and anthropology as much as it does to the more personal content.

… change my mind on things. Who knows? I may say something or do something for which I receive eye-opening feedback. I certainly hope that we all see some level of personal growth through my content. And as I grow, I am sure my perspectives will shift.

… chose who I engage with. I invite you to share your experiences and insights in response to what I share. And, I will ignore, block, or otherwise not engage with those who choose to use hate speech, bullying, harassment, trolling, spamming, or violent words and behaviors.

… establish a hard and fast boundary to protect myself and the people that I interact with. I realize that because what is important to me is connection, I spend time mulling over interactions with others. And, their personal agency is important to me, so my content will strive for anonymity and permissions when anonymity cannot be maintained.

I hope to learn by engaging with you and hearing what you have to say about your own experiences. I hope to learn (and share what I learn) from colleagues in my discipline and colleagues from other collaborative disciplines.

If you made it this far, well done. Thank you for investing your time in reading this.

Stay tuned to see what I unearth next.

In the meantime, all the very best to you and yours.