There was some wood cutting to be done on the mountain, and I was out early. The autumn morning was as clear as an alpine lake. The sunrise burned gold in a pure sky, the shadows on the edge of the snowy clearing were darkly blue, and in the valley patches of far-off forest hung like smoke. It is early in the morning stillness, when my muscles are swinging to their familiar task and my lungs expanding with deep breaths of mountain air that I do my clearest thinking.
My savings won't last forever and neither will the opening for the job that I was offered nearly a year ago. I would sign a 1 or 2 year contract agreeing to work with some of the same people that I left in Portland. I would have to start soon to have enough time to complete the project before the funding for the grant expires and, let's be honest, before I have forgotten everything.
My girlfriend is here about half the time, and I spend an afternoon in town with her sometimes when she wants to run errands, or when we need to buy supplies, or when I want more than a few minutes of internet time. So overall, we/I've been largely isolated on the ranch. And that isolation has given me enough time and distance that I think I could deal with living in the city again, especially if I know that I will only be there for a short time.
I had not thought much about the project that I left unfinished. I won't bore anyone with the details except to say that it's technical and involves a rigorous combination of math and science. That and the project in a very generalized and indirect way, as does everything else in that field, asks the question "what are the neural substrates of consciousness?" I would be working at a research university, and if all goes well the research will generate 2 or 3 publications in the year that I am there. (I finished a lot of the work while still in Portland). It is innovative enough that there is a good chance that one of them would be in a high impact journal such as Nature or Science. Maybe that is wishful thinking, but the project is cutting edge. In that position I would expect to earn and save enough (I'm good at living frugally) money to live on it long enough to properly plan and invest in a farming enterprise (goats) and get things going smoothly.
I walked to the edge of the clearing. Morning sun filtered through the pines, their motionless tops making a frozen pattern of light and dark on the fresh snow. I leaned my ax against a log and sat on a rock. I poured a cup of hot coffee from a Thermos my girlfriend had packed for me.
My hands aren't idle, but despite all the reading and occasional journaling and sketching that I do, my mind is idle out here. If I were to stay, I would live off my savings to a small extent and only when necessary, but mostly I don't touch that. I have been doing manual labor (harvesting mushrooms, roofing, restoration work, selling firewood and harvesting timber (never old growth), etc.). Manual labor is fine up to a point, but it's too easy, and it's not engaging. Any knucklehead with a strong back could do this stuff, and there are plenty of knuckleheads here who earn a subsistence living doing so. I'm not using my mind out here. Without a challenge that I can lose myself in, I feel that I'm stagnating and that I'm losing my mind at times. Not only that, but I've realized that I miss learning new things. I don't mean reading books but being in an academic environment and doing cutting edge research and publishing the findings.
There is a lot of pressure at a federally funded research university. The work is very competitive, especially in a political climate that seems increasingly reluctant to fund science. The hours are long, and I would be working for what amounts to peanuts. I don't htink I have ever been one to chase money, and I wouldn't do anything horribly unethical to get it. In fact, I turned down a corporate job (pharmaceutical industry) that offered a 6 figure (>$100,000 dollar) salary right out of college. But the setting for the prospective job is academic which I believe is generally more honest, collegial (people help each other by collaborating, sharing knowledge, skills, data, supplies, etc.). I think I could deal with that for a while.
My savings won't last forever and neither will the opening for the job that I was offered nearly a year ago. I would sign a 1 or 2 year contract agreeing to work with some of the same people that I left in Portland. I would have to start soon to have enough time to complete the project before the funding for the grant expires and, let's be honest, before I have forgotten everything.
My girlfriend is here about half the time, and I spend an afternoon in town with her sometimes when she wants to run errands, or when we need to buy supplies, or when I want more than a few minutes of internet time. So overall, we/I've been largely isolated on the ranch. And that isolation has given me enough time and distance that I think I could deal with living in the city again, especially if I know that I will only be there for a short time.
I had not thought much about the project that I left unfinished. I won't bore anyone with the details except to say that it's technical and involves a rigorous combination of math and science. That and the project in a very generalized and indirect way, as does everything else in that field, asks the question "what are the neural substrates of consciousness?" I would be working at a research university, and if all goes well the research will generate 2 or 3 publications in the year that I am there. (I finished a lot of the work while still in Portland). It is innovative enough that there is a good chance that one of them would be in a high impact journal such as Nature or Science. Maybe that is wishful thinking, but the project is cutting edge. In that position I would expect to earn and save enough (I'm good at living frugally) money to live on it long enough to properly plan and invest in a farming enterprise (goats) and get things going smoothly.
I walked to the edge of the clearing. Morning sun filtered through the pines, their motionless tops making a frozen pattern of light and dark on the fresh snow. I leaned my ax against a log and sat on a rock. I poured a cup of hot coffee from a Thermos my girlfriend had packed for me.
My hands aren't idle, but despite all the reading and occasional journaling and sketching that I do, my mind is idle out here. If I were to stay, I would live off my savings to a small extent and only when necessary, but mostly I don't touch that. I have been doing manual labor (harvesting mushrooms, roofing, restoration work, selling firewood and harvesting timber (never old growth), etc.). Manual labor is fine up to a point, but it's too easy, and it's not engaging. Any knucklehead with a strong back could do this stuff, and there are plenty of knuckleheads here who earn a subsistence living doing so. I'm not using my mind out here. Without a challenge that I can lose myself in, I feel that I'm stagnating and that I'm losing my mind at times. Not only that, but I've realized that I miss learning new things. I don't mean reading books but being in an academic environment and doing cutting edge research and publishing the findings.
There is a lot of pressure at a federally funded research university. The work is very competitive, especially in a political climate that seems increasingly reluctant to fund science. The hours are long, and I would be working for what amounts to peanuts. I don't htink I have ever been one to chase money, and I wouldn't do anything horribly unethical to get it. In fact, I turned down a corporate job (pharmaceutical industry) that offered a 6 figure (>$100,000 dollar) salary right out of college. But the setting for the prospective job is academic which I believe is generally more honest, collegial (people help each other by collaborating, sharing knowledge, skills, data, supplies, etc.). I think I could deal with that for a while.
