GriffJon.com Blog

Grad School -- GWU, 2 years in DC, getting a masters in public policy in science and technology. Hope to focus my classwork in international relations, economics (gag), development, and applying IT to culture/development/etc. (prolly a class or two at GTown for that last part).

The next step is to find a job. My ideal job is something that lets me help implement IT in development projects in a sane and appropriate fashion. Admittedly, most IT projects in development are insane inherently, and the money is potentially more valuable building ventilated pit latrines (join the Peace Corps and learn about the wonders of ventilated pit latrines, boys and girls!), but nevertheless, the money is sent towards IT projects, and IT, like cell phones, can enable leapfrogging if implemented well, so...

I haven't gotten my wanderlust out of my system, I think this is central to a lot of things. I'm still... restless. Or perhaps just afraid of commitments, and masking it with wanderlust? I mean, I really dislike contracts that extend outside of the months range. I can't even decide on a fucking cell phone plan! Anyhow, unless this changes, I'd like a job that enables it; so working in-country on these IT projects would be nice. I don't really want to return to the English-speaking Caribbean again; I would like a Spanish-speaking Central or South-American post, or perhaps Eastern Europe (mainly so I could explore Europe at a comfortable pace).

Not sure how long I want this phase to last, or how long I'd want any segment of this phase to last. One to two years per country/post? Five years? Ten years? All of this is uncertain, and, frankly, I don't know the job market for this kind of position. Will it be USAID contracting? UN contracting? Hopping from one agency to another? I hope to have a feeling for it through networking during grad school.

Also, realistically speaking, do I want to be single while doing that? No. I'm getting fucking tired of goodbyes already. So that means either I need to get a job where I'm not away for more than a month or so, which isn't the same (and is more expensive to the various agencies), or find someone who'd want to join me hopping around.

Eventually I guess the plan ends up back here in the States working at a non-profit or international development consultancy or somesuch after I get tired of hopping around so much. This is the really-fuzzy long term planning -- there are many different paths this could go down, I wouldn't mind ending up writing articles/books, or teaching, or some combination of all of these things.

It seems like almost everyone else has set end goals, or some subset at least, covered in their lives. Like, many of my friends fully intend to live in Austin for the rest of their lives, or with a specific person, or doing a certain style of job (geekery, mostly, among my friends). I guess I have a general area of job worked out, actually, so I'm better than I was pre-Peace Corps at least, so perhaps it's not as bad as I often paint it in my head.

So that's the professional plan. I guess I need to spend time pondering the personal plan too. Like I say, I'm getting tired of goodbyes. As I learn (by painful trial-and-error) more about how to make relationships work, I get better at them, and realizing the value in them -- which just makes the goodbyes get worse and worse. So, I'd like to stop that, and I don't think becoming a hermit is the path for me. At the same time, I have a few things working against me in this arena. First, naturally, the aforementioned fear of commitment -- nothing particularly exciting there, just a dragon to be slain from the inside one day. I also am having a very hard time dealing with the possiblities afforded by being single. To mix metaphors horrifically, I feel like a bull in a candy shop (a kid in a china shop, incidentally, doesn't seem to really change the meaning of that saying). There are so many possibilities, but it seems that I can't not do damage in the process of exploring them, even with lots of honesty. I guess I'm making up for all the fun and painful stupidity I failed to have earlier in life? The fun part is great, the pain and stupidity are irresponsible.

I guess the end result of that rambling is that I don't have a personal plan in as good a shape as my professional plan, and since my professional plan is really just a vague outline anyhow, what does that say about the personal plan? I'd say more thought it necessary, but I'm not sure if it's thinking that needs to happen, I've thought a lot with very little progress. It definitely needs further refinement before it gets called a "plan"...