Right! The blog.

My first meeting with some of the students and staff with whom I will be working.

Here I sit, about four weeks since starting this blog, having failed to provide a single entry since arriving in China. Truth be told, I’ve written a couple, slept on it, and then upon waking in the morning and rereading, decided I didn’t like it. Quite a few years ago my friend Gabe asked why I don’t have a blog, saying that I seemed like a guy with something to say, so I should have one. I took that as a compliment, but as I knew then, I also know now, I’m much too particular about writing for a public audience to ever be both efficient and satisfied with the product. This could be a problem.

Just now I have been inspired on how to resolve this conundrum. A couple of minutes ago I was chatting with Julie about my lack of blogging productivity and she commiserated saying that she would also have a hard time flippantly writing and posting personal experiences. That got me thinking; I am often at my best when being flippant. Perhaps I’m just over-thinking this blog thing? When I began I had been visualizing these posts as descriptive chronicles of my fascinating and exclusive experiences of adventuring my way through the country, with breath-taking photos and eloquent prose. As I’ve sat and pondered what to write about, I feel like I have yet to do anything interesting. Since arriving in China my weekdays have been locked up in lots and lots of reading to try and get up to speed on the new study area and species I’ll be working on, as well as understanding the data needed and  the research methods and sampling design required to get that data. If not that, I have spent time with graduate students and researchers from Shan Shui (the Chinese NGO with which I will be working hand in hand). A major part of my job (scary as it sounds) is to be the scientific advisor to these people to ensure that our efforts are rooted in rigorous scientific inquiry, that our results are publishable, and that they are also applicable to key conservation questions and concerns. Then on weekends, life gets really crazy as I dig out my PhD work to try and perfect my thesis chapters for publication. These are all exciting and important activities, however, the past couple weeks of reading, writing and meetings don’t translate well into a story to share with a general audience.

I have thought about what I should write about from this first month, and I have realized that as I’ve been out and about doing normal day to day activities such as buying food, using public transportation, and riding a bike, that I find all of these activities to be fascinating as to how they contrast, or fail to contrast, as might be expected. We all know that China and the United States are two very different places in many different ways, but I find it remarkable to actually experience these differences and compare the reality to what my preconceived ideas were prior to arriving. Therein lies my new motivation on what to comment on in this blog when I’m not doing exciting things like trekking through the Tibetan Plateau, snaring snow leopards, or otherwise engaged in overtly interesting activities.

I leave for Qinghai Province, and field work, in about 10 days. Until then I will post a handful of stories about eating, sleeping, grocery shopping and riding a bike. If you happen to have some burning question, throw it out there and perhaps I can address it in a future post. I often respond well to peer-pressure and forceful guidance J

I need to just chill out and roll with it from now on, and not over-think. The writing may not be stellar, but I think adopting a natural approach will make my entries more accessible and meaningful. In that way I'm better fulfilling what my original intent was for this blog, and that is to keep in touch with friends and family who are interested in how I'm doing and what I've been doing.

Stay tuned!