The Bio-Hustle

It’s been a while. Not that I’ve had nothing I wished to say – it’s that I haven’t found the framing, motif or theme to pack the words into. It’ll come.

In the meantime, here are some snapshots of what I’ve been up to in the last 12 months. Uniting theme? Hustle.

(Northeastern) Big City Nights

I don’t need much of an excuse to visit DC. In November 2018 the American Medical Writers Association hosted their annual conference there. I’d yet to visit the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and I had a couple of hundred dollars in my bank account. How many more signs did I need?

DC. Washington DC.

I like the grand expanse of the US Capital. It’s a bitch to walk round on a sunny day – sunlight beamed back off marble – but there’s space to pause and enjoy the surroundings, which you can’t do in NYC. Every time I visit I’ll peek into the Library of Congress, I love it as a monument to intellectual power.

This time around I lucked out and found a pretentious coffeeshop near my hostel. They served me a double espresso in a volcano-shaped mug, on a slate tile. Although not pictured above, there were extensive quantities of cacti. The espresso was perfect.

This could be the section of my post where I brag about the AMWA conference: how insightful it was, how many late night revelries I crammed in, the glamour of big meetings in endless hotels. Instead I departed DC with the realisation I wasn’t quite a medical writer. I was hitting ~50% success rate interacting with people at the conference: half the people I had decent chats with and enjoyed their company, the rest I had kinda stilted exchanges with and felt I wasn’t connecting. The workshops and talks were all useful, but there were 3 blocks of attendees (writing academic papers, regulatory writing and continuing medical education) and by then I was self-identifying as ‘healthcare marketing’.

The AMWA Southeast chapter.

A disappointing conference isn’t the worst thing life can hit me with. It helped me refine my professional identity: I’m not a medical writer, I’m a healthcare copywriter (that’s totally a thing). There were plenty of good experiences on the trip: I was able to walk into the NMAAHC without a minute of queuing, I spent time with my local AMWA chapter (“local” in this case encompassing Atlanta, Knoxville and chunks of Florida).

 

ChemBros

People don’t come to Atlanta for chemistry. I was surprised to learn that my adoptive city specialises in global health. Atlanta hasn’t been branded with the same strength Boston has as a biotech hub, for example. Global health equates to public health, medicine, epidemiology and the likes…but not chemistry.

So you can imagine my delight when two chemists did visit for the weekend.

Fernando and Peter – selfie afficiandos.

The Future Leaders in Chemistry program sustained me throughout my PhD. It was only two weeks during the summer between my 1st and 2nd year, but when I hit the mid- and late-stage troughs of grad school I remembered that someone had accepted me onto this prestigious program (and no one had questioned my inclusion once I was there). It’s been 5 years now, and I’m not sure I’ve become a ‘Leader in Chemistry.’ But maybe that doesn’t matter.

Anyway, my two FLIC buddies had lunch at Ponce City Market. It’s one of those hipster utopias: ‘industrial’ interiors, expensive shops and artisanal food. I paid $8 for a sandwich smaller than my fist…but was one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth, albeit for all of 5 seconds.

 

While you were partying, I studied THE STICK

 …Well, you probably weren’t partying first thing on a Saturday morning. Nobody does that. As a time for karate & jiu-jitsu classes goes however, it’s pretty effective: with evening classes you have a whole day to accumulate excuses and flakiness. First thing in the morning you’re always fresh. There have been a few occasions when I woke up to the 6.30am alarm I’d earnestly set for myself Friday night…rolled over and went back to sleep. I’m human. Still, I’m more likely to be in attendance than not. It’s an intermediate-plus class, so we go through tricky things like weapons.

With martial arts, it often feels like moving up the ranks just means opening extra avenues of critique. You don’t stop doing technique wrong, instead you access more sophisticated layers of wrongness. It can be frustrating, especially when it seems you’ll never get it right.

However, jiu-jitsu shows proof of my progression. When I first hit blue belt I was thwarted by hip throws. These are (basically) when an opponent’s behind you, and you bump them up and over your back.  Despite drinking many protein shakes, I don’t have the upper body strength to brute-force the throw, I have to apply good technique. And I since I’m a tall woman my practice partners are either women roughly my weight but shorter (which makes body alignment hard because I’ve got to crouch down), or men who are taller than me…but 100 lbs heavier. You can’t hide bad technique: you’ll either do the hip throw or fail. My tolerance for practising the throw was limited – I’d get too frustrated after a series of misses to continue.

Then one class…I performed the throw. THWACK! went my partner. And I realised I was hitting correct the technique more often than I was missing. I still mess up my hip throws, and I’ve now graduated on to its more finicky variants, but it’s proof that eventually things click. There aren’t any showy flashes of insight here, just getting things right. It’s not that I enjoy failing, but I can tolerate it. And to improve at martial arts (and life, I guess) you need to tolerate exposure to your failures.

Party in the dojo – Saturday 9am | Photo courtesy of The Martial Arts Center Atlanta

Lastly, here’s a picture of me and a lizard.

I realise this photograph raises more questions than it answers. But as we say in Okinawan Shuri-Ryu: ‘Karate is my secret.‘

Like a fire needs flame

I couldn’t sleep, it felt like my whole body was burning. Except this wasn’t me at the lowest point of my PhD. I was in early Spring 2018, long after the emotional immediacy of grad school had blurred into a memory chained to someplace else. I was in Atlanta, lying in a bed where I could no longer hear Amtrak trains hurtle by in the darkness. Why was my skin on fire?

The answer was perhaps more wrenching second time around. In grad school I’d become so stressed that my immune system lost control, causing hives to erupt over my body. This time I’d come home from my first jiu-jitsu class where I was introduced to the new martial art and practiced some throws, joint locks and grapples.

My skin was burning because it had forgotten what it felt like to be touched.

***

I asked this question before my PhD, during, and in its fading days. Could I recover from this? I’d seen too many broken and bitter grad students – even among those who made it to the end. I’d reconfigured my life so all my energy and hours went into the lab, I didn’t know if I’d remember how to twist it back.

That’s the question I came to Atlanta with: Was the PhD a blip in my trajectory, or was it the new direction? Could I re-access the person I was before – diverse hobbies, useful volunteer roles, high physical fitness – the person I saw as productive and happy? Would I know how to have an existence that didn’t orbit my research?

My burning skin answered my question.

You can starve yourself of something for years at a time, until you lose the memory of it.

But your body can always remember.

Belt Testing Sept ’18 | Photo courtesy The Martial Arts Center Atlanta

I’m not one for excessively sentimentality – that’s still too American for me. But martial arts – here, in this city – is important to me in general and specific ways.

It’s important to be physically active. It’s important to have hobbies. It’s important to try new things. It’s important to get out of the house and meet people.

Courtesy of TMAC (Apologies. I don’t have any footage of me kicking ass. If/when I do, I’ll share it.)

Martial arts is a great sink for my energy and focus. I’m not a natural fighter, same way I wasn’t a natural dancer. So I train, practice, adapt and try again. I hold a million technical reminders in my head with every pattern: hands here, weight here, feet here, knees here, fingers here, elbows here, neck here, left leg here. Everything must be accounted for. I know I’ll never be perfect, but I’ll always be making progress. That’s the balm to research uncertainty right there!

Right down the line | Photo courtesy The Martial Arts Center Atlanta

Traditional Far Eastern martial arts like karate & jiu-jitsu do have strong honour codes, dojo etiquette, and emphasis on obedience/self-discipline. Sure, yeah. By the time we get to adulthood most of us have already wrapped ourselves in too many honour codes, veering into self-denial instead of self-discipline. Martial arts is also the space where you can be playful and have fun. We spent one karate class wrestling each other off a large mat. Know when I last did anything like that? When I was 8 and trying to wrestle my brother off his bed. I’d spent the intervening years pretending like I was too old for those dumb games…when of course I wasn’t. Why would I deliberately choke off my sense of play, when it’s so fundamental to what we are as humans, as animals?

Special guest seminar Sept ’18 | Photo courtesy The Martial Arts Center Atlanta

Let me put my own basic needs first. It’s never too late.

I bless the rains down in Atlanta

Don’t bother with waterproofs in Georgia. Get caught in a summer thunderstorm and you’re getting soaked. Waterproofs just leave you at the uncomfortable ‘partially-damp & itchy’ level of wetness. Let the rain soak you instead: it’s less like being under a warm shower; more like floating in a warm bath. I’ve been caught in those thunderstorms when I was out walking. The sidewalks turned to rivers – I splashed along up to my ankles in lukewarm water. Atlanta drivers – oblivious at the best of times – sent plumes of water breaking over me as they passed. By the time I got home to towel down the rain had stopped, the sun was pounding down, and half the deluge had already evaporated.

Southern thunderstorms are quite something. I love them.

***

I’m dealing with a professional upheaval right now. I’m not in a place where I can talk about it (yet) because (i) I don’t want to jinx the good stuff (ii) hindsight makes it easier to write an intelligible account that people would actually want to read.

Anyway. Here’s a bullet point summary of the things I’m balancing that I can talk about:

• Communication & Marketing for Women in Bio-ATL. They’re a professional organisation bringing together all “bio” and “bio-related” folk for networking/professional development. I’m creating event flyers & email promo.
•  Emory Postdoc Science Writers Fall 2018 magazine. I’m reprising my role as Editor for a “microbiome”-themed issue. It’s great to see the postdoc team grow in confidence with their science writing: tackling unfamiliar topics, longer article forms, letting their personalities come through (we’re often taught to repress personality in our academic writing).
• Wikipedia Fellows Women in Science cohort. There are several programs trying to boost the representation of female scientists on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia Fellows program is being rolled out by WikiEdu, targeting scientists who belong to professional organisations (e.g. the American Chemical Society). So I’ve been part of a summer program learning how to edit Wikipedia – something I’ve never thought much about, but is easier than I imagined. I’ve expanded several “stub” articles, and created a brand new Wikipedia entry for a scientist in my field whose omission from the platform was suitably glaring.
• Freelance science writing. I had an article idea I felt inspired to pitch to an online science magazine. Much to my surprise I received a reply several days later encouraging me to submit the full thing. It’s a beast: I’m chasing down scientists in 4 countries for interviews, and collecting lots of crunchy numbers to back up the point(s) I’m trying to make (not all of the information is displayed to the public). This kind of science writing exercise gives me a massive kick – it’s stressful, but it activates so many regions of my brain at once. I can only hope the article inside my head eventually matches what I commit to writing.

***

It’s a busy time. Evidently I like being busy. You’d hope I would.

Beneath the bubble and frenzy is an undercurrent of fear and anxiety. I’m trying to reposition myself into a new professional lane, aware that I don’t have the luxury of unlimited funds or time. I’ve also got plenty of handicaps that make getting what I want harder than it would be for others. The stakes are higher in some of the projects than others. If my freelance article gets accepted it’ll make it easier for me to successfully pitch future stories (editors always look for previous published work).  If the article is killed it brings me back to where I was before, with an additional dent in my self-confidence. It’ll also decelerate my income flow, which is I need to keep a tight watch over.

I know the point I lose confidence and momentum is when I’ll fall. So I’m pushing forward and filling up my Moleskine planner with reminders, deadlines & To Do lists. It’s been several years since I wanted to fight for a city with the ferocity I’m fighting for Atlanta. That alone tells me I should fight harder.

The PhD Legacy: Some Nights

If I could distil 4.5 years of a PhD into a 4.5 minute song, it would be a tune I half-heard one morning at the gym. I hadn’t heard it before, and I was sufficiently intrigued by caught lyrics to hunt it down. When I heard the whole song – direct from my laptop to ears – there was a deep resonance.

“Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck,

Some nights I call it a draw.

Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle,

Some nights I wish they’d just fall off.”

There were many nights during my PhD I’d stumble home late. My last reserves of energy had sputtered towards cleaning my glassware for tomorrow. I would either feel the glow of satisfaction from a completed task and encouraging result, or a dull pulse of despair knowing I’d stayed late for the sake of reactions that failed.

Nights were never my biggest PhD problem. I slept well, never built up a sleep deficit. In the first two years I lived on campus, a safe 5 minute walk from work. Cook dinner, nip back to lab, knowing I’d spend the evening with company.

“Some nights I wish that this all would end, ‘cause I could use some friends for a change.”

I knew what I was getting in to with an American Synthetic Organic Chemistry PhD. I was warned about The Hours. I was warned about The Hours in this particular lab. I was quick to give up my evenings and Saturdays. After a while I gave up my Sundays too. If you only have one free day per week then you can’t go anywhere or do anything. You’ve killed your extracurriculars, you’ve choked off your social circles. You may as well go back to lab.

Philadelphia was only 90 minutes down the road. That city and its people was the reason I came back to the Eastern Seaboard. I wanted the magic of 2009-10 back. Couldn’t have it. If I’d done my PhD in the UK and scheduled US summer trips I’d probably have spent more time in Philly than I did living in New Jersey.

“But I still wake up…”

The only thing in my life for 4 years was that PhD. And I wanted it to consume me. It was easy to find purpose: I understood the justification for our research, I saw we were going after hard challenges. I joined in, beating other research groups to the punch with my keynote project. Our group won several races to the press and improved upon concepts more elite labs had already disclosed. We were scrappy and smart. The group coped with stress by evolving in-jokes and delicious dark humour. When talking amongst ourselves about our boss we’d always title him “your boss”. Lines of dialogue from our PI or former group members would be quoted for years as punchlines or linguistic shorthand. We built our own language of references, riffs, Mandarin or Hindu interjections, and comprehensive verbal takedowns.

Getting my research moulded into a publication was a thrill. Three first-author papers (2 submitted during my PhD) is not a large number…but Goddamn they all felt delicious. I savoured condensing years of work into a concise table; when I looked at the NMRs of my products I pored over the clean beauty of their flat baselines. When I think back to the conferences I attended off the back of publications, the memories have a dreamlike filter, like the lighting of Midnight In Paris. Late nights laughing in bars, the adrenalin of personal connections running through my veins as I grinned myself to sleep. The PhD hits & highs were addictive.

I’ve already spoken about the lows. I went down far enough into Hell that I emerged blinking out the bottom. Worse things happened to others. Some were in my department. Some in my lab. I wasn’t always happy, but I wasn’t always miserable. The lows of mid-grad school faded from my present state – my emotions ended up more positive than negative.

“So this is it – I sold my soul for this?”

When I transitioned into my end game the come-down was brutal. The rest of my lab had moved to another university over the summer. I was left in an empty lab, an empty office. I’d proved the points I needed proving. Whatever force of nature that had carried me for 4 years faded away. No need for late nights or weekend work. No rush to generate large quantities of data. No pressures. I could breathe and look at my life.

Was the PhD worth it?

I’d systematically destroyed what had given my pre-PhD decades their meaning. Diverse, separate friendship circles. Challenging extracurricular activities. Culture. I’d cut back on blogging during my PhD not because I didn’t have time to write, but because I’d lost my voice. The words wouldn’t come. My voice has always been strongest on paper, and I’d silenced myself. Over the years I’d met people whose PhDs had hollowed them out, who seemed broken. Was that now my existence? Would this particular PhD even get me the lifestyle I craved? Had it been worth it?

“When I hear a song, it sounds like this one”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have doubted my ability to bounce back and revert my life to its pre-PhD patterns and values. But if I won my PhD, crossed 9 state lines, then immediately attempted to scrub the experience from my mind…was it something I should have pursued at all? Can my PhD benefit me when I half-pretend it didn’t happen?

I don’t know. New experiences reframe old ones. Wounds heal. Scars look cool. I don’t need to package myself, my identity or my emotions into neat labelled boxes. Stuff just is. Perspectives are built to move.

“Some nights I always win.”

Midday in the Chem Lab of Good and Evil

“I’m sensing internal conflict when you talk about your career aspirations.”

I took a long drag from my cranberry juice.

“…Yeah.”

We were in an artfully-dimmed speakeasy bar on the outskirts of one of Atlanta’s northern satellite towns. I was here doing something close to, or in mimicry of, professional networking. I always figured networking was for the folk who looked comfortable in power suits – not me. But since anonymous online job applications were now striking me as as a fools’ game, I was sincerely trying it.

What I’ve realised about moving around cities and continents is that I can assess my “fulfilment” and “happiness” at each stage of my life with a few outcomes: do I take up new activities, and do I build new friendship circles? It’s all about creating a unique set of good experiences you associate with a particular location. In Philly there was dancing, hiking and a book club. In Basel there was running. In London there was an intense tourist program. Here in Atlanta I’m doing martial arts and building up a professional network bound into the fabric of the city.

I didn’t network during my PhD. Not with any vigour. I’d feel more affinity for the New Jersey suburban realm if I’d tried to connect with professionals outside the university, instead of just with fellow grads in the program. Which isn’t to downplay the value of those grad school friendships. But now all my buddies are getting their PhDs and scattering across the continent. I sunk 4.5 years of my life into a single town, and now have no reason to hold on to it. NJ wasn’t really a “bad location” – it just feels like a misuse of my time not extracting more value from it.

So in Atlanta I’m swinging back to my usual approach: dig in. Meet people. Draw on their experiences, needs and advice if necessary. Although I’m at the “whoah she’s introverted!“ end of the extrovert-introvert continuum, I don’t mind meeting new people. In fact, the controlled environment of “networking” suits me. Those strangers want to chat with you. Their conversations are concise and to the point. You’re expected to circulate, not hold someone’s attention for an hour. No one is drinking heavily or playing shitty music, the space isn’t too loud or crammed. I bought 200 business cards, a shiny card holder and practiced extracting the holder from my pocket without breaking eye contact/conversational flow. That’s a networking skill right there.

Some people have networking miracle stories (“They told I was getting laid off so I left to get coffee and as I was standing in the queue at Starbucks I got talking to the guy behind me and he said his company was hiring and he’d take a look at my CV and after they hired me I learned he was the CEO.”). I’ll let you know if something similar happens to me. Right now, meeting a lot of random people generally has helped me connect with a key subset of people. Drinking a couple of post-work fruit juices and chatting for ~90 mins has helped me articulate what I was looking for in a career (if you can’t articulate what you want, how can you expect to get anything?) and nudged me into several proactive steps. AC: if you’re reading this thanks for your time and ear. I also appreciate that you said a bunch of nice things about my business card design and ‘social media strategy’ (I’m glad I possess anything it can be identified as a strategy!).

***

I don’t have anything important to say about my martial arts progress. But there’s a comment I need to publicly address. When I posted that recent photo of my karate/jiu-jitsu class, a friend jocularly commented: “Don’t tell me you have to try and beat up those massive guys!”

Rookie misunderstanding.

Big guys are the easiest targets. For some reason they feel bad about deploying force on a woman, so they hold back. Sure they’re heavy…but they make a real satisfying THUD when you throw ’em on the ground.

Dude, it’s the women you gotta watch out for.

They won’t hold back a single muscle fibre. They won’t feel compunction whacking you. They’re smaller and bonier than the men. You ever been caught by a bony edge? I’ve met women who are 90% bony edge and sharpen their elbows before class. Some of my biggest, most persistent bruises were given to me by female martial artists. They’re fantastic.

Martial arts requires this combination of strength and dance-like grace, neither of which are my natural attributes. I feel as if maybe I can learn both…but progress is incremental.

 

This city makes me look like a decent driver – and other reasons I love Atlanta

“I’m moving to Emory University in Jan 2018.”

“Great! …Where’s Emory?”

“Oh, its in Atlanta.”

“Brilliant! …Where’s Atlanta?”

This was the type of conversation I had with my non-American friends last year. I can’t take the moral high ground because a few years ago I wouldn’t have been better-informed.

I knew Atlanta was a big city. I’d never felt compelled to visit it as a tourist, but I’d never heard anything awful about it either. When I was listening to Marketplace on NPR I heard a segment about Atlanta as a emerging transportation and business powerhouse, which intrigued me.

When I told my savvy American friends about the move to Atlanta, there were two common replies:

(i) “Oh, I visited Atlanta once…AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.”

(ii) “Oh, I passed through Atlanta airport once…AND I ABSOLUTELY HATED IT.”

As I packed up my life in New Jersey, I figured that if I made it out of Hartsfield-Jackson Intl Airport alive I’d be in for a positive experience.

***

Nights that are alright for fighting: most of ’em

Now and then I’ll walk into a room and feel deep relief. These people are my people, I’ll realise. You can’t predict or articulate after the fact what it was about the circumstances and personal chemistry, only that it fit and you knew so immediately. That’s how I feel about my martial arts. I could have walked into any other martial art school in this city and it wouldn’t have clicked. Conversely, I could have walked into a Crotchet Support Group and experienced a more forceful connection. You never know in advance.

I’m probably getting better at deploying marital art prowess on 12 year olds…but now the 12 year olds are getting better at fighting me. My push-ups remain pitiful and I can’t even fall to the ground right…but my enthusiasm is unwavering. I got promoted to yellow belt in karate recently, and intend to move higher.

I need to work on my game face | Courtesy of The Martial Arts Center Atlanta

Big City Nights

Atlanta meets my criteria of “a proper city”. In a city I should be able to walk to the supermarket and coffeeshops. I should have access to serene greenery. I should be able to dine on Indian-Mexican fusion cuisine for lunch and vegetarian Soul Food for dinner. If so inclined I should be able to waste my weekend in a 24 h Korean spa, cinema complex, hipster coffeeshop, or the Target ‘scented candle’ aisle.

Atlanta has drawn in people from across the USA. It doesn’t feel like a “Southern City”, although an hour’s drive will take you to the site of recent alt-right rallies. Recent as in ‘last month’. Within Atlanta these past 6 months I’ve had more contact with successful, confident non-white professionals than I did in all my years on the East Coast. Which I think is great.

It’s a shame I’m not connected to other cities the way I was in the NJ area: it’s a three hour drive to the nearest large towns or cities I could conceivably want to explore. The Southern public transportation system never recovered after Sherman tore up the railways. But on the plus side, Atlanta covers all the basics of what I need.

 

 

Fear and Loathing in Atlanta

“We can’t stop here – this is biscuits and gravy country!”

I’ve been moulded into a product of New Jersey. By which I mean I love diners, drive like  a lunatic and don’t know how to re-fill my petrol tank. I learned to drive in the States, and have done one 4-hr road trip during my time as a PhD student. As you can imagine, driving from NJ to Atlanta sounded like a challenge. It’s over 800 miles (14-hrs according to Google Maps). At one point I was stupid enough to consider making the trek in a U-Haul with my car clipped on the back. After some reflection I realised that was idiotic – I’d overtake a lorry at 80 mph and forget I was towing a car behind me, or something like that.

Therefore. A two-day road trip in Saxon (aka my ‘Wheels of Steel’). I’d been told that the journey was (i) really scenic and iconic, a fun experience you had to try at least once (ii) an awful soul-destroying grind that you’d never want to repeat again. It was the same person who told me those two things, before then after they actually did the trip. I decided to stop over in Burlington NC (just over halfway there). Armed with 4 pages of Google Map printouts and several bottles of water I prepared myself for an early start.

The key to long-distance driving is the radio. “Adult variety” is my first choice, but I’m not too fussy. The Top Hits stations are too repetitive: I must have heard the opening to “Havana” by Camila Cabello at least ten times over 2 days, and I kept switching stations. RnB/Hip-hop is fine, but I cry to 70% of country songs (it’s embarrassing – I was even tearing up at the overblown ones about two alcoholic lovers shooting themselves). Conversely, when I started my engine at 6.30am and heard Solisbury Hill blasting over the speakers it had a better awakening effect than coffee ever could.

Which is just as well, because I was severely under-caffeinated for the whole trip. I bid farewell to NJ with breakfast at a 24-hr diner. I was reminded why I don’t eat breakfast there more often: omelette was greasy, the coffee was brown water. Says a lot that my last hours in NJ were spent eating bad diner-food.

I decided that under-caffeination and mild dehydration was preferable to bladder discomfort and restroom hunting at high speeds. By the time I got to my sleazy motel (if you’re after a proper road trip experience of course you need to stay in sleazy motels) I was too exhausted to drive out and look for food/coffee. When I set out on a walk around the neighbouring strip malls, people in the car parks gave me weird looks (what’s that chick doing walking around HERE?), and after making note of my surroundings I could understand why. Following greasy diner food I was craving a salad or some fresh fruit, but perusing the local southern eateries I could see that wish was impossible. It was all “biscuits” (which as a British person I can assure you aren’t what I’d call biscuits) and waffles. So I crashed asleep at 7pm, vaguely hoping no one would try and break into my room. They probably could, if they wanted to. Only 30% of the electrical sockets in my room worked and despite its Non-Smoking designation…it smelt of smoke.

By Day 2 I was on the home strait. Despite exceeding the speed limit by an average of 20mph I made it into Atlanta without getting pulled over once. There was a steady scattering of busted cars in motorway ditches along the American coast, I suspect left there as a warning to cocky drivers such as myself. Still…faster speed = better fuel efficiency, right?

I made it to Atlanta. As soon as I pulled off I-85 I stumbled into an Ethiopian restaurant only a couple of miles from new apartment. Veggies and strong coffee – I demolished everything. Part of my sadness of leaving NJ involved parting with things I couldn’t replace. Knowing there’s stellar Ethiopian food in the Atlanta metro area had an instantly reassuring effect.

 

Midnight in the Chem Lab of Good and Evil

Back in 2009 I told a friend I’d be spending a year in America, interning at a pharma company. Her response was to insist I read one of her favourite books – “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt. She hoped I’d check out Savannah, GA while I was in the US. I did. And in 2018 that book is still on my shelf. Along with American Gods (Neil Gaiman), The Devil In The White City (Erik Larson), Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow) and Evicted (Matthew Desmond) it provides me with an atlas for navigating this vast country.

Setting out to that internship, I viewed the American South with the same level of trepidation and beady curiosity as I viewed West Philadelphia. It was unknowable and dangerous. After my first exposure I stopped fretting about the ‘hoods of Philly, but I never got comfortable with the American South. My Scottish East Coast values templated onto American East Coast values to the point where I barely felt a culture shock. This part of the States is viewed as rude and uppity by fellow Americans: I decided that therefore made me rude and uppity…and I was OK with it.

Now I’m moving to Atlanta, GA.

(Which is 3-4 hours drive away from Savannah. I checked that out pretty early in the process.)

I find it easier to move to a new place than back to an old one. I get a kick from re-activating my Meetup account and trawling local interest groups. Going to a place where I know no one forces me to socialise and meet people. I get to re-roll the dice and correct past mistakes. You miss dancing? Well, Google ‘ballroom dance Atlanta’ and start checking out studios! New location – new habits. Any pre-move jitters are soothed by putting events into my Moleskine Calendar to fill up my time.

Even if the South turns out to be as alien as I once feared…I can make the experience meaningful. I left Basel, Switzerland with a strong feeling of relief, but because I’d thrown myself into the new location I never felt like I’d wasted a year. Quite the opposite!

You can find opportunities for good and evil in the same place, at the same time. That’s what I love about this country.