it’s hard to know exactly when something starts. sometimes i can look back and say that because i did this one thing or had this one thought, my life to this point has been different. like identifying a fork in the road in the past when i happened to be driving in the dark. conversely, many times i look back and say, i did this and this and this and it’s all a jumble of nudges and ideas and false starts that circuitously led me to where i am today.

in the movies they try to make it pretty obvious. someone has an idea or a goal, and they work to achieve it. i assume many people in real life live their lives that way. i want to work in X, where X is politics or public health or performance art (i admit i’m often skeptical of those sorts of firm yet abstract goals) and so i need to do/cultivate A, B, and C (certain jobs/experiences) in order to have the perfect credentials/pedigree to ascend to X at some point in the future.

“small pieces loosely joined” is probably more representational of my life philosophy. i know i want to work on interesting projects, which hopefully involve me learning new things, solving challenging problems, and collaborating with other people, but that’s not much to go on. as i currently work in an IT capacity, it’s all too easy for me to forget that it’s not my goal to become a world-class programmer/hacker.

this meandering life philosophy is nice except for when i’m passing between two small pieces, and i find myself floating in a loose joint. which i guess is where i am right now. unsure. and so i’m starting to plan for the next cluster of possibly unrelated small pieces. at the same time i know that society doesn’t value randomness (climbing the ladder is more important than horizontal exploration) because a lack of perserverance is often the cause of a random life.

i want to believe i’m seeking something (my life’s work? a good time? something to keep my mind occupied and my hands away from the devil?) and either my life will end somewhere in the course of that journey, or at some indefinite point greater than 10 years in the future, the small pieces will resemble some coherent whole, i’ll believe i’ve found what i’ve been seeking, and i’ll do that.

well, it’s a new day and i’m ending it in a new hotel.

sunday, between the time we left the guest lodge to explore accra and got back that night, theresa discovered $200 USD and 100,000 GHCs (about $10 USD) missing from her room—luckily just a small portion of the total amount she had locked in her desk. she didn’t want to confront them and cause a ruckus, and she had no physical proof of the theft—she was even second-guessing having had the money in the first place.

bottom line, she didn’t feel comfortable staying there, breakfast sucked (toast and butter with tea/coffee), and internet was spotty/unavailable. so we decided to mention it to usaid and see if they thought we could switch to la-palm royal.

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seems like just a bit ago i was racing through the office getting last minute things done while a halloween party was happening around me. children in costumes, small dogs in costumes, even phill in a costume (with fangs). and me printing things out, polishing off some last minute financial system chores, munching on the reese’s peanut butter cups in a bowl by my desk.

i focused this week on making some revisions to the financial system before my two (or three?) week trip to ghana (and tanzania?). but not before i discovered monday morning that a yellow fever vaccination was required to gain entry to ghana. by monday afternoon i had gotten three shots (yellow fever, adult polio, and hepatitis a) tracked down anti-malaria pills, and started to feel like i was coming down with a low grade version of yellow-polio-a. i wonder whether i should have been more vaccinated during my two previous trips to cambodia and tanzania.

thursday morning (oct 27) i got an email from someone working with usaid/tanzania apologizing for the short notice but wondering if i could pop on over to tanzania on nov 8. i’d love to, but coincidentally/conveniently i’ll be working in ghana then. if you want, i could swing by tanzania when i’m done? so nothing confirmed (as in flight plans), but all signs point to my spending the third week of november in dar es salaam.

right now i’m pretty tired. sitting in an empty business class business centre in heathrow enjoying free access to the internet. thinking about that shower i’m gonna take when i get in to accra tonight.

so i’m heading to california tomorrow to do some work on the project that previously sent me to kazakhstan, cambodia, and tanzania.

this time i’m going to be working on a set of health and policy indicators for west africa, and i’ll be building (modifying actually) a database to hold and track the data collected for those indicators over a number of years. i’m traveling to california because the person who has been leading the project is currently very pregnant, and thus unable to fly.

then in november i’ll be traveling to accra, ghana to customize the system and train people how to use it.

i’m going with a co-worker who has a few friends in the area she knows from peace corps, and i’ll be visiting casey who i know from way back. apparently friday night she’s having some kind of debate watching party. then afterwards some berkeley nightlife which casey says is actually pretty sedate. we might have to check out the scene in san francisco.

at the hypertext conference i heard dan gillmor talk about his experience of journalism, and something at that moment resonated with me. there are things that a journalist does (communicating, writing, explaining) that i would like to be doing more of in the future.

i just happened upon meg h. blogging about switching careers from technology to cooking which is similar to a fantasy i have about culinary school.

at work we’re going to be unveiling a new website look and feel, and for some reason it was never demoed to me and i haven’t been asked if i’d like to give it a critique. the confidence i have in my ability to do so makes me think about all the unique and special skills that i (as well as others) have which tend to fall outside our primary work responsibilities. and thus go under-utilized.

a few weeks ago i was poking around rebecky’s design work and projects. her stuff makes me wish i was doing more to develop my graphic design skills. i would love to spend time studying fonts and typography. i would love to be doing more with digital photography.

my relationship with my former graduate school (and university) falls somewhere between playful and adversarial. after participating in a scholarly communications panel at the library and seeing doc searls give his talk on campus, it occurred to me that i might eventually like to pursue some sort of slow phd.

this past summer i emailed the assistant dean at SILS to let him know i’d love to teach one of the intro database classes at sils. i’ve poked around durham tech and wake tech, but haven’t pursued anything seriously yet.