Clarissa AL Lee's Lateral Worlds

I realize it is about 10 months since I'd last posted, and so much has happened in the meantime.  My other pages (Academia and LinkedIn) are better updated than this one. But I also have the excuse of having gone through a lot of transitions the past year and trying to make sense of those changes.  I now work in an industry where I am in a university but in an alt-ac path where I do policy relevant work. At the same time, I am carving out a space for myself to do the kind of intellectual work I enjoy without the pressure of conforming to the kind of expectations that had been soul-sapping just a year before. In feeling better about myself, I am also taking better care of my physical and mental health, and being more pro-active towards that end - this includes learning beauty and exercise regiments that work for me (this means using my skills as a researcher; my work in science and technology studies has been useful in this regard, even in understanding my mistakes as a consu...

UPDATE: Someone pointed me to this common-sensical and yet often forgotten tenet of self-care, especially for those in the intellectual/creative profession s.  One thing that comes to mind, especially in that powerful opening, is how we sometimes transfer our own insecurities/inadequacy/self-loathing into our interaction with others - we say and do things that hurt others without thinking of the consequence, perhaps because we do not have to bear the consequence directly, at least not immediately. I think an important thing to do is learn how to balance between truth-telling and thoughtfulness in all our actions, which could only come with cultivated EQ. Many of us in intellectual-centric professions tend to valorise intellect over intra- and interpersonal intelligence, and put minimal effort into cultivating the latter; which is dangerous for society especially if your work involves influencing lives, and detrimental to your own personal life in the longer term.  In the pro...