field, schmield

I am taking kind of a break this week. OK, to be truthful, when I left Cape Town last Wednesday, the friend dropping me at the airport asked, "So, it's straight back to the field, then?" "Oh, yes," I replied, with every intention of getting up the next morning and heading to the hospital at quarter past seven.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

Anyway, the 'official' reason I am not at the hospital this week is so that I can do some serious reading and thinking about the paper I am giving in late November. (I am slated to give a version of this paper in a local forum in early November. I feel like I need to get my ass in gear.) So I am alternating bouts of reading and thinking about how to frame an inquiry into the epistemological problems posed by paediatric hiv adherence monitoring with bouts of being heartbroken. Conveniently enough, sitting over a cup of coffee and staring into space could be interpreted as either of these sets of activities.

This alternating dynamic is, naturally, punctuated by feelings of guilt that I'm not doing 'real' research. I keep telling myself that clocking hours on the ward is not what this is about, that I need to be researching smarter, not harder. (From what infomercial hell did that phrase come?) And yes, I can excoriate myself while sitting over coffee and staring into space. I am that talented.

Two things made me feel better:

1. I found sun-dried olives. Now I can make puttanesca sauce.
   
2. One of the smartest anthropology graduate students I know told me she has collected no data. I don't actually believe this; I don't even think she believes this. But it's nice to think that my I-don't-have-any-data! panic is probably peaking this week less because I don't have any data and more because I am having a shitty week.