Sometimes I wonder how many of my academic colleagues would react if they knew how I actually fund my research. The irony isn't lost on me: I'm writing a dissertation on social structures and transactional interactions while simultaneously embodying one of the most stigmatized transactional interactions possible.
This morning I met a client who's a professor at another university. We've been seeing each other for months and he knows precisely nothing about my academic work. He talks, I listen. That's the job. But today he went on about his department's funding cuts while I'm thinking about my own economic survival strategies.
The cognitive dissonance is constant. My PhD research is technically about economic precarity and gender performance, which is hilariously on-the-nose considering my side hustle. Except it's not a side hustle. It's how I eat, how I research, how I exist.
Most people can't handle this complexity. They want simple narratives. Victim or empowered. Desperate or calculating. I'm neither. I'm just surviving, strategically and intelligently.
Anyway. Another day, another set of contradictions.