It is indicative that the online space I intended for myself was empty of new content for the past few years. I don't think anybody who went through the pandemic would be surprised by that, but as most personal stories, it's a bit more complicated than just a global pandemic that shut down the world. Since I last posted, I finished my PhD, moved from Utrecht back to Zagreb, went through a pandemic, became one of the caregivers for the cutest grandpa dog, survived cancer and became (somewhat? I'm not sure on the terminology or my identity here!) disabled, switched two temporary academic jobs, got a nephew, went through a deep existential and professional crisis, wrote the story for a cute computer game, and finally landed a research job in Croatia I was looking for for the past four years. This is by no means in chronological order.

In short, I'm finally doing well enough so I can write not only to survive, but to unwind. I also feel better. A little less lost, a lot more at peace with myself, and bursting with energy to, well, do something. I think I'll write about most things I mentioned in the first paragraph at some point or another. We'll see, who knows what the future brings? For now, a bit about the professional side.

Since I finished my PhD in Utrecht, Megi and I moved back to Zagreb. I loved the Netherlands, I had friends there, really great professional contacts, a good job, and perspective. However, I always felt I wanted to go back to Croatia and work there. A big part of the reason for moving back was personal, about where Megi and I wanted to make a life for ourselves in the long-term. But as I've come to understand in the past four years, brewing under the need to settle down somewhere comfortable for a while was also a professional frustration. What are we doing, when pursuing academic careers? What are the kind of sacrifices we're ready to make in order to be deemed excellent? What are we doing to ourselves when we slot ourselves into the worldview that being an academic is a sort of a calling? I still don't know the answers to those questions. There's plenty of contradictory ones, for sure. I hope I'll have time to explore some of them in the future.

In Croatia, I first did a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Rijeka. I planned to do a lot in those six months, and in the end I did finish the last unpublished paper from my thesis; but most of my plans were cut down by my deteriorating health. After my fellowship in Rijeka was done, I got a job at a small private Catholic university in Zagreb. I was a replacement for their faculty at the psych department who were taking maternity leave. I spent three years teaching mostly psych methods and surviving a horrible operation that saved me from colon cancer.

Let me tell you, those three years were really hard. I managed to work through most of it either by occupying myself with teaching, going to psychotherapy, or spending time with our dog Floki.

Research was mostly at a standstill because I was in survival mode, but also because I didn't see or couldn't institutionally make a move towards something. If you think it's hard to land an academic job, let me tell you how hard that is if you limit yourself just to a country like Croatia. During that time, the thing I regret the most is fucking up a lot of professional friendships along the way - the long months of being incommunicado and wallowing meant that many a bridge was burned just because I couldn't be there. I understand that everybody understands, but disappearing from the world for three years doesn't only mean you were lost to your world, but your world was lost to you too. If I regret anything, not mustering the strength to stay in contact would be it.

Well, I think there's strength now. Two weeks ago I started a new postdoc position at the University of Rijeka, at their Department of Cultural Studies. For the next five years, my research will move quite a bit away from psychology, taking the strangest of turns, toward studying Nikola Tesla. I'm a member of a newly founded ERC-funded research group studying post-empires - the legacies, memories, places, things, persons that kept going in our cultures long after the polities that formed them dissolved into history. I'll be studying Nikola Tesla, a man who became one of the best known inventors and scientists in the world, looking at how two empires (Austro-Hungarian Empire and the USA) both defined him and propagated many images of him through time.

It's a strange turn, from 20th century psychology to Tesla, isn't it? I think so too, and that's why I needed it. During the past four years, I feel like I engaged so strongly in the replication crisis debates in psychology that I burned out not only professionally, but intellectually. I can't put my finger as to why this happened, but I knew I needed to refashion my research interests into something new. I don't think it's about personal investment - I'm real darn invested in doing good history of science. We'll see how it goes and maybe I'll understand it better, this need to move away, to disassociate, to do something new.

So, here's to something new! Who knows, maybe after surviving horrible things you don't get your life back. You make a new one from the pieces of the old.

Header art by Danielle Navarro, https://art.djnavarro.net/, licensed under CC-BY-SA.