My neighbour took this photo on the way home the other evening. You guys … I get to live here. It’s really hard to want to leave.
This week, I finally heard back about an international conference. “Yes”, they said. “Congratulations. We would like you to share your research at our conference”. With less than six months to go, they say: “We would love for you to travel thousands of kilometres, spend thousands on airfares and thousands on conference registration.” Is the early bird fee still available? Who knows! But I can tell you for sure that the conference rate at the venue’s hotel has long since sold out, meaning accommodation would require even more thousands of dollars than they would have if they had coordinated acceptance with hotel bookings.
I tell ya, friends, it’s really chafed my underbelly, this little sequence of events. I think I’d be feeling some southern hemisphere righteous indignation even if there wasn’t a massive geopolitical situation going on. But as things stand, with fuel supplies under threat and dangerous rhetoric from the world’s so-called leaders, it’s making travel fairly unappealing!
Of course, conferences are fab for the networking, for hearing new ideas and for shimmying up our thinking. But you know what else is good? Staying home! I’m estimating it would take $6-$7K to get me to that event (*even if the world isn’t melting by then). But I can think of so many ways to spend that money locally – running baby lounges, giving talks away, creating episodes of the Feeding Companion podcast.
UGH … what to do?