The Field

In an office-bound work setting, field work presents such an immense appeal for many people, be it firstjobbers who are starting with their career or oldtimers who badly need a change from their desk-bound routine.

A colleague, whose desk is practically an elbow away, loves the field because he can get a lot of actual work done.

I find field work as fresh air that puts myself in a bubble and allows me to actually focus on one single mission, whatever that is: from sitting down with a partner organization to get a logframe done, introducing e-mails to local organizations in the province, tracking garbage pick-up route from residential area to final dump site to justify the cost of garbage cart with dividers, jotting down notes like crazy until my wrist went frozen (I’m not used to voice recorder) while a colleague (who interpreted the whole conversation) finally snapped, “My God, you ask too much!”, to breaking the ice by distributing clove cigarettes to a group of foreigner-shy farmers to get them talk about rice harvest in post-disaster situation,

It was very rewarding to hear comment of that colleague of mine upon reading my write-up later on, “All this was from our last visit? I think you can ask more from now.”

In the midst of a bad burnt out episode, field work helped me refocus and re-thinking about which direction I need to take as the road not taken has the same drama with the road taken.