Samuel Ajala’s Field Notes
Monday is the first day of my week and it is usually one of the busiest days, though I work from home all week. I start my day by planning and strategizing for the week.
Monday is the first day of my week and it is usually one of the busiest days, though I work from home all week. I start my day by planning and strategizing for the week.
I was amazed by the vibrant energy of the conference, reconnecting with familiar faces and meeting new colleagues.
I normally use Mondays as an admin day to catch up on emails from the weekend and plan out my to-do lists for the week.
After a long day of back-to-back workshops, I went to a reception organized by Climate Central and Impact US at Strangelove´s. I wasn’t going to attend because the temperature was near 50ºF, combined with heavy rains and strong winds. However, it was a unique experience, and I wanted to meet others.
Mondays tend to have a lot of meetings. An important one is attending the Senior Staff meeting to understand what all of the program offices and divisions — Air and Radiation, Water, Superfund, and Emergency Management, among others — are currently working on.
This week, I’ll be going on a reporting trip in Turkana County, in northern Kenya. It’s about the complex causes of insecurity in the region, a combination of resource scarcity, political manipulation, and longstanding disputes between ethnic groups…
This week was a good blend of work, rest, and fun — plus an opportunity to practice self-care. By the end of the week, I felt like I’d nurtured lots of different parts of myself: the professional, the creative, the social, and the physical.
This was a crazy week! And more eventful than most. Last month, I attended the UN plastics treaty talks at the UNESCO headquarters in central Paris.
I spend today working with some tape I gathered last Friday and polishing a radio spot with my new editor. Last month, I was selected to work one-on-one with an editor through NPR’s California Newsroom. This is my second week with her.
I’m joining the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources for their workshop on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We started in Boise after SEJ (where I attended the first Uproot National Convening) and headed east, spending Sunday night at a gorgeous guest ranch outside Salmon, Idaho.