Another weekend, another uplifting conference, and now it is Carnaval time and it would be nice if I were living at home in the city and could just absorb the atmosphere but I do not feel like fighting traffic and I want to ride the writing wave.
I really do feel like a completely different person when I am not in the zone of oppression. I wonder whether I can bring this with me–it always seems to fail. Do we have to go home? Should I apply for a job as a department chair in an ostensibly more desolate place, just to get out from under the local heel?
#OccupyHE
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Apply. You are not required to be miserable, and if local culture is so oppressive then, indeed, anywhere else might be better. You don’t have to take a job if it is offered but it would be worth getting the opportunity to consider. IMHO. I’m glad you’ve been getting out and enjoying yourself in other places.
Although, here, all I need is enough $ to leave on weekends more regularly, and slightly less obstruction/sabotage at the micro-level. It’s very hard to tell since I bring with me this attitude of fitting-in which shades too easily into submission to the irrationality of others. A little more autonomy here and I would be like many other faculty; if I could claim that with current chair life would change markedly. The job I swear I could get is in Vermilion SD, where they are desperate to hire; population is 10K and temperature today is very low; it is one of the worst paid places in the country (although better than here, I discern), but there would be costs. I could try to use for counter offer but am not sure this would be taken seriously. I think an application could do me good, though, just as an exercise.