Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time, about priorities, about health, about our larger purpose. I've been thinking, too, about intentionality.

What is it that I want to do with my career? Am I doing the work that feeds me and my community? Or am I pursuing projects not because they are meaningful to me, but because this is what I am expected to do at this juncture of my career? And what of my health?

Am I putting up guardrails to make sure that I'm not sacrificing my health for the academy and not letting corrosive institutional pressures get to me? I'm sure that these are questions that many of us grapple with. And who better to think through these questions than my dear friend, Dr. Gina Velasco. Dr. Velasco is an Associate Professor and Director of Gender and Sexuality studies at Haverford College. Her book, Queering the Global Filipina Body, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2020.

Gina and I have known each other for 10 years, and I've always appreciated our hangouts where we both just chill and talk about work and life. I've also really admired how Gina's relationship with work has evolved over the past decade as she battled major health challenges and life changes that led her to understand, as she puts it, the impermanence of being healthy.

Related Links

• Gina K. Velasco, Ph.D.
• Queering the Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalisms in the Filipina/o Diaspora