I'm Still Collecting Data

A Story from the Wandering & Wooing Series

Written by Joni Roberts

Traveler, storyteller, and public health advocate

"I'm still collecting data."

It's probably the least romantic thing I've ever said while dating.

My ex-husband used to ask me what I thought about him.

What I thought about us.

Where I thought the relationship was going.

And every now and then, I'd give him the same answer.

"I'm still collecting data."

He hated that answer.

Not because it was wrong.

Because it wasn't definitive.

He wanted certainty.

I wanted observation.

He wanted conclusions.

I wanted more information.

At the time, I didn't think much about it.

I thought everyone approached relationships that way.

Apparently not.

The older I've become, the more I've realized that "I'm still collecting data" isn't something I said.

It's how I move through the world.

I'm slow to decide.

Not because I'm indecisive.

Because I know first impressions are incomplete.

People are wonderfully consistent over time.

They're just not always consistent in the first hour.

Or the first week.

Sometimes not even the first year.

So I watch.

I listen.

I ask questions.

I notice patterns.

And then, eventually...

I analyze.

That mindset has shaped nearly every part of my life.

It's certainly how I became a public health researcher.

Public health doesn't begin with answers.

It begins with observation.

Who is getting sick?

Who isn't?

What patterns emerge?

What assumptions are we making?

What aren't we seeing?

Collect the data.

Then analyze.

Travel, I've discovered, works much the same way.

When I first started traveling internationally, I thought I was collecting passport stamps.

Now I realize I've been collecting people.

Conversations.

Meals.

Silences.

Misunderstandings.

Compliments.

Contradictions.

Moments that don't make sense until months—or sometimes years—later.

I can't tell you how many times I've experienced something in one country that felt random, only to encounter it again somewhere else.

That's when my brain lights up.

Not because I think I've found a universal truth.

But because I may have found a pattern worth paying attention to.

Take the married men.

If it had happened once, I probably would have shrugged it off.

Twice?

Interesting.

Three times?

Coincidence?

By the fifth country, I wasn't asking, "Why does this keep happening to me?"

I was asking, "What am I observing?"

That's a very different question.

One centers me.

The other centers the phenomenon.

People often ask researchers whether we're looking for something specific.

Sometimes we are.

Sometimes we're simply paying attention.

Some of the best research questions aren't designed in an office.

They're discovered because life keeps putting the same thing in front of you until you can no longer ignore it.

That's how this series began.

Not because I set out to study courtship.

I didn't.

I was supposed to be studying public health.

Maternal health.

Health systems.

Health equity.

Instead, life kept handing me conversations about love.

Marriage.

Gender.

Power.

Boundaries.

At some point, I stopped laughing long enough to realize I was collecting data.

Collecting data doesn't mean judging people.

It means resisting the urge to rush toward conclusions.

That's harder than it sounds.

We live in a world that rewards certainty.

Social media certainly does.

Everyone wants a hot take.

A definitive opinion.

A tidy explanation.

Travel has made me suspicious of tidy explanations.

The longer I wander, the more complicated people become.

I've noticed this in myself, too.

When someone tells me a story, my first instinct isn't to decide whether they're right.

It's to wonder what information I don't have yet.

Who else was in the room?

What happened before this?

How would the other person tell the story?

What assumptions am I bringing with me?

Those questions have saved me from oversimplifying people more times than I can count.

This way of seeing the world has also made me more patient.

Not passive.

Patient.

There's a difference.

Patience allows people enough time to reveal themselves.

Sometimes they become exactly who you hoped they were.

Sometimes they become someone entirely different.

Either way, the truth usually arrives eventually.

It just rarely arrives on our preferred timeline.

One of the gifts of wandering is that it constantly reminds me how little I know.

Every country humbles me.

Every conversation complicates something I thought I understood.

Every friendship challenges a stereotype I didn't even realize I carried.

The world is endlessly more nuanced than we allow it to be.

Maybe that's why I love traveling so much.

Not because it confirms what I already believe.

Because it interrupts it.

I've started to think of curiosity as a discipline.

Not a personality trait.

A discipline.

It requires restraint.

It asks us to delay judgment.

To ask another question.

To stay in the discomfort of not knowing.

That may be the hardest thing of all.

Especially when we're talking about people.

Especially when we're talking about ourselves.

When my ex-husband asked me what I thought about our relationship, I genuinely wasn't withholding an answer.

I didn't know yet.

Not because I wasn't paying attention.

Because I was.

Very carefully.

Life has taught me that the first chapter rarely tells the whole story.

Neither does the middle.

Sometimes not even the ending.

There are always details we only understand in hindsight.

These days, I smile when I think about that phrase.

"I'm still collecting data."

It has followed me into my classroom.

Into my research.

Into my friendships.

Into my travels.

Into the way I understand the world.

I suppose that's what wandering has become for me.

Not an escape.

Not a vacation.

A way of paying attention.

A way of collecting stories before I collect conclusions.

And maybe that's the real gift of travel.

Not that it changes who we are.

But that it gives us enough data to understand ourselves a little better.

What I'm Still Wandering...

What patterns have I dismissed because I was too eager for an explanation?

How often do I mistake one experience for a universal truth?

What stories am I still too close to analyze well?

What might become clear five years from now that I can't yet see?

And perhaps the question that keeps finding me, wherever I go...

How do we stay curious in a world that rewards certainty?

For now, I don't need all the answers.

I'm still collecting data.

And I'm still wandering.