All will be well.

It is late, and I am tired, and soon I will head off to bed.

At work, some things are good, and some things are bad.  Now that I've found some pieces that I might be able to work with to make some kind of reasonable postdoc out of, I'm worried that I'll mess it up.

Well.  I guess I'll try to do well and see how it goes.

But it's not all worry, worry, worry.

I have carrot cake, and I finally bought a whisk and a can opener.  I'm really looking forward to watching Catching Fire.  My ginger syrup makes delicious little tonics.  I'm thinking I might be able to make it to the library tomorrow.  That'd be so nice.

In a few days, I'll be heading out to visit a friend, and we've got a plan for feeding me that's not stressing me out too badly.

I'm a lovely heavy-tired from my roller derby practice, and I've stuffed myself with roasted chicken and squash and carrot cake.  I feel like adding some good sleep in to all this, and I can handle tomorrow.

let's go again

Just a note?  I bought some bok choi at the grocery the other day and stuck its root-end into some water in the fridge, thinking this might help it not go all gross and wilty.

It kinda worked, but kinda not - some of the stalks stayed nicely, but others got wilty.

Yesterday, I took the water (and its bok choi) out of the fridge because I intended to cook it up.  That didn't happen, and I didn't put the plant back in the fridge because, you know, I don't know.

Now, at room temperature, in water, the bok choi is just as firm and appealing as the day I bought it.  I am determined to cook it tomorrow in some duck fat, before it starts growing slime in the water.

So that's the data I have so far on keeping bok choi so that's it's still usable after three days.  Undoubtedly, there's more data yet to come, but this was promising, so I thought I'd share.

But all of that is beside the point.  My point for the next couple days, I've decided, will be iterating upon my iteration post to make it better.  Is my bok choi a good lead-in for this?  Not really, I think, not the way I've written it.  But it's a nice example, and potentially useful, so in it goes.

I have a tendency to get stuck.  Stuck on how to start something, stuck on a particular piece of a problem I'm working on, stuck.  What's interesting is my different kinds of stuck.  When I'm stuck on a piece in a puzzle I'm solving, it's hard to pull myself away.  I have to really work at evaluating if the thing I'm hammering at needs to be solved.  Often it doesn't - and it takes significant effort on my part to pry myself off and set myself on a more productive path.  I am not always successful.  The other stuck - the don't want to do it version - is also troublesome.  I can avoid a task that I'd rather not do, and worse, I can generally justify this avoidance in ways that feel very true.  The trick to a good justification, I think, is to have elements of truth ("this is not the top priority right now") with elements I want ("I don't have time to do anything on this until X is finished).

For both these stucks, iteration is my friend.  I can pop a random number into my calculation and remind myself I can come back to it; I can convince myself that there's value in going the rest of the way through a problem even if I haven't figured out exactly how to handle Hurdle Y.  If I'm avoiding something, it's much tougher to justify not working on it when all I'm asking myself to do is fifteen minutes of work, or making a directory, or putting a paper into the bibliography, or outlining one section.  I'll edit pretty much ad infinitum, so it's never a stretch to tell myself that what I need to write (or do) is a rough draft.

I still avoid things, and I still spend too much time on appealing problems.  But in general, I think I'm improving.  Recently, there was something at work that I wasn't terribly excited about doing.  But I wrote up a draft (in Word, people!) and sent it out.  I've been editing for about a week, and the thing is looking just fine now.  Bok choi?  Crispy.  This blog post?  Slightly improved (friends may disagree).  Talk with my supervisor?  Uuuungh, painful, and didn't go great.  But definitely better than nothing.

I find that promising myself improvement doesn't always get me unstuck, and I'm not really sure where the difference lies between the successes and the failures.

I wonder if part of the difference is fear.  Or maybe some feeling of overwhelm.  And in the interest of attacking a problem - in this case, never writing a damn thing - from every possible angle, here I am writing.  My thinking is that practicing what I'm avoiding, even in a different setting, might lessen its barrier into something I can more easily overcome with my promises for iteration.  Actually, I prefer to do my practice with something a little easier than "writing a scientific paper".  If I were doing something equally difficult, I'll bet I'd never do it.

You know what definitely does help?  Sleep.  I'm going to go invest in some of that magical elixir right now.

i++

I have a tendency to get stuck on the start.

And for this, iteration is my friend.  I'll edit pretty much ad infinitum, so it's never a stretch to tell myself that what I need to write (or do) is a rough draft.

Recently, there was something at work that I wasn't terribly excited about doing.  But I wrote up a draft (in Word, people!) and sent it out.  I've been editing for about a week, and the thing is looking just fine now.  Thanks, iteration!

I find that the promise of improvement doesn't always get me unstuck, and I'm not really sure where the difference lies between the successes and the failures.

And in the interest of attacking a problem - in this case, never writing a damn thing - from every possible angle, here I am writing.  My thinking is that practicing, even in a different format, might lessen the barrier for scientific writing.  Actually, I prefer to start with an easier format, such as writing non-consequential posts not intended for colleagues.  If I were doing something equally difficult, I'll bet I'd never do it.

This discussion feels a bit rambly to me, but that's okay.  Maybe tomorrow I'll do some editing and make a better version.

I make an elixir, We make an elixir, You make an elixir.

Two things.

Wait, no, three things.

Thing 1.  For some reason, I became convinced several weeks ago that I wanted to roast carrots with thin slices of ginger.  Well, fine.  Ginger is available in root form, a form that soothes my cross-contamination worried mind, at my grocery.  The carrots didn't really work, and then I was left with a significant amount of ginger root, which smelled amazing and seemed a shame to waste.  After a lot of thinking, I made ginger syrup.  And now I make myself a tonic of ginger syrup, lime wedge, and sparkling water after dinner.  I put it in a tiny cup and enjoy it quite a lot.

Thing 2.  I need to do some work on a thing for work.  I don't care about it, but my supervisor does.  I'm trying to care about that more, and succeeding a little.  I'm going to do this almost right now and then get to bed.

Thing 3.  I want to go to the library.  The books I'd like to check out are Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving: A Novel.

I need to get on that.  But first, to work!

I am not a nice person.

I've been reaching out to all the resources my institution offers, and there have been surprisingly many that have been quite useful.  Like, I wasn't expecting the ombuds office to have enough understanding of my situation to offer helpful advice, but they have been really great.  (Sorry for doubting, ombuds people.)

One of the things I got from the ombuds office was a book on having tough conversations.  The book rings pretty true to me, but the method they suggest requires you to, among other things, not be reactive and also to not want pain for the other person.

At some point, months ago, all I wanted was to resolve things.  Maybe not even fully!  Just enough so that I could work in the lab without too much hassle.  Just enough so that I felt like I had a chance to earn my way back into the group.

Now, I want to yell and shout and scream.  I want to make sarcastic remarks.  I want to ridicule my supervisor's perspective.

I'm not exactly sure what's up with the sea change, here.  One contributing factor could be all the kinda-humiliating experiences of assumed incompetence.  

I've also been frustrated with all the different directions I sometimes get pulled in.  I decided, a while ago, to try really hard to Do What Boss-Man Wants.  But everyone feels comfortable telling me what to do.  So for any given task, I'll get told to do it one way by my boss.  And then someone will come in and start chastising me for doing it That Way rather than his favorite Other Way.  And then while I'm looking up some materials properties to help me determine if there's any difference between That Way and Other Way, someone else will come in and tell me that I'm overthinking things and that I'll never get anything done (a true point, to be sure) and that I should just do it, Some Way.  

Just doing something, any old way, is my preference.  So I'm in total agreement with Third Dude Offering Advice.  But I don't know how to explain that Boss will be irritated if I don't do things his way.  And that if I go off script, I'd better have good, numerical justification at the ready, else I'll get an earful.  Or worse, the silent treatment.  It's a special kind of pain, to have your Boss light up and start talking physics when someone else enters the room.  And for that talk to go out like a light when you walk over, wanting to join in.

So I want to yell, and even I can tell that losing my cool is not the way to go.  But I'm so angry, and it's so hard for me to imagine being an effective member of this group.  It seems like it would feel so good to lash out.

Uck.  It seems like another trip to the ombuds office might be in order.

I feel like it would've been helpful if every physics class included a component on how to keep your cool when people start yelling at you for not knowing something that you do, in fact, know.  I mean, actually knowing stuff is important.  But when permission to do work is on the line, it's also important that other people know that you know something.

She takes up space, I take up space. You can't have this space because I'm using it. Go find your own.

I question whether or not I'm cut out for science.

I also wonder if I'm really good enough to be taking up spots at national labs and detector schools and grad programs.  I totally suggested to my E&M instructor that he bring up my admission to the graduate program at the next faculty meeting.  I mean, if I'm really dumber than his two-year old grandchild, shouldn't he?

I didn't really believe him; even then I knew I could out-physicist his darling toddler.  But I was serious when I told him that maybe he should kick me out of the program.

Lately, though, I've been feeling just a tiny, tiny bit more like I have something to offer the physics community.  I feel like I'm a really good fit, actually, for the job I currently have.  And that it's wonderful for me to have so much diverse science I can interact with.

I have this job, and there's people who don't.  I feel like there are probably people who could do better work here or make more out of this opportunity, but I also feel like there are plenty who wouldn't.

So it's a subtle shift, but it's interesting.  My reaction to ridiculous assumptions of incompetence is still, "dude!  just fire me already!"  But I also feel like they'd be losing an asset.  Like, an asset that has real value.

So, world, there it is.  I take up some space, and I'm a tiny bit okay with that.  I have some skills, and that's pretty awesome.  My team isn't currently interested in anything I have to offer, which is kind of dumb.  Do they think I'm going to stick around without any interesting work or community?  Because I am not.  They way they're acting is not okay, and me, my space, and my skills are going to go elsewhere unless things change.

Awesome.

I felt uncertain about going to roller derby practice tonight, but I managed to get myself there anyway.

True: I got lost.  True: the house numbers were near-invisible in the dark.  True: random neighbor-people waved at me, which was a friendly enough signal that I found myself able to ask them if they knew which house I was looking for.

And so I arrived!  Late, but that was okay.  I had a lovely time jumping around in my socks.

I talked with my friend later, briefly, and we made plans for working on our paper tomorrow.  And not in a, "oh gods we suck why don't we have more done" kind of way.  In a, "and so we'll hang out on the google and just work together for a while" kind of way.  This is a pleasant way for me to interact with this paper.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.  It'd be pretty sweet if it's also a reasonably productive method.

I talked with my mom while I ate dinner, and we talked about stuff I'm doing to make work better.  We talked about her cold.  We talked about books.  She mentioned several times that my co-workers are behaving badly.  Ha!  Take that, co-workers!

It feels nice to know my mom is in my corner.  I feel like a lot of people are in my corner.  I feel like maybe I can climb out of this hole I find myself in.  And today I feel like, despite work-based irritation, I had a lovely evening.

And now, to bed.

Wow, okay. Me: not so much with the writing.

So I signed up for BlogHer's November Daily Post Thingy challenge, and so far I've already missed two days?  One day?

Anyway.

Writing once a day is, apparently, more difficult than I imagined.

It is odd that I underestimated the difficulty, because I started a blog partly because I find academic writing (the only kind of writing I ever attempt, mind) excruciatingly difficult.  I thought that there was a chance I wouldn't find writing some manner of vignette as big a hurdle.  And that I could therefore practice my hurdling with less stress and more frequently, thus making the academic writing a bit more approachable.

I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but a few things are on track with this attempt: I do find it difficult to write a post, although not nearly as difficult as writing parts of a paper.  I am writing more frequently than I would if I were not posting.  Writing is not my thing.  My language tends toward pictures, and all that.  Linear speech typically requires something akin to translation for me.

But linear speech is the world I live in, so it seems like a good idea to do some practicing.  Also, people get pissed when I drag my feet on academic writing.  I don't like any part of that - not their pissiness and not my foot-dragging.  So again, I'm excited about practicing.

Well.  "Excited" might be a little strong.

It would be accurate to say that I would be excited about having delicious chocolate cake for tomorrow's breakfast.  Practicing writing, on the other hand?  I am fairly certain that practicing writing constitutes "worthwhile effort."

And I have made a bit of progress on academic writing fronts.

Today I wrote a draft that describes a procedure for a simple experiment I've been doing in the lab.  This, at the request of my supervisor.  I want to be irritated by this, but it was a really good suggestion.  That I took.  And completed.  (See the proud post-doc write?)

Yesterday, I sat down to work on a paper that's been dragging on for a long, long time.  I sat down to work on it like it was no big deal!  And promptly found the password to the group's data had changed.  So, you know, I didn't get anything done.  Beyond sending a few emails and uncovering the new password.  But still.

Progress?  Maybe?

Certainly enough to merit cake, I think.

Hello! Please stop being a jerk!

Work really sucks right now.  Like, I should probably start looking for another job?

On the plus side, I'm gaining some skills and knowledge that I'm very excited about.  Also on the plus side, I'm gaining some ground on not getting so terribly perturbed by my co-workers.

But it seems to me like the people I work with are now deeply entrenched within confirmation bias, and their bias is that I'm incompetent.  This makes for a serious lack of fun.  And makes it surprisingly difficult to be productive at certain tasks.

They say things that are frustrating, and this is not new.  People have been saying frustrating things since the accident.  My accident.  My responses have been varying, and I still haven't found a way to respond that I like.

Initially, I was so shocked by my colleagues' statements that I was speechless.  This phase involved quite a bit of gaping and also a decent amount of crying.  Blinding rage followed closely behind.  During this phase, I was also mute, mainly because the thoughts that sprang to mind were clearly not conducive to a collegial work environment.

I'm currently trying Earnest Discussion:
"I'm having difficulty with experiment Y and was wondering ..."
"Oh, you do X?  When doing experiment Y?"

Now, data logs show that my supervisor does not, in fact, do X.  He is nonetheless very confident when suggesting, impatiently, that the reason I am having trouble with experiment Y is that I do not do X.  How do I respond?  I do not wish to be confrontational, but the information he's giving me isn't helpful, so ...

"I'd like to do X, that seems like a good idea.  But it's not clear to me how I can manage that, given that I usually A and B.  Those seem like the only way to make X happen - do you have any suggestions on how to make sure to ..."
"Right, yeah, I get that C is true.  That's why I do A and B.  Is there anything else I could be doing to make sure X happens?"
"No, no, I don't want to waste Expensive, Valuable Resource.  It's just that the behavior really suggests that something is going on with "
"Oh, yeah, that'd be great.  If we could do experiment Y', that would help clarify what's going on."

Now, it's true.  Experiment Y' will help clarify what's going on.  So in some ways, this exchange was successful.  I follow the path of non-confrontation because I worry that pointing out to my supervisor that he does not do X will turn the conversation into a non-useful fight that serves only to make me look really petty.

"But you don't doooooooo that.  I checked the data like a creepy stalker and look!  See how you're wrong?  Admit you're wrong!  Admit it!"

In many cases, though, taking the non-confrontational path feels like verifying assumptions that I'm not a good worker/scientist/problem-solver:

"If you had just looked in the lab book, you would have seen that's expected behavior!"

Dude, I looked in the lab book.  You didn't write down enough information for me to be anywhere near certain that the numbers you're pointing to can be directly applied to the setup we've currently got.  And remember how you were lecturing me about not "playing around" with these particular parts, as they're expensive and custom and very necessary for experiments we hope to do in the near future?  Okay, whatever.  You know?  I agree.  It's always good to check the lab book.  That's a true thing.

"Okay.  Lab books are great.  I'll make sure to check the lab book next time."

Success?  It's true, I'll check the lab book next time.  That's not a bad thing to confirm.  And I think the interaction resulted in more good-feeling than if I had been all, "dude DUH I checked the lab book.  Maybe if your notes didn't suck so much I could've found the info I needed."

I think it's useful to reduce tension between me and my supervisor, but not correcting him allows interpretations like, "Oops, silly me, I didn't think to check the lab book!"  And also, "Oops, I didn't know that basic thing about physics.  Thanks for telling me!"  And also, "Oops!  I should have warned you about the test I was about to do!  In writing, since I totally warned you verbally but it was silly for me to assume that you were paying attention to what I said!"  I am not saying any of these things, nor would I.  But I'm worried that my supervisor is hearing them.

I think I'm okay with my supervisor thinking I'm dumb as long as he's also able to change his opinion.  And since confronting his misconceptions directly wasn't productive, this method at least seems worth a try.  But it worries me a bit.  I don't want future me to be all, "Oops!  I assumed you'd be able to objectively evaluate evidence since you're a scientist.  But I forgot that everyone's brain works to confirm their worldview, and that scientists can be prone to thinking their version of reality is unimpeachably accurate!  My bad!"

Well, it is true that I make an awful lot of missteps.  I should clearly spend less of my brain power thinking about unicorns, and how soft their noses are.  And how beautiful their eyes are.

Actually, I don't mean that.  I think those are great things to think about.  And now I'm going to go to sleep so I can go for a nice, early hike with my friend.  Who is not a unicorn but is nonetheless awesome.

What if I make a plan? How would that be?

What did I do on my paper yesterday, you ask?

Nothing, I say.  Nothing.

What did I do on my paper today?

You got it.

What will I do on my paper tomorrow?

No, really, I'm going to work on my paper tomorrow.

My goals for tomorrow are:

1. Do a short edit of someone's application and send him an email summarizing said edits.
2. Oh man did I leave my laundry in the laundry room and not remember till now?
3. The door is, like, locked.
4. Tomorrow morning I need to dry my laundry.
5. Clean some parts at work.
6. Solder some parts at work.
7. Spend some time workin' on my paper.
8. Go to a roller derby practice for potential recruits.
9. Eat.  Don't laugh, this takes for-effing-ever.
10. Shower.

Will all that happen?  Can all that happen?  Laundry will not take much time.  I think I should only spend a short amount of time editing, because looking at this list ...

The work stuff is simple, but will take a while.  Three hours?  Yeah, more than three hours.  Let's say four hours, which may be reasonable provided I don't decide to expand my work-project list.

I'll need to eat before and after work, but need to leave two hours between my last meal and derby, which means I'll need to eat a solid lunch at 1 PM.  Uh, so if I want to be done with my at-work portion of the day, I need to be in the lab at 8 AM?

Problem: it would be really nice to be able to come home at noon, make lunch, eat lunch, spend an hour (half-hour?  please?) getting my gear together, and then either nap or work on my paper.  Ideally, I'd not have to do any work after derby and spend that time lazing, cooking, and/or reading.  And showering, dear gods, the showering.  But even if I get all my at-work work done in the morning, that means not spending much time on my paper and screwing over my friend.

Okay, how about:

1. In to the lab at 9 AM to do three hours of work.  I think I can get the essentials done if I don't do some of the futzing I was planning on.  (Thank you, Adderall!)
2. Head home at noon to make and eat lunch.
3. Give myself until 2 PM to do lunching, hearding derby gear, making a map to get to the practice space, and editing my friend's application.
4. From 2 PM to 2:45 PM, either work on my paper or nap.  Depending on which feels most essential at the time.  I'm guessing it'll be nap.  We'll see.
5. Derby (2.5 hours), shower (1 hour if I include figuring out what to do with my smelly clothes), eat a bunch of food (maybe one hour?).
6. So now it's going on 8 PM and if all has gone well I'm not ravenous at this point.  But if all has gone well-ish, I will be tired.  It's still early enough to deal with laundry, so I should do that.
7. How do I do anything other than finalize my current Amazon order and then chill on the sofa with a cozy blanket reading my new book on the impact of Brown v. Board of Education?

Also, this list means that I've neglected to locate the certificate that says I really do own my car.  Which I think I needed a few weeks ago.  I really feel I should get on that.  I suspect I'll be a bit jittery pre-practice, so maybe instead of trying to work on my paper, I should do some attacking of my filing cabinet.  That would reduce the freak-out potential of Monday.

Also, this list ignores the boxes that I need to mail.  But that's okay.  That can wait for another day.

Also, this list does not include any time working on my paper.  Hmm.

I feel like I need a crazy awesome reward with which to bribe myself into a few hours' paper work after derby practice.  Like, crazy awesome.  I get to not have celiac for a day?  I get to feel nice about the progress I've made?  Awwww, I'd like to feel nice.  Not sure there's enough junkie-style serotonin in that one, though.  I get to be invited to David Sedaris' and Amy Vowell's Sunday Evening Tea if I do two hours of work?  Held at Tig Nataro's gluten-free residence just down the street?  In an adorable, comfy, warm outfit that magically appeared in my closet?  And which will not vanish at midnight but will gently pulse blue when it's time for me to go to bed?  (Note: awesome idea, need to think about ways to implement this.)

Point: I will try to think about how to do a few hours' work on my paper after derby.  Considering my current mood, it doesn't seem like there's a suitable bribe in existence that will make this possible, but hey.  I'll keep a lookout and let you know how it goes.

Considering that I'd like to be in to the lab at 9 AM, I'm off to bed.  Peace, people.  

Drumroll, please.

So, I have this paper that needs finishing.

I thought that a thing I could do would be to write down what I've done on the paper every day.

I mean, that is indeed a thing I can do.

And maybe it would be helpful?  Whatever.  I'll try pretty much anything.

So today, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have done ... uh, nothing on my paper.

But I ate dinner!  And picked out a bra online!  Woo!

And soon I'm going to go to sleep.

Maybe tomorrow will go better for me and my paper.

Not a tame man-hating lesbian.

It's true.  I'm not.  The only reason it seems that way is because I am still considering a career in science.

Some background: I broke something at work.  No no no no no please let it not be my fault (it's totally my fault).  People are trying to be judicious and kind and are generally succeeding only at making me incredibly angry.  Hey, I'm super fun!  And did I mention how much I hate the patriarchy?

Three weeks out, my blinding rage is now muting into something more like severely-impaired peripheral-vision rage.  This week, the positives:

1. No swearing at work!  This evening I almost had a pang of regret for hating all the men so very, very much.  They might be, like, people.  People I shouldn't swear at.

2. I found the mistake in my calculation and now everything's (reasonably close to) good.  I'd tell you what the mistake was, but it's embarrassing.

3. The many ideas surrounding Project: Get Work Done have, generally, suffered in the super-sadness of the Broke a Thing aftermath.  However, I had gotten started on one of the projects prior to The Horror, The Horror, and it's been going well.

This particular project is intended to help increase my job-related reading (research papers and textbooks).  Generally, I get sucked into the lab during the day.  This is a combination of inclination and project priorities.  I don't really need to be told twice to spend time wrenching in a building that smells of vacuum pump oil.  And I like to be in the lab along with the rest of my team.  The downside is that reading papers becomes an evening/weekend endeavor.  In sum, I've been attempting to do my literature reviews when my meds have well and truly worn off, and this has been wildly unsuccessful.  And I hate this, because I suspect many papers have something interesting to say.

So.  My college microphone, a new digital recorder, and I have teamed up for out-loud readings of my highest-priority texts.  The plan is to form papers into TAL-style audio pieces.  Obviously, with music.  Because how awesome would that be?

This is a complex plan, the kind I'd normally consider trouble.  But the first step offers a nice, low barrier: read the paper out loud.  Brain involvement can be minimal and I get a jolt of narcissistic joy when listening to my digitized voice.  Crucially, the explicitly iterative plan for the paper lulls me into actually really truly believing I can puzzle through content as little or as lots as I wants while reading.  For me, every sentence in a paper can hold a universe of perplexity.  An option to shift the sorting-out to post-production is ... helpful.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this plan and eager to see where it'll go.  The reading has so far been fun.  I have yet to do any editing, but my hope is that I'll find its barrier to be reasonably low.  And if not, hey, I've at least read some words.

Though, lest you think that I am a steadfastly practical beast, holy wow do I have a vision.  The latest in cosmological constraints on the standard model, with the occasional fade into a discussion with my stellar-modeler bro, woven throughout with music that gives me some space to melt into ideas?  Is it just me, or does science go all sparkles, sometimes?  Welcome to my mind, people.  I hope I can manage at least a first-order approximation.

Anyways, it's undeniably a slow way to get through papers.  But it has so far been a way to actually make headway.  In the future I might try to find less time-intensive ways to get through literature.  For now, this plan has been enjoyable and has increased my work-related reading from zero to not-zero.  Ahhh.

Also, I hate the patriarchy.  I really, really, really hate the patriarchy.

me, sucking at work

Oh, wow, I'm really feeling like I'm sucking at work right now.

Did I finish making that thing?  Uh, no.

Okay, what about that other thing?  No.

How's that paper coming?  It's not.  I mean, not the way either of us want it to.

Did you at least get that one thing done?  I'm feeling a little ill right now; could you come back later?

I really like my idea about writing a summary of my days or the week and keeping track of time spent on projects, but I'm having difficulty making it happen.

I'm thinking I need to find a way to make it happen.

Uuuurggghhh.

Not so much.

I'm struggling with this postdoc thing.

I love it.  People listen to me.  The work is new and interesting.  I'm making slow but steady progress with my projects.  Some of the projects I'm working on are nearly done (!), so soon I'll get to work on some brand-new questions.  The group is great; they have a lot of expertise and like to talk about work.  I feel like my work matters.

I also sometimes feel really worried I'll be fired.  Is my supervisor happy with the work I'm doing?  Am I making rapid enough progress?  Am I a good postdoc?  Am I doing enough real science?  Am I a good worker?  Is my ADHD spilling over in ways I need to address?  Does my shirt smell too noticeably?

I don't expect to be ecstatic all the time, but I'd like to have more control over my anxiety.

Something I've been trying has been writing at the end of the day: summarizing the work I did, and then pointing out something that I did particularly well and also something I feel I'd do differently in the future.  Me, I love concreteness.

However.

Uh, writing doesn't usually happen at the end of the day.  So I'm thinking I need to change this plan up so it's a little easier for me.  I'm thinking I'll try to write something that's less free-form and more form-like.  I can easily make a table of my current goals, and then each day put a check mark on the goals I've worked on.  And then add one sentence re: awesomeness and one sentence re: not the best.

Now I just need to figure out formatting ...

All better.

In case you were wondering, the sertraline made by generic drug manufacturer Lupin may not be gluten free.  I haven't gone through the work to calculate a confidence interval on this statement, so, you know, take this pronouncement with a grain of salt.

But still.

I had been taking Greenstone's sertraline and all was well.  When I switched pharmacies, the pills I picked up didn't have the nice little G marks, so I started making some calls.  Lupin was able to tell me that their sertraline contained no gluten ingredients, but they (as is typical) couldn't guarantee the final product was gluten free.

So when I switched to the Lupin's pills, I was careful not to introduce any new foods.  And I got sick.  First a little sick, and then worse, and then the migraine started, and then I went all whoop-ass on the situation and got a new prescription filled, this time Greenstone.

And now I'm all better.  Correlation?  For sure.  Causation?  Mmmm.

But this is definitely a data point, and for some it might be useful, so I'll put it out there.

Also, how would I calculate the confidence interval in this case?  I can probably estimate the probability I'd feel ill on any given day.  If I pay attention, I could also estimate the duration of illness typically associated with low-level gluten ingestion.  I feel like this should let me calculate ... something quantitative.

Dunno.  I'll get back to you on that.

Baby Steps?

So my potatoes are cooking away in my super fancy new pan, and I don't want to write anything.

This is, tragically, rather ideal since I'm trying to practice doing things I'd rather avoid.

So instead of not writing, I will write about something that is very exciting to me.  (Likely not many other people, but hey.)

Finishing projects is typically difficult for me, and I've been working on a paper with my peeps from my graduate institution for a long, long while.  Like, it could have been finished partway through graduate school.  I mean, if I were someone else.

But I am not someone else, and here's this paper, languishing.  My peeps and I had become discouraged, and every week we'd be all, "we'll get a lot done!" and every week we would get very, very little done.

Bad.

I was feeling stressed out about this.  I was feeling particularly stressed out about this because I had lots of work to do for my current job.  My current, awesome, amazing job which I love and would like to keep.  And I really just didn't see how I'd get anything done on the paper without being someone else.

Side note: my potatoes burned a little.  The new pan is awesome, but does not have magical anti-burn properties.

Anyway, the point is, I'm not someone else and I don't like feeling crazy, so I didn't work on the paper for a month and it was awesome.  For the past week and a half, my peeps and I have been churning away at the paper for about an hour each day, and I'm relinquishing control of it at the end of the week.  It's cut into my work time a little bit, but I knew it was for a finite time and I got to pick that time.  And I kept saying, "I'll get to it, I'll get to it," and I did.

Good.

I read in a book that ADHD folk often need to build the sense that their future can be different from their past, and I feel like this paper-writing experience has been an example of this.  I'd very much like to know someone in the sciences who struggled with ADHD, but knows how to manage herself to a tee and has a satisfying and in-control work and home life.  Also, I want a pony.  And an oscilloscope and a standing end mill.

So, right.  This paper-writing has been overwhelming at a few points and tiring at all points, but it's been something really positive.  And I'm really proud of myself.

Oh, dear.

I'm ... starting a blog?

This is embarrassing primarily because the likelihood of continued posting seems horribly small.

But no one uses LiveJournal any more, and I dislike the short-statement format of Facebook, so ...

Anyway, I'm off to the grocery store.

See ya'll later!