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.