Crunch Time

One of the thought patterns I observe myself having a lot lately is “How did I get to be so lame?” and “Am I introverted?” I find myself wanting to spend more time alone than I ever remember doing.

I finally (on the car ride before I wrote this post) realized that I have A LOT going on and it’s enough to just be. It’s OK to pass up a Sunday afternoon of drinking for chores and cooking so I get good meals this week. It’s OK to come home after work or rehearsal and just chill.

I’m currently facing two major deadlines with three projects. On top of this, PartnerPenguin came out to visit me this weekend and stayed for less than 48 hours. Which, to be honest was extremely happy but also a little devastating.

Project 1

I am presenting a poster on my research for TLoTH at a convention on Nov 1. The poster has 17 figures, all of which I have made from scratch in the past couple weeks. I use PowerPoint to make my figures because that is the program I work best in. Illustrator, InDesign (which to the credit of my first high school was taught to me in 9^th grade) and even Photoshop boggle me. I am fully capable of learning these softwares, but honestly I don’t give enough fucks to spend my time that way. If I was to stay in a technical field or switch to a design based field, I will learn them. For now, .ppt is where it’s at.

Two of the figures and both of the tables were made in software that was developed in my group at TLoTH 10+ years ago. I mentioned before my difficulties with this program and how unhelpful the most knowledgeable scientist was when asked. To combat this, I have been asking a broader net of people to help me when I get stuck. My office mates are very talented in Excel (the program is written in Excel. Yes. That’s a programming language. Sorta.) so I have asked them for help.

But today I fucked up. The accidentally judgmental scientist came by to check up on me because I sent him an email. I told him I figured it out. But I did not credit my office mate for all of the help she gave me. And she was sitting right there. I didn’t realize I did it; I was mostly thinking “What can I say so this guy doesn’t call me stupid again?” After that previous meeting I cried a good bit and it took me almost and hour to recover, so I was very very scared of being judged like that again.

The scientist went away and my office mate called me out. “I was right here. That’s not right, to not give someone credit.” She told me this is not the first time I’ve taken credit for other people’s ideas. I felt horrible. Not only do I really try to give credit where credit is due but it also hurt me that I hurt her. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is brilliant and funny and kind and deserves respect. I did not do that, for a moment.

I resolve to be more conscious of what I’m saying, how I say it and take time if I need to. I have been trying to do that more and more in the past couple years since a good friend called me out on my language framing behaviors. I appreciate the people in my life who trust and respect me enough to call my shit. It just hurts because my flaws are flaw-ful.

The good about the whole situation is that once I got over feeling sad (less than an hour this time), I was able to knock out two figures with that program. It had literally taken me a MONTH to get to that point. I finished a solid draft of my poster and called it quits.

Project 2

I took an hour of vacation today to come home and work on my other poster for the same convention. I am presenting my senior honors thesis from BAU (Big American University).  This has had it’s own set of problems and feels associated because, essentially, I never knew what hypothesis I was testing. I spent a year and half doing research (I produced more original data than some people do during their Masters) but it was all over the place. Now I have all of these beautiful pictures and I don’t have anything to do with them. So I will leave some of them here for you. I’m not even remotely using these so…whatever I guess.

 This is called a phytolith. It's basically silica tree-poop.

This is a fungal spore. These fuckers (called mycorrhiza) are responsible in extracting nutrients from rocks and giving them to trees so trees can do their tree thing. I am probably wrong and this is some normal kind of soil fungus. I don't really care: I learned about mycorrhiza, once.

Both pictures taken with a fancy-ass scanning electron microscope.

I spoke with one of my managers who gave me good constructive feedback to move forward. I’m glad I gave him what I had (even though it was rough) because he thinks I should publish. I have received advice from several scientists I work with to put together a manuscript after my poster and just go for it. I need to decide which journal is appropriate to publish basic science, but then go for it. I’m thinking PLOS One might be good. The feels come in because my mentor is one of those “groundbreaking” people. She has invented new branches of science. I think one reason she never pushed me to publish is because my work is boring. I didn’t find anything interesting. I just found what was there. Which was mud.

Anyway, poster #2 is in significantly better shape than it was earlier today.

Project 3

After I go to the conference (Sun-Wed) then I will see my mom and friends for my birthday (Thurs) and when I fly back and drive to TLoTH (Fri), my shows open that night!! This week has been rehearsal every night, hence the delay in posting. I love you all but sleep is more important than self-imposed writing deadlines.

My shows are going pretty good. Show #1 is directed by an inexperienced director who explained to us what cheating is the first day of rehearsal. That’s going ok. I do my part for 3 minutes and then I’m off.

Show #2 is going AMAZING. We went up in front of a live audience today and got legitimate laughs. Our producer’s comment was “That was fucking hilarious!” And then he turned to me and said, with surprise “You’re…really good! I mean, really quite good!” Lolz. I did do this for several years before becoming a scientist…

Anyway my cast mates are all nice in both shows. They are funny and it is nice to have people I can hug if I need a hug. Have I mentioned I am a ridiculously tactile person and not having my significant other to physically comfort me is one of the hardest parts of long distance? Well I am.

Active Hobby?

PartnerPenuin visited me so I didn’t make it to derby this week. I did, however, FINALLY get my bike fixed!! I rode to and from work once or twice and now it’s started hailing in the mornings. Ce mon vie.

I had a boyfriend-ish-type-guy once who said the word “melancholy” as “meh-lank-ly” with a British a. I leave you with a meh-lank-ly song and a good night’s rest.