(no subject)
I can call it self-medicating. After my 14hour work day yesterday, I drank wine out of a mug and read. Why is there this reach for alcohol? The volume of cultural lore on the topic (a pint after work, etc etc) makes me think that this is a shared human phenomenon. We need an aid to make our heads lighter after all the heavy pulling and pushing of a job done. I don’t want it unless the lab bench really wore on my hands and my head.
The other voices of common opinion make me want to defend myself. Social drinking allowed; the wine with only me for company is somehow wrong. I think mind-altering is a broader category than talked about. And as the category stretches from horizon to horizon, it loses all meaning. Let me down what I want.
I took a walk between analyzing data sets. On a 45-degree day after January, with the promise of California, I fell I can finally eat up New England and enjoy. The snow is clear, reflective, and swims down the pavement. The campus is covered in tourist-ants. Working at Princeton is like being an extra in a main attraction.
Working at Princeton is proving lonely outside the lab’s windows. I can’t find other people between the students and being with the students makes me feel like a visitor.