Murphy's Little Minions
So here we are at the high hump of the PhD process, timed like the climax of an action movie, mere minutes before the end. And of course, now is when all the little things have been going wrong. Or, I think, when we're primed to notice that they're going wrong.
I think that Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.", is more a matter of having our perceptions keyed to difficulties due to stress. If we loose our keys for 15 minutes while on a leisurely beach vacation, so what. It might ratchet up our stress from 2 to 3 (on a scale of 1 to 10), but that hardly matters. We'll soon forget about it. But if we loose our keys just before heading out to an important interview or meeting, our stress will jump from a 7 to 8, and that's hard to ignore. The best evidence I have that Murphy's law is perceptual rather than actual is it's first corollary "And at the worst possible moment." These worst possible moments are points where our stress is already high, and we a primed to react to even the smallest stressful stimulus. Of course, even random accidents can lead us in to a phase of increased Murphyism, as each stressful incident primes us to respond to the next. Most of the time, these random stressors are isolated and easily dealt with. But occasionally they come in a rapid succession, either due to mistakes we make during post-stress exhaustion or simple bad luck due to clustering.
I've already hinted at a few of our previous tribulations, here's the latest two:
Our idiot box died last night. As in dead. As in push the button and nothing happens. To be fair, the TV is a bit CRT brute and is over 20 years old and screamed like a neon banshee, but still, now? How am I supposed to relax at night while watching bad TV? Netflix in my office just isn't the same. No couch, and everything in the room reminds me of the work I have to finish. That's kind of anti-relaxing. Stressing with bad dialog. If anyone has some advice about buying a new TV, I'm happy to hear it. The on-line reviews say they're all about the same. In the absence of good data, I'll just go to Costco and pick one out.
The second bit is bugs. You see, eating organic means sharing. At the end of our CSA season we got a pile of greens, I cooked them all down and froze them, but we had some stowaways I didn't notice. Terrier_Girl saw the first one, dead, on the counter. The next day I squashed two of them while they were making sweet, sweet pesty love. I then found the carcasses of a half dozen more hidden under the appliance parking lot in the shadowy corner of the counter. We did a massive kitchen cleaning (because yah, we had plenty of free time) but found a baby the following week and another adult in the bok choi in the fridge. So now we're in full anti-bug protocol, complete kitchen cleaning and garbage removal every night, and traps and bait all over the kitchen and bathroom. And of course, the baits are toxic to people and animals, so the baby and dog need to be supervised in those rooms at all times. And they're both fascinated by the new little black disks hidden all over the room. It's like a toxic Easter egg hunt. Gah.
Bet Terrier and I are chugging along. Terrier actually finished the writing last night, so today and tomorrow are formatting and review. trcharisse has offered to proof Terrier's thesis, which is awesome. phoenixjourney is staying over Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night so that both Terrier and I can sleep. All in all, our problems are pretty minor. We're not even close to the death of a thousand paper cuts yet. But I live in fear of being doused in lemon juice.
I think that Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.", is more a matter of having our perceptions keyed to difficulties due to stress. If we loose our keys for 15 minutes while on a leisurely beach vacation, so what. It might ratchet up our stress from 2 to 3 (on a scale of 1 to 10), but that hardly matters. We'll soon forget about it. But if we loose our keys just before heading out to an important interview or meeting, our stress will jump from a 7 to 8, and that's hard to ignore. The best evidence I have that Murphy's law is perceptual rather than actual is it's first corollary "And at the worst possible moment." These worst possible moments are points where our stress is already high, and we a primed to react to even the smallest stressful stimulus. Of course, even random accidents can lead us in to a phase of increased Murphyism, as each stressful incident primes us to respond to the next. Most of the time, these random stressors are isolated and easily dealt with. But occasionally they come in a rapid succession, either due to mistakes we make during post-stress exhaustion or simple bad luck due to clustering.
I've already hinted at a few of our previous tribulations, here's the latest two:
Our idiot box died last night. As in dead. As in push the button and nothing happens. To be fair, the TV is a bit CRT brute and is over 20 years old and screamed like a neon banshee, but still, now? How am I supposed to relax at night while watching bad TV? Netflix in my office just isn't the same. No couch, and everything in the room reminds me of the work I have to finish. That's kind of anti-relaxing. Stressing with bad dialog. If anyone has some advice about buying a new TV, I'm happy to hear it. The on-line reviews say they're all about the same. In the absence of good data, I'll just go to Costco and pick one out.
The second bit is bugs. You see, eating organic means sharing. At the end of our CSA season we got a pile of greens, I cooked them all down and froze them, but we had some stowaways I didn't notice. Terrier_Girl saw the first one, dead, on the counter. The next day I squashed two of them while they were making sweet, sweet pesty love. I then found the carcasses of a half dozen more hidden under the appliance parking lot in the shadowy corner of the counter. We did a massive kitchen cleaning (because yah, we had plenty of free time) but found a baby the following week and another adult in the bok choi in the fridge. So now we're in full anti-bug protocol, complete kitchen cleaning and garbage removal every night, and traps and bait all over the kitchen and bathroom. And of course, the baits are toxic to people and animals, so the baby and dog need to be supervised in those rooms at all times. And they're both fascinated by the new little black disks hidden all over the room. It's like a toxic Easter egg hunt. Gah.
Bet Terrier and I are chugging along. Terrier actually finished the writing last night, so today and tomorrow are formatting and review. trcharisse has offered to proof Terrier's thesis, which is awesome. phoenixjourney is staying over Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night so that both Terrier and I can sleep. All in all, our problems are pretty minor. We're not even close to the death of a thousand paper cuts yet. But I live in fear of being doused in lemon juice.