(no subject)
So I'm now in the San Francisco Bay area--nowhere near settled in, but my stuff is here (except my poor, lost iron I left in DC :*( ) A friend from LA is coming up to the UCLA/Stanford game, then we're heading into 'The City', as Eddie Izzard would say...and I can't believe how lucky all of this was.
Truth is, I'd been not happy for the past year. I say *not* happy because I wasn't quite to the point of depression--I never had to force myself out of bed, never felt totally overwhelmed until the very last month or so--I never felt *bad*, but I didn't really feel good about the general state of affairs in my life--specifically my job.
Now, I know a lot of folks hate their jobs, or don't particularly like them, and do just fine, but I didn't go to school for 10 years to do anything other than what I *loved* doing. And I didn't love it. I sat in front of a computer all day, running pre-packaged scripts and writing down the results. I was working on a tiny little piece of a huge project, with little perspective on the big picture. The only times I liked it was when something went wrong, and I had to work with the engineers to fix it. It's generally not a good sign when you're hoping something fails.
But it was my job, so I put on a brave face, and, like you do in academia, told everyone how wonderful my research was going. I'm pretty good at brave faces, apparently, because noone knew.
So when this job came along, two things happened 1) I really wanted it and 2) I realized how scary-close I'd been to being miserable.
Like I said, I doubt I was depressed in the clinical sense. I still went out, socialized, etc, but for the first time, I could see how easy depression can sneak up on you. I'm absolutely sure that if I had a family tendancy towards mood disorders, I would have been in big trouble. I was lucky, and feel incredibly sympathetic towards people who *do* dealt with it on a daily basis.
Even so, I had a bit of panic when I first came out here--would it happen again, would I *fail* to like my job here too?
but I love it. I'm part of the big picture, managing and communicating with observatory teams, and the center here is small enough that it *feels* like a university department. I still work for NASA, which I love, but now I love the work too.
Truth is, I'd been not happy for the past year. I say *not* happy because I wasn't quite to the point of depression--I never had to force myself out of bed, never felt totally overwhelmed until the very last month or so--I never felt *bad*, but I didn't really feel good about the general state of affairs in my life--specifically my job.
Now, I know a lot of folks hate their jobs, or don't particularly like them, and do just fine, but I didn't go to school for 10 years to do anything other than what I *loved* doing. And I didn't love it. I sat in front of a computer all day, running pre-packaged scripts and writing down the results. I was working on a tiny little piece of a huge project, with little perspective on the big picture. The only times I liked it was when something went wrong, and I had to work with the engineers to fix it. It's generally not a good sign when you're hoping something fails.
But it was my job, so I put on a brave face, and, like you do in academia, told everyone how wonderful my research was going. I'm pretty good at brave faces, apparently, because noone knew.
So when this job came along, two things happened 1) I really wanted it and 2) I realized how scary-close I'd been to being miserable.
Like I said, I doubt I was depressed in the clinical sense. I still went out, socialized, etc, but for the first time, I could see how easy depression can sneak up on you. I'm absolutely sure that if I had a family tendancy towards mood disorders, I would have been in big trouble. I was lucky, and feel incredibly sympathetic towards people who *do* dealt with it on a daily basis.
Even so, I had a bit of panic when I first came out here--would it happen again, would I *fail* to like my job here too?
but I love it. I'm part of the big picture, managing and communicating with observatory teams, and the center here is small enough that it *feels* like a university department. I still work for NASA, which I love, but now I love the work too.