#Reverb10: Prompt 11, the blog-along
Today, MathNerd314, Sunflowerakb, and I will all weigh in on the #Reverb10 prompt mathnerd314 mentioned last week:
What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?
How will you go about eliminating them?
How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
We've agreed to update on our progress at the end of each month in 2011.
When mathnerd314 initially proposed this blog-along, I envisioned my entry taking shape as a list of mostly independent objects or tendencies. The more I considered and pondered and slept on it, though, the more I realized that many of the things I most desire to change about my life right now are all related. And so this entry became more of a narrative, highlighting each of the items on my list.
1. Debilitating headaches
2. Excuses: skipping the gym
3. Excuses: skipping cooking
4. Excuses: skipping fun
5. Work (read on, ok?)
6. Excessive worry about things over which I have absolutely no control
7. Emotional responses that are disproportionate to the situation
8. Cynicism
9. Loneliness
10. 11 pounds
11. Peas
Most of you readers know that this is the year MathNerd and I "switched places". During my gainful-employment break post-PhD, MathNerd completed her PhD and moved straight into a tenure-track job. MathNerd left the tenure-track after the 2009-2010 school year, shortly before I re-entered the ivory tower as the 2010-2011 school year began. Honestly, re-entering the ivory tower in the manner in which I did (as a research scientist/laboratory manager for ChemGuy) could not be better for either of us Chems. This process took 15 months and should not have, but, I had no control over that pure absurdity (#6). [As this narrative progresses, I will refer to the list by number where appropriate. Think of them as "headnotes".] Moreover, that particular absurdity is over and in the past. No one believes there should be any issue with me being re-appointed in a year, and I must do my best to believe this (#6, #8).
Professionally speaking, ChemGuy has faced more struggle and challenge in the last couple of years than pretty much any other young faculty member I know. This has taken a toll on both of us, and I've ended up in tears more often over the last 18 months than I'd like to admit (#6, #7, #8). As 2010 began, I felt lighter and had high hopes for 2010 being a completely amazing year. In retrospect, I guess it was. ChemGuy and I bought and moved into our first house. We undertook and nearly completed a huge remodeling project. The increase in space and bedrooms meant that we had lots of visitors, and we took a couple of trips ourselves. Some really great undergraduates joined the lab. I officially joined the lab.
The challenges ChemGuy is facing professionally at the moment would be tolerable if it weren't for the pile of challenges that has already set him back. Neither of us think we should throw in the towel or that there is no hope at this point. But we know we don't have as much time for things to not work as most other junior faculty. Without results, the money stops rolling in, and the money starts being spent even without a finished laboratory to use to get those results. Funny how that works. This brings me to tears on a regular basis (#6).
My problem is that I care too much. I see how hard he works; I hear all of his really great ideas that he cannot pursue because he has no personnel and no money. I know that if the situation were even slightly different, he'd be kicking a$$ and taking names. Now he may be time-limited and finance-limited and never really get that chance. This breaks my heart.
I suffer from crazy-bad headaches on a semi-regular basis (#1). After considering and ruling out wisdom teeth, out-of-date eye wear prescriptions, and high blood pressure as possible causes and describing the symptomology to my PA at my last physical, she said "[ChemGal], based on symptoms alone, those sound like tension headaches. And what you've told me over the years, I'd say you're a prime candidate for such things." She referred me to a medical massage therapist and a regular therapist (where she sends her other highly-educated, female patients who ask). I called the medical massage therapist immediately. We really clicked with each other, and I saw her regularly for about 2 months. My headaches (and other aches) became less frequent and less severe. Then I sprained my ankle twice and got out of my routine. When I resolved to start seeing her again, she had just broken her fibula and was going to be unable to work for a couple of months. In 2011, I will start seeing her again. For the time being, I'm OK with just having the "regular" therapist's contact information.
The two sprained ankle incidents derailed more than just my massage therapy routine (#2, #3, #4, #10). I didn't use the injuries as an *excuse* for skipping the gym; I was physically unable to work out in my usual classes because of them. In total, I was unable to take group fitness or yoga classes for nearly three months, interrupted only by my first class back from the first injury, after which I fell on wet grass, reinjuring the ankle and breaking my tailbone. Not surprisingly, there were many fewer calories burned in those three months. Moreover, immediately after each injury, I faced a period when I could not stand up long enough to cook. Again, I didn't use the injury as an excuse, per se, but combine eating out with inactivity, and you've got a pretty good idea about #10.
I am so thrilled to be working in ChemGuy's lab. Really. I am. Unfortunately, being thrilled does not mean that certain personality tendencies that made themselves apparent during graduate school are not also rearing their heads in this situation, rendering the "being in lab" thing a double-edged sword (all numbers *except* 11). In graduate school, I was never certain how much of my motivation was fear of my advisor/desire to please him and how much of it was just how I respond to my responsibilities. I am in no way afraid of my new advisor and harbor few secret fears that he will discover me to be a huge scientific fraud with no aptitude or intelligence or ability. Nor do I want to "please him". (I know, dirty.) I want him to succeed, but not because he'll like me more or be less scary to me or any of those other gray motivational areas that were in play in graduate school. After being in lab for a few months, I realize that I'm good. I'm really good. I'm not the best ever, but I don't have to be. I don't have to give my PhD back. I'm not a scientific fraud. There's plenty that I don't know that I should know, but I absolutely have the goods to back up the degree I received from the school I attended. I didn't somehow fool everyone, including myself, for the entire time I spent there. At least, not about the things that really mattered.
Working in lab means that I am always at work (#5). I have a hard time turning it "off" when I leave, not only because it's something about which ChemGuy and I can talk, over dinner, in the car, etc. I routinely have dreams in which I am in lab; in graduate school, these dreams either helped me remember to do something or figure something out or were a manifestation of a diagnosed incidence of PTSD. I have always found that having more on a mental or actual to-do list was preferable to a day dragging on with nothing to fill it. I can waste only so much time on the internet. I tend to make ambitious plans for my workdays; ChemGuy does the same, which means we can feed each other's "let's just stay an hour longer" tendencies. Wanting to get one more thing done or one more thing started becomes an excuse for me to skip doing things that I know are good for me (#2, #3, #4, which contribute to #1 and #10). I'm getting better at not telling ChemGuy that I want to skip morning gym times (We drive past our gym on the way to or from campus each day. Some mornings, he drops me off on the way in. After class, I shower and hop on a bus.) because of wanting to get into lab for the day. He's getting much better about not letting me do this, now that he knows I want him to make it very difficult for me to do so. In 2011, I want ChemGuy to keep leaving me at the gym on certain mornings. I hope that I am less likely to try and convince him otherwise. The evening gym times are where I struggle most now. I find it much harder to feel like I've accomplished enough for the day to hop on a late afternoon bus and have ChemGuy pick me up after class. I find it much easier to make work an excuse. Next semester, ChemGuy will have a 9AM MWF class, so we'll routinely be getting to lab between 7:30 and 8, rather than closer to 8:30 as we did by the end of this semester when he taught at 2PM. I'm hopeful that the schedule shift will add to my resolve to leave for a 5:30PM class on Wed nights. A class that I really, really enjoy, but find easy to skip.
The curse of working with cells is that 12-18 hour incubation periods are darn typical, and longer can be detrimental to results. [Cells die if they run out of nutrients. You would, too; that process would take longer than 18 hours, though.] Choosing to not start an incubation one evening sets that project back an entire day, as the incubation cannot begin until the following evening. Setting up an incubation at 9AM means that the next step begins between midnight and 3AM. Yes, in most circumstances one could return to lab at 1AM and shove the cells into the fridge, effectively stopping growth and reproduction, but isn't starting an incubation in the early evening preferable to stopping one at 1AM? It is in my world. Unfortunately, this, too, can mean that I frequently want to stay to do "just one more thing" and skip my bus to the gym (#2), or get too hungry or tired to want to cook dinner and clean up from it (#3), or don't take an entire weekend off to do something fun (#4). Luckily, I don't foresee many valid reasons for regularly staying at work past 6PM in 2011, and I promise to plan my schedule and my meals better to be able to leave earlier on Wednesdays to work out. I will still struggle with the urge to work late and want to pick up dinner on the way home, rather than cook it myself, but I will ask ChemGuy to help me work on this, too. This process will be hard on ChemGuy, too, but I think we need to make packing up at 6PM a general rule. We've already established our plan for which nights either he or both of us will go back to work after dinner. We both need the break. And I need the break to prepare a good meal for us. I love to cook. I love chopping, sauteing, playing with food. This brings me joy, and yet my need to get work done can easily overwhelm it. Cooking is good for my soul. Having a happy soul is good for my work. I know this, yet I struggle.
The curse of science in general is that it never takes a day off. It's hard to spend a block of time away from the lab because even taking an entire weekend off means that part of Friday is useless because things have to be put on pause and part of Monday is useless because nothing is growing. At this point in ChemGuy's career it is easy for both of us to skip the "fun" (#4), using the excuse that the fun can wait, getting closer to early independent publications is on a much stricter time clock. Sadly, 2010 was a year of many, many tragic deaths (and frightening near-deaths) in my world. I lost my first mentor, who was also a second father. A colleague lost his 38-year old wife in a matter of hours. Dear friends lost dear parents. Life is too short to always skip the fun. Work is always reminding us that it is there, waiting to be done. The fun isn't as vocal. In 2011, ChemGuy and I need to commit to finding more of the fun. Our state is filled will all sorts of amazing things to explore, within a short distance. At present, we tend to not go to campus on Saturday, working a moderately full day on Sunday. I hope to plan our schedule next semester so that with some degree of regularity, we can work a little bit on a Saturday to have the next weekend available to only work a little bit on Sunday. Spending Saturday on a fun day is great, but it means that all the housework I would normally do on Saturday doesn't get done that week. I'd like to be able to spend Saturday out of the house and out of the lab, doing house chores and a few lab chores both on Sunday once in awhile. This, too, is good for the soul. We left our last homestead without having done a lot of things we probably should have done. I don't want that to happen again. The excuses are so easy; the routine of work is too ever-present. Visitors help us remember to do the fun. Hint. Hint.
We have one night each week that is built-in as a night out. On Mondays, we eat dinner with a group of faculty from ChemGuy's associated department. We both need that social interaction (#9), and I refuse to give it up. The expectation that Monday is the only night every week that I will not cook is unrealistic. Sometimes I just need a break. Sometimes I just need something that is best prepared by someone other than myself. Moreover, exploring new restaurants is one of the things that ChemGuy and I find fun (#4). We also really enjoy some of our tiny local restaurants and would be deeply saddened if they closed because of lack of business. Naturally, when I am not preparing the food, the list of ingredients is not on my radar. It's no secret that some of the most calorie-rich ingredients are some of the most delicious (#10). In 2011, I need to get back to cooking more not only because I love it, but because even though I don't specifically try to cook "light", everything I make is pretty darn healthy compared to much of what we would fetch on the way home. In most, but not all cases, my food is also more delicious. I tend to start each year cooking a lot, but by the end of the year, I'm cooking dinner a lot less. I need to get back in the habit of having lunch at work; I need to plan more carefully so that on nights when I am tired and get home later because of a work-out, I have a fast and easy dinner idea ready to go. Wednesdays are currently the curse of my week. I skip the gym to work, and when I do work, I haven't planned dinner carefully enough and am too tired to cook or it becomes too late to do so reasonably. In 2011, I hope to have fewer Wednesdays trip me up. [I hadn't realized that Wednesdays in particular were so prone to messing things up. Perhaps I should add "Wednesday" to the list of things I hope to eliminate next year.]
My challenges with #6 and #7 tend to be tied to science as well. ChemGuy and The Tenure Process sounds like a scary children's story. It's also a frightening adult story, even without all of the roadblocks that have been placed in his way so far. I can't control any of it, though I still worry about whether or not he is doing the right things at the right times. It's not like there are rules or guidelines, aside from "publish interesting papers" and "get funding". After that, tenure is a nebulous mess. He won't know until he gets there if he did it right. He probably won't know at that point, either, aside from a "yay" or "nay" decision. Since every aspect could either be completely important or not at all important, I find myself worrying that all of them are completely important. I know this is a bad, bad state of affairs.
While I am cynical about certain aspects of the ivory tower, I find my cynicism rearing its ugly head in non-laboratory related situations, and I don't like this part of myself. I am cynical about political things, which bleeds into cynicism about people in general. Today, we were adding some extra air to a tire at a nearby gas station. The air pump was near the front door of the convenience store, so in order to use it, we had to park our car in one of the parking spaces, and the air hose laid across the sidewalk. A woman exiting the convenience store saw the hose, but still tripped over it. I helped her up, but my first thought was "She'd better not try to sue us. That was totally not our fault." In the past, I never would've reacted this way. I hate that that thought popped into my head. I don't want to be jaded and assume the worst about everything and everyone. I do not know how to fix this.
Loneliness is not entirely related to nor independent from the rest of the list. I do not yet know how to make new friends outside of a shared learning environment or having friends I already have relocate nearby. [I am still holding out for this.] I have acquaintances at the gym, but I wouldn't call any of them up, save one, to go out. We have friends who are faculty in other departments, but we haven't gotten to the point of being very social, aside from the Monday night thing. I hope that once the construction project is complete, we will find more excuses to have people over for dinner or appetizers or something. I hope that our home will be a place where people feel comfortable and want to spend time. I hope that my cooking can meet the demands of picky palettes.
In 2011, my life will improve if I make a bit of progress on any one of the items on my list. They all feed off of and into each other. Making fewer excuses about staying at work for "just a little bit longer" (#5) will enable me to cook more (#3), work-out more (#2), find more fun (#4). That, coupled with regular massages, will ease my stress, assisting in the alleviation of my headaches (#1). Increasing #3 and #2 (and not tripping into any new injuries) should help #10 take care of itself. It's no secret that less stress helps in that arena, too. Backing off on #5 should help me be less exhausted, which I know contributes to #7. #6 will always be a struggle for me, as I've been a worrier even from my youngest days. I'm hopeful that as much of the rest of my life comes into balance, #6 will also ease. Like #6, cynicism (#8) and loneliness (#9) will, I expect, be more of a challenge to ameliorate. The path is not as clear. #11 is easy. I have always despised peas.
If you'd like to join in--just with a list of 11 things, or for the full, year-long, series of updates--please leave your url in the comments section!
What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?
How will you go about eliminating them?
How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
We've agreed to update on our progress at the end of each month in 2011.
When mathnerd314 initially proposed this blog-along, I envisioned my entry taking shape as a list of mostly independent objects or tendencies. The more I considered and pondered and slept on it, though, the more I realized that many of the things I most desire to change about my life right now are all related. And so this entry became more of a narrative, highlighting each of the items on my list.
1. Debilitating headaches
2. Excuses: skipping the gym
3. Excuses: skipping cooking
4. Excuses: skipping fun
5. Work (read on, ok?)
6. Excessive worry about things over which I have absolutely no control
7. Emotional responses that are disproportionate to the situation
8. Cynicism
9. Loneliness
10. 11 pounds
11. Peas
Most of you readers know that this is the year MathNerd and I "switched places". During my gainful-employment break post-PhD, MathNerd completed her PhD and moved straight into a tenure-track job. MathNerd left the tenure-track after the 2009-2010 school year, shortly before I re-entered the ivory tower as the 2010-2011 school year began. Honestly, re-entering the ivory tower in the manner in which I did (as a research scientist/laboratory manager for ChemGuy) could not be better for either of us Chems. This process took 15 months and should not have, but, I had no control over that pure absurdity (#6). [As this narrative progresses, I will refer to the list by number where appropriate. Think of them as "headnotes".] Moreover, that particular absurdity is over and in the past. No one believes there should be any issue with me being re-appointed in a year, and I must do my best to believe this (#6, #8).
Professionally speaking, ChemGuy has faced more struggle and challenge in the last couple of years than pretty much any other young faculty member I know. This has taken a toll on both of us, and I've ended up in tears more often over the last 18 months than I'd like to admit (#6, #7, #8). As 2010 began, I felt lighter and had high hopes for 2010 being a completely amazing year. In retrospect, I guess it was. ChemGuy and I bought and moved into our first house. We undertook and nearly completed a huge remodeling project. The increase in space and bedrooms meant that we had lots of visitors, and we took a couple of trips ourselves. Some really great undergraduates joined the lab. I officially joined the lab.
The challenges ChemGuy is facing professionally at the moment would be tolerable if it weren't for the pile of challenges that has already set him back. Neither of us think we should throw in the towel or that there is no hope at this point. But we know we don't have as much time for things to not work as most other junior faculty. Without results, the money stops rolling in, and the money starts being spent even without a finished laboratory to use to get those results. Funny how that works. This brings me to tears on a regular basis (#6).
My problem is that I care too much. I see how hard he works; I hear all of his really great ideas that he cannot pursue because he has no personnel and no money. I know that if the situation were even slightly different, he'd be kicking a$$ and taking names. Now he may be time-limited and finance-limited and never really get that chance. This breaks my heart.
I suffer from crazy-bad headaches on a semi-regular basis (#1). After considering and ruling out wisdom teeth, out-of-date eye wear prescriptions, and high blood pressure as possible causes and describing the symptomology to my PA at my last physical, she said "[ChemGal], based on symptoms alone, those sound like tension headaches. And what you've told me over the years, I'd say you're a prime candidate for such things." She referred me to a medical massage therapist and a regular therapist (where she sends her other highly-educated, female patients who ask). I called the medical massage therapist immediately. We really clicked with each other, and I saw her regularly for about 2 months. My headaches (and other aches) became less frequent and less severe. Then I sprained my ankle twice and got out of my routine. When I resolved to start seeing her again, she had just broken her fibula and was going to be unable to work for a couple of months. In 2011, I will start seeing her again. For the time being, I'm OK with just having the "regular" therapist's contact information.
The two sprained ankle incidents derailed more than just my massage therapy routine (#2, #3, #4, #10). I didn't use the injuries as an *excuse* for skipping the gym; I was physically unable to work out in my usual classes because of them. In total, I was unable to take group fitness or yoga classes for nearly three months, interrupted only by my first class back from the first injury, after which I fell on wet grass, reinjuring the ankle and breaking my tailbone. Not surprisingly, there were many fewer calories burned in those three months. Moreover, immediately after each injury, I faced a period when I could not stand up long enough to cook. Again, I didn't use the injury as an excuse, per se, but combine eating out with inactivity, and you've got a pretty good idea about #10.
I am so thrilled to be working in ChemGuy's lab. Really. I am. Unfortunately, being thrilled does not mean that certain personality tendencies that made themselves apparent during graduate school are not also rearing their heads in this situation, rendering the "being in lab" thing a double-edged sword (all numbers *except* 11). In graduate school, I was never certain how much of my motivation was fear of my advisor/desire to please him and how much of it was just how I respond to my responsibilities. I am in no way afraid of my new advisor and harbor few secret fears that he will discover me to be a huge scientific fraud with no aptitude or intelligence or ability. Nor do I want to "please him". (I know, dirty.) I want him to succeed, but not because he'll like me more or be less scary to me or any of those other gray motivational areas that were in play in graduate school. After being in lab for a few months, I realize that I'm good. I'm really good. I'm not the best ever, but I don't have to be. I don't have to give my PhD back. I'm not a scientific fraud. There's plenty that I don't know that I should know, but I absolutely have the goods to back up the degree I received from the school I attended. I didn't somehow fool everyone, including myself, for the entire time I spent there. At least, not about the things that really mattered.
Working in lab means that I am always at work (#5). I have a hard time turning it "off" when I leave, not only because it's something about which ChemGuy and I can talk, over dinner, in the car, etc. I routinely have dreams in which I am in lab; in graduate school, these dreams either helped me remember to do something or figure something out or were a manifestation of a diagnosed incidence of PTSD. I have always found that having more on a mental or actual to-do list was preferable to a day dragging on with nothing to fill it. I can waste only so much time on the internet. I tend to make ambitious plans for my workdays; ChemGuy does the same, which means we can feed each other's "let's just stay an hour longer" tendencies. Wanting to get one more thing done or one more thing started becomes an excuse for me to skip doing things that I know are good for me (#2, #3, #4, which contribute to #1 and #10). I'm getting better at not telling ChemGuy that I want to skip morning gym times (We drive past our gym on the way to or from campus each day. Some mornings, he drops me off on the way in. After class, I shower and hop on a bus.) because of wanting to get into lab for the day. He's getting much better about not letting me do this, now that he knows I want him to make it very difficult for me to do so. In 2011, I want ChemGuy to keep leaving me at the gym on certain mornings. I hope that I am less likely to try and convince him otherwise. The evening gym times are where I struggle most now. I find it much harder to feel like I've accomplished enough for the day to hop on a late afternoon bus and have ChemGuy pick me up after class. I find it much easier to make work an excuse. Next semester, ChemGuy will have a 9AM MWF class, so we'll routinely be getting to lab between 7:30 and 8, rather than closer to 8:30 as we did by the end of this semester when he taught at 2PM. I'm hopeful that the schedule shift will add to my resolve to leave for a 5:30PM class on Wed nights. A class that I really, really enjoy, but find easy to skip.
The curse of working with cells is that 12-18 hour incubation periods are darn typical, and longer can be detrimental to results. [Cells die if they run out of nutrients. You would, too; that process would take longer than 18 hours, though.] Choosing to not start an incubation one evening sets that project back an entire day, as the incubation cannot begin until the following evening. Setting up an incubation at 9AM means that the next step begins between midnight and 3AM. Yes, in most circumstances one could return to lab at 1AM and shove the cells into the fridge, effectively stopping growth and reproduction, but isn't starting an incubation in the early evening preferable to stopping one at 1AM? It is in my world. Unfortunately, this, too, can mean that I frequently want to stay to do "just one more thing" and skip my bus to the gym (#2), or get too hungry or tired to want to cook dinner and clean up from it (#3), or don't take an entire weekend off to do something fun (#4). Luckily, I don't foresee many valid reasons for regularly staying at work past 6PM in 2011, and I promise to plan my schedule and my meals better to be able to leave earlier on Wednesdays to work out. I will still struggle with the urge to work late and want to pick up dinner on the way home, rather than cook it myself, but I will ask ChemGuy to help me work on this, too. This process will be hard on ChemGuy, too, but I think we need to make packing up at 6PM a general rule. We've already established our plan for which nights either he or both of us will go back to work after dinner. We both need the break. And I need the break to prepare a good meal for us. I love to cook. I love chopping, sauteing, playing with food. This brings me joy, and yet my need to get work done can easily overwhelm it. Cooking is good for my soul. Having a happy soul is good for my work. I know this, yet I struggle.
The curse of science in general is that it never takes a day off. It's hard to spend a block of time away from the lab because even taking an entire weekend off means that part of Friday is useless because things have to be put on pause and part of Monday is useless because nothing is growing. At this point in ChemGuy's career it is easy for both of us to skip the "fun" (#4), using the excuse that the fun can wait, getting closer to early independent publications is on a much stricter time clock. Sadly, 2010 was a year of many, many tragic deaths (and frightening near-deaths) in my world. I lost my first mentor, who was also a second father. A colleague lost his 38-year old wife in a matter of hours. Dear friends lost dear parents. Life is too short to always skip the fun. Work is always reminding us that it is there, waiting to be done. The fun isn't as vocal. In 2011, ChemGuy and I need to commit to finding more of the fun. Our state is filled will all sorts of amazing things to explore, within a short distance. At present, we tend to not go to campus on Saturday, working a moderately full day on Sunday. I hope to plan our schedule next semester so that with some degree of regularity, we can work a little bit on a Saturday to have the next weekend available to only work a little bit on Sunday. Spending Saturday on a fun day is great, but it means that all the housework I would normally do on Saturday doesn't get done that week. I'd like to be able to spend Saturday out of the house and out of the lab, doing house chores and a few lab chores both on Sunday once in awhile. This, too, is good for the soul. We left our last homestead without having done a lot of things we probably should have done. I don't want that to happen again. The excuses are so easy; the routine of work is too ever-present. Visitors help us remember to do the fun. Hint. Hint.
We have one night each week that is built-in as a night out. On Mondays, we eat dinner with a group of faculty from ChemGuy's associated department. We both need that social interaction (#9), and I refuse to give it up. The expectation that Monday is the only night every week that I will not cook is unrealistic. Sometimes I just need a break. Sometimes I just need something that is best prepared by someone other than myself. Moreover, exploring new restaurants is one of the things that ChemGuy and I find fun (#4). We also really enjoy some of our tiny local restaurants and would be deeply saddened if they closed because of lack of business. Naturally, when I am not preparing the food, the list of ingredients is not on my radar. It's no secret that some of the most calorie-rich ingredients are some of the most delicious (#10). In 2011, I need to get back to cooking more not only because I love it, but because even though I don't specifically try to cook "light", everything I make is pretty darn healthy compared to much of what we would fetch on the way home. In most, but not all cases, my food is also more delicious. I tend to start each year cooking a lot, but by the end of the year, I'm cooking dinner a lot less. I need to get back in the habit of having lunch at work; I need to plan more carefully so that on nights when I am tired and get home later because of a work-out, I have a fast and easy dinner idea ready to go. Wednesdays are currently the curse of my week. I skip the gym to work, and when I do work, I haven't planned dinner carefully enough and am too tired to cook or it becomes too late to do so reasonably. In 2011, I hope to have fewer Wednesdays trip me up. [I hadn't realized that Wednesdays in particular were so prone to messing things up. Perhaps I should add "Wednesday" to the list of things I hope to eliminate next year.]
My challenges with #6 and #7 tend to be tied to science as well. ChemGuy and The Tenure Process sounds like a scary children's story. It's also a frightening adult story, even without all of the roadblocks that have been placed in his way so far. I can't control any of it, though I still worry about whether or not he is doing the right things at the right times. It's not like there are rules or guidelines, aside from "publish interesting papers" and "get funding". After that, tenure is a nebulous mess. He won't know until he gets there if he did it right. He probably won't know at that point, either, aside from a "yay" or "nay" decision. Since every aspect could either be completely important or not at all important, I find myself worrying that all of them are completely important. I know this is a bad, bad state of affairs.
While I am cynical about certain aspects of the ivory tower, I find my cynicism rearing its ugly head in non-laboratory related situations, and I don't like this part of myself. I am cynical about political things, which bleeds into cynicism about people in general. Today, we were adding some extra air to a tire at a nearby gas station. The air pump was near the front door of the convenience store, so in order to use it, we had to park our car in one of the parking spaces, and the air hose laid across the sidewalk. A woman exiting the convenience store saw the hose, but still tripped over it. I helped her up, but my first thought was "She'd better not try to sue us. That was totally not our fault." In the past, I never would've reacted this way. I hate that that thought popped into my head. I don't want to be jaded and assume the worst about everything and everyone. I do not know how to fix this.
Loneliness is not entirely related to nor independent from the rest of the list. I do not yet know how to make new friends outside of a shared learning environment or having friends I already have relocate nearby. [I am still holding out for this.] I have acquaintances at the gym, but I wouldn't call any of them up, save one, to go out. We have friends who are faculty in other departments, but we haven't gotten to the point of being very social, aside from the Monday night thing. I hope that once the construction project is complete, we will find more excuses to have people over for dinner or appetizers or something. I hope that our home will be a place where people feel comfortable and want to spend time. I hope that my cooking can meet the demands of picky palettes.
In 2011, my life will improve if I make a bit of progress on any one of the items on my list. They all feed off of and into each other. Making fewer excuses about staying at work for "just a little bit longer" (#5) will enable me to cook more (#3), work-out more (#2), find more fun (#4). That, coupled with regular massages, will ease my stress, assisting in the alleviation of my headaches (#1). Increasing #3 and #2 (and not tripping into any new injuries) should help #10 take care of itself. It's no secret that less stress helps in that arena, too. Backing off on #5 should help me be less exhausted, which I know contributes to #7. #6 will always be a struggle for me, as I've been a worrier even from my youngest days. I'm hopeful that as much of the rest of my life comes into balance, #6 will also ease. Like #6, cynicism (#8) and loneliness (#9) will, I expect, be more of a challenge to ameliorate. The path is not as clear. #11 is easy. I have always despised peas.
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