Clawing my way up and out

Things had been going really well for a while.  I had a great talk with Crazy Man about  a paper we’re trying to get out.  For the first time ever I felt like he was actually talking to me as a colleague, and I really liked it.  I even started writing a blog post about it, but that got abandoned mid-sentence a paragraph in, and for the life of me I can’t remember why or bring myself to finish it.

I had also put together a plan to finish experiments and start writing papers.  I’ve been working on a lot of related but distinct projects and I thought things were finally going to start to coalesce.  So I had outlines and timelines and I was really excited.  At some point that all fell apart too, and I haven’t been able to regroup on all of that yet.

I’ve been feeling pretty down the last 3 weeks or so.  I don’t feel like I’m in control.  I’ve been gradually realizing that I have stopped doing little things that make me feel in control.  Little things like cleaning the house and doing laundry and working out and reading blogs that give me a sense of control and accomplishment.  I’ve simply been letting essentially everything go, which is doing nothing but making me feel worse. 

I’ve been trying to make a summary/model figure that Crazy Man suggested for this paper and I just can’t seem to make anything I like.  It’s frustrating me. 

The Golden Child and I have been on the edge of a knockdown drag out for a while now.  Crazy Man came in Friday while the Golden Child was gone and told other FGS and me that we should try to be nicer to him.  I almost lost it.  I don’t get angry often, but I was beyond livid then.  Ugh…that’s another story for another day though.  At the end of the day though, Crazy Man finally realizes why I’m so frustrated and how far my frustration has progressed, and he doesn’t seem to think I’m being unreasonable.  I’m going to try to be more patient with the Golden Child.  We’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.

I’m still not feeling super, and baby fever has been flaring up a bit, which doesn’t help.  I’m trying to get things under control.  I finally folded the month’s worth of laundry that was on the couch.  I scrubbed the bathrooms.  I scooped the litter box.  My calendar and my outlines are in my bag.  I found some new papers I’m excited to read.  (I actually started reading a review yesterday and got a new idea for a mechanism to explain some very old data.)  Honestly, I don’t feel motivated, and I don’t feel very excited about science right now.  But I do still feel driven.  I have a lot of data that I hope is going to translate into a lot of papers.  There is still a flicker of excitement in me somewhere.  Now I just have to keep pushing through and find the motivation to do what needs to be done and fan those flames.  If for no other reason than I want to have 3 times as many publications as the Golden Child.  Hehe…I guess I’ll take motivation from wherever I can.