my nemesis, open pavement. it’s been a long, long time. shoes tied tight, check. sense of dread, double check.

i’ve been running for a while now. it will take me a while longer before i decide whether i like it. but i have decided i can *do* it. and this is a start. the first few weeks were tough as my body adjusted again, the newly learned mechanics of just standing upright, of just taking steps, challenged as i added new motion. and hell yes, it hurt. my neglected running muscles were sore, my knees ached. my lungs never did like the cold air, but they will protest longer than my legs ever did. even as i re-implement the breathing patterns that got me through those seemingly endless training runs in the soccer pre-seasons.

in, two, three, out, out, in, two, three, out out…

the knees have decided to get with the program, they don’t bother me anymore. my legs don’t hurt much anymore, my lower body is loosening up. i found a comfortable cadence.

i slow down to a walk occasionally. my lungs aren’t fabulous yet. but my run time comes down a bit every time i go out, proving that i’m getting stronger with every run. so i just keep going.

amazingly, it took about four months for my evil awesome physical therapist to get the pain out of my life. there was a period where there was more pain- a LOT more pain. continuing on seemed like it would be worse than just settling for what i had been dealing with for so many years. but i kept on, 6-7 days a week at home and 2-3 hours a week in the PT office.

apparently my dedication to getting through this is unique among PT patients, but here we are. i am holding my own and don’t need much intervention from evil awesome PT anymore.

it has been years since i have felt even “okay” – much less good. a good week was one in which i had little to complain about. but this. this is not something i even remember. it’s entirely different, and i’m still not used to it. but from here i have to keep building up on my own.

i haven’t been able to run without debilitating pain since the late 90s. just typing that kind of blows my mind. so now i have to reclaim the running, for real this time. it’s time to get the strength back, no limitations.

i’ve made a number of failed attempts to take back some aspects of my life that i lost a long time ago.

once upon a time, i was a pretty epic halfback on the soccer field. i ran like the wind. once upon a time, a little bit later than this, i had a lot stolen from me without apology. and despite having all manner of medical practitioners’ opinions, alternative treatment modalities, and shovels full of drugs thrown my way, i never got it back. all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and what have you. the false hope (oh and working my ass off in a shitty retail job to afford the medical treatment, so i could physically tolerate the work i had to do to pay for said medical treatment) assailed my spirit and the conveniently prescribed drugs were probably the wrong way to cope with it. the “passage of time” – aka wait it out- method wasn’t particularly helpful either.

and so on several occasions in the last however many years, i said fuck this, i’m going to try running again. on the same number of occasions, i finally admitted defeat because it sucks to try to go about life in that kind of pain and quite simply, i don’t wanna do it again. i had also carefully tracked down my medical records and discovered that most of my practitioners effectively washed their hands of me very early on, citing that i did not want to improve. (alright, i was an angry and headstrong young person but to think i preferred to live in that hell is mystifying.) highly discouraging.

but then there is the physical therapist i met a few months ago. and she was great so i thought i’d give it another shot. i have some additional pressure, the job i want to have next is contingent on me meeting some physical requirements.

let me tell you. reversing almost half a lifetime worth of structural problems is difficult. and it involves a lot of new pains when i had already figured out the workarounds to keep the comfort level acceptably high. but my PT tells me we can do this if i can work through the temporary soreness. and she doesn’t wash her hands of me because i have a bad week or don’t make as much progress as i’d hoped.

don’t call me optimistic, but i’ll give it a try.

with the passage of time, life just keeps on happening whether you’re ready for it or not. some things change and some stay the same, but these life experiences never stop rolling in.

as the sum of my own experiences, i can’t help but change as i go through my days. i was on a pretty straight trajectory toward increased cynicism for a long damn time. i wasn’t one of those optimistic, fresh faced naive kids for long. life wasn’t too kind to me in my early years, but i kept on going. i discovered sarcasm, i learned how to fight, i grew my claws and i used them. i felt i needed all of these things to protect myself.

now my 30th birthday is coming up (geez. really?) and i am so different. i’m amazed i’ve made it this far. when i was younger, i felt it wasn’t worthwhile to plan anything because i didn’t hold the expectation that i would be alive for much longer at any given time. and looking back, i see that i lived my life accordingly and had to make big adjustments as my expectations turned out to be wrong. every couple of years i can see events in my life changing my outlook, my approach to life, my outward behavior, everything.

yeah, i’ve still gotten more cynical as the years go by. but perhaps more slowly than the alarming rate of my earlier years. and i’ve run a wide range of operating parameters, from a cold and calculating “get the fuck out of my way or i’ll run your ass over” persona to being someone’s everything when he can’t do much for himself.

you’ve got it: the biggest change, by far, was when my son was born. because now it isn’t about me anymore. he needs me to be there for him, to introduce the world to him. i worried about my ability to face some terrible memories that i was sure would come flooding back. instead, he has given me strength. and to be brutally honest, for the very first time in my life i have stopped questioning whether it was was truly worth fighting to survive those early years.

i welcome the challenges and changes the world has for me- and i know that 30 years from now, if i’m still alive, i’ll look back and again i’ll see such contrast. life offers few guarantees other than constant change.

do you have one of those people in your life who will talk your ear off about this, that and the other thing in a most annoying perseveratory manner? and never lift a fucking finger to make any kind of change or DO anything about it?

yeah. some family members of mine make my ears bleed.

so fuck you if it’s been 8 years since i left home state and i’ve lived at 6 addresses in 3 other states and even produced another human being, and you STILL tell me you’re totally coming to visit next summer. or the next one. you know. and it’s going to be great and all. when it happens. eventually.

in your honor, big talkers, i’ve been plowing through a lot of background legwork dragging up lots and lots of old records. sleuthing and talking to people from my hometown whose accents seem so much more pronounced than i recall. and i’m going to clear some time (baby permitting) to make that last phone call to get this shit on the road.

because fuck if i’m going to idly talk about this and do nothing more.

amazing what people will say to a woman who is just going about her business, and would prefer to be left alone, solely because she happens to have a fetus on board. i’ve gotten accustomed to the “when is the baby due” and “are you having a boy or girl” inquiries- i can see them coming based on where oncoming eyes are focused.

but people do nice things, too. tonight someone kindly offered me a chair so i could sit down during a short wait for a table at a local restaurant. i thanked her, and assumed that was the end of our interaction. instead, she felt she had earned the right to hover around me, asking the usual questions. and i tolerated it, but focused on continuing my ongoing conversation with my husband and giving him the occasional “do you see what i put up with” eyeroll. and then she asked me something mind-meltingly stupid.

“do you work?”
umm, yes, what else would i do with my time?
“when are you going to quit your job? you’re not taking some time off and going back, are you?”
in fact, i am taking time off until my daycare spot opens up and then i am going to go back.
[inner monologue: fuck you, lady! i've put almost a dozen years into getting here, and my work is important to me too, so shove it up your ass!]
“oh. well. [snort] “
here i see it’s time to make the stoneface as she makes a complete asshole of herself and i think of how i would like to poke her in the eyeball with that fork laying over there…
“[some convoluted relative person] has her kid in daycare, it’s just horrible how she drops her off and leaves her when they have something like 2 or 3 infants per daycare provider…”
stoneface. keep. making. stoneface.
and then our wait ended, and fixer took me away and calmed me down before i committed battery.

these attitudes amaze me. first, the assumption that any woman who is 9 months into her pregnancy is not a dangerous creature who should not be provoked with such nonsense. second, the perception that women should all quit their jobs because, omg, teh behbeh! this says to me that, clearly, we have no other purpose once this offspring thing happens. which is a load of horseshit.

i personally faced a huge uphill battle at my workplace due to these prevailing attitudes. i work in a pretty badass scientific center, but the middle-to-senior leadership are mostly grayhairs whose wives stay home with the kids and keep them free from kid-related responsibilities. if they have spouses or families at all. the perceptions of these grayhairs shapes local culture, of course. so when i went and turned up all pregnant and whatnot, it was a huge effort to convince the relevant people that i remained committed to my career and actually wished to come back after appropriate postpartum recovery time. from what i can gather- though i have flogged myself and pushed well beyond the limits that any reasonable human being should set up during this type of physiological challenge, in some cases to my own detriment- there are still parties that will believe i’m coming back when they see it.

so thanks for that, society. thanks for the extra hurdles, because i haven’t jumped enough of them yet.

not helpful to my case (but perhaps the right choice for her, and that’s just fine) was the more senior female who gave up her position shortly after announcing her pregnancy. department culture was all afire with that story, right as my own abdomen started to get notably round. awesome timing.

thanks, cultural standards, highlighting that other woman’s decision as The Right One or The Typical One, and then comparing to me.

but i keep returning to the question of why, for twentysomething years, people did not feel compelled to trample on my day by asking me invasive questions about my life choices based on some unique aspect of my appearance. (except the people who feel compelled to ask about my racial background, but i generally have to assume someone like that has other issues.) one appearance-changing episode lasting several months and suddenly everyone has the right to ask everything of someone who is pretty much out of patience (who perhaps never had a lot to begin with).

how about you just smile at the lady, because we all know there’s a baby in there and we all know how it got there and we all know she has some interesting decisions ahead of her, and move along? having the incredible audacity to show oneself in public while pregnant is not the same as giving permission to be interrogated or lectured about women’s proper places in society.

i seem to have run out of coy little ways to slip big news into innocent conversation, and i’ve been pretty damn tired lately. so, here’s the news:

we’re expecting to welcome a new person into the world in roughly a month.

there, i said it. after months of silence, and preceding what will likely be another dry spell as i frantically (exhaustedly) manage life and work preparations in advance of the onslaught of insanity, i blow off the blog dust with that.

but before we descend into further madness, i wanted to put some thoughts out there.

1. it seems like all kinds of people tell you there is no “right” time to have kids. so far, i have decided i both agree and disagree with this. personally, there was a time when this would have destroyed me. and i mean the entire experience. so absolutely there was a “wrong” time in my life, which basically comprised my entire 20s and everything before them. and certainly i can imagine things being a little bit better than they are presently, particularly on the issue of early-career job stability (not just for myself). but, eventually there was a point where good enough was good enough.

2. crippling cluelessness (and general unawareness of being in this state) is almost as bad as malice, but not quite. i do not have the luxury of a traditional employment situation. it’s great for my CV to have this nice award and all, but i have found myself in a lot of limbo due to people not knowing how to properly handle a temporary situation. this has caused me a great deal of stress that did not need to happen. had i been a traditional employee, i would have had more means to push back. and i am not one to *not* push back against damn near everything.

3. so far, attempting this in a postdoc-type career stage (i say “type” because my situation does not match exactly what one imagines in an academic postdoc) has been pretty decent. scientifically, i have a decent amount of autonomy. i am still free from quite a bit of the beat-you-over-the-head administrative stuff associated with my workplace, but i have a fair bit of lower level admin crap responsibilities. i am able to plan things out and make proper arrangements so that, after having busted my ass far too much in the lead-up weeks, i should have things in the hopper while i’m gone, with minimal experiments-ground-to-a-halt time. i am not sure how well this would have gone at any other career stage, though i’m sure it works out regardless.

4. i approached the news with a bit of trepidation, wondering how well i was going to handle this emotionally. especially as my work situation went through some difficulties early on. i don’t exactly come from a world that has shown me a lot of kindness. i’ve surprised myself, somehow i’ve actually rooted in more-solid ground and gained some confidence in my own inner strength and ability to handle my shit. i have had to dig up some old and painful stuff from many years ago for something that may be in my future. last year, i would have taken all of this very hard. now? i can take a deep breath and know that part of my life is never coming back for me.

i have overcommitted myself over the next few weeks in order to keep things flying while i’m gone. but i gotta learn some better balance in the long run… it’s not gonna be optional. already, the struggle to keep up with the pace i had previously set for myself has been instructive, to say the least.

but i couldn’t know what i was in for until i got here.

Dr. Isis has an interesting post tonight, in which someone asks if s/he could become a scientist.

to my awareness, there is no mold that we scientists all come from. if there is, i must have gotten where i am by sneaking through the side door when nobody was looking.

like any profession, scientists come from all walks in life. we have our strengths and our weaknesses. we try to leverage the strengths and improve at the weaknesses. (of course, i should mention that the greatest strength is in recognizing your weaknesses.) generally, in my day to day, i see tendencies to share the traits of “enjoy science” and “crazy enough to try to make a living out of it” but beyond that… there is no checklist of what you must bring to the table or else you’re doomed to epic failure.

my training/career track did not always reflect that i was on course to become a scientist. i say, all the better for it. you are the sum of your experiences, after all.

if there are infinite walks of life that could lead one to become a scientist, i think it follows that there are infinite ways to contribute to science. science is not one single job, nor one single field, requiring one sort of scientist. but this is a recently aggravated pet peeve of mine- science is not one single sector, either. the best and brightest science is not exclusive to the hallowed labs of acadame.

i was facing some tough stuff recently. someone thought they were being helpful by telling me, “but look, you’ve already done the hardest part.”

neglected is the part about the work of carrying on through the valleys and ridges of life, knowing what you left behind is in fact behind you, and yet its shadow is still with you-  and sometimes it’s more with you than other times. that is no small thing.

part of me is happy to watch certain parties self-destruct, thereby doing all the hard work for me. and perhaps that’s the better way, the more fitting way, in the end. but the other part of me has wanted to personally finish that job for some time. that’s that damn shadow lurking just over my shoulder.

consider the following:

1. every time the world tries to knock me down a notch, i come back stronger.

2. the world seems to be at this pretty much perpetually, but even the above-the-background-noise instances are damn frequent.

3. i’m so acclimated to getting shit kicked at me that i’m always preparing for it.

i think the right combination of the above is the only reason that:

a. i am still kicking

b. i somehow keep on elevating myself despite my 99.99% doubts in my ability to do so and astonishment when i succeed.

 

why yes, i am having a pretty epic week over here. is that correlated with last week nearly taking me out? the resulting inner compensation pouring out this week? perhaps. i’ll never know for sure. but ya take what ya can get.