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life has been discouraging lately. extremely so. it’s nothing new to me, but i was looking forward to at least catching a breath away from the toxicity of the shit my life (more specifically, my family) throws at me.
the unbloggable nasty things are behind me now. i need to get down to business in coping with them. but any time i even attempt to share this bit of myself, i just hear the violins playing as if i’m whining about it. i’m not. this is my reality.
but i would sooner keep things to myself than fulfill this fear of coming off as someone who uselessly whines about the unchangeable. i’m very self-protective. this inhibits me quite a bit.
in short, all i want is a little bit of stability and a chance to make progress on my own life goals, and my search hasn’t even gotten me to the same universe as stability. in part, i had hoped that acquiring/finishing my education would help. it has not. so now i’m left wondering if i just haven’t gotten there yet and need to keep working and waiting, or if i am totally on the wrong path.
it’s not all negative lately- i’ve scored a lot of points in my work life. but having success in my career does not, on its own, make me satisfied with my life. this is part of what i’m fighting with.
or maybe i’m just being impatient. i have impatience in bulk quantity.
there is cause for celebration in the house of leigh tonight. but i’m soooooo tired. just a few more days of this up-early no-sleep shit till i have a day off- still more cause for celebration. two days per month to get some kind of sleep is insufficient.
what can i say… i work a lot, and when i come home, my time is more focused on trying to have a normal life. the fixer and i are spending more time together, trying to weather the major stressors we’ve just been wrung through.
i’m exhausted, but in a different way than grad school exhausted me. it’s more than the work. though i fully admit this whole thing where i get up ridiculously early and work long hours, followed by a total inability to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, is kicking my ass. it’s the need to prove myself all over again, to a new group. to earn my reputation as it was in grad department. and to hold my shit together when sometimes it seems like i’m about to fall apart.
in nicer news, i’ve met some very cool postdocs from other departments through the local postdoc group. fortunately, we have such lively conversations that we stick around at social events later than the rest of the group. unfortunately, staying late just kicks me in the ass even more.
ahh, balance. you continue to elude me.
i heart my undergrad mentor. it’s been years since i left undergrad lab for the great wide open of grad school, but i never forgot how important my undergrad experience was. particularly now that i’ve left grad lab for the great wide open of postdoc life, and am finding how important grad mentor’s influence has been on me, i’m fairly reflective on this.
since we hadn’t communicated since my defense, i sent an email off to undergrad mentor to catch up. even as the years pass, i still feel very supported by undergrad mentor. and of course, i received a very enthusiastic reply about my progress. what i didn’t expect was an invitation to come give a talk at small state u once i had the postdoc work up and running.
wow! that is a big deal to me. i had hoped that someday i could do this- i think that seeing someone who’s walked your footsteps at a little place like small state u come back and show the path they took after graduating, that makes a huge impact. and i hold very fond memories of my years at ssu, so any opportunity to go back is wonderful. it will be a little while before i’m in position to do this, but i am really excited.
my alternate title for this one is “shit that’s really hard to blog about.”
last weekend had some awesome parts and some excruciating pain. for a moment in time, that knocked down the 10 long years of uphill progress that i had put up between present-day me and the person i used to be. it took me a day to recover.
and i can’t put this stuff into words and talk through it. i just shut down, i stop feeling. as the incident happened, i was vaguely aware somewhere in the back of my mind that it was totally screwing me up. but rather than feel anything, i watched myself negotiate and walk away from the situation. then i refused to acknowledge that it happened until later.
the son of a bitch hasn’t changed. he’s the same manipulative, lying responsibility-denier. except now he’s got some form of dementia on top of the constant intoxication and looks about 20 years older than he really is. and the words are still empty. they are instruments to get what he wants, and nothing more.
i thought i would never see him again. i thought i wouldn’t be placed in that situation again. overconfidence… i should have known better, i suppose. dear mother has never been great at making decisions.
combined with a recent misstep of a beloved person into impulsive drug-taking binges, calling me in a panic in the middle of the night asking if s/he was going to die and to please help, and subsequent interventions… this incident has sent me absolutely reeling. i was at least handling this last bit until the weekend’s events threw me down in a brutal way.
it’s times like this where i question whether i can continue doing the work i do, now that my subject of study is more closely related to my own past. i suppose it’s the present non-science-life influences converging to darken my perspective on things, and maybe once i get my feet back under me i’ll feel differently. i was doing ok until last weekend, after all. but it’s not an easy road to walk, the way things are right now.
i was pondering this as i had some walking-alone time today, telling myself that the implications of my work might contribute to the lessening of someone else’s suffering someday. fewer people in my own shoes, with these burdens, that’s a good thing for everyone. but today? my own world of suffering is closing in. and i’m reminded of it when i read the case studies. when i read or even write introductions arguing why ____ needs to be addressed with methods x-y-z.
there are many scientists who chose their field of expertise due to personal motivation. i think this is good- in my opinion, if we’re more invested, we might tire less easily in the face of disappointment. and science involves lots of disappointment. but given my current state of being, i think this might be too close.
i’m in the development stages of my own thing, which basically uses data collection methods similar to the already-funded project and makes a sharp turn in another direction. to an area of interest that needs more study, which is still relevant to my larger field, but not so hard on me personally.
i tell myself everything is going to be ok.
among other annoyances of postdoc life, one of the least amusing is the fact that there does not appear to be a single job which utilizes the fixer’s college degree in the general local area. if he were willing to drive a 2-hour round trip commute every day, his chances would improve. still, this is a very sad realization and a big change even from the situation in the area when i signed the offer letter and mailed it back.
i feel like i just totally fucked his career over… and it’s an awful feeling.
sure, part of it is the fact that the economy is worse now than it ever has been, in my lifespan. however, had i known that every last job in the field would dry up here, i would have chosen a larger metro area simply for the fact that more people in the area = more people with the fixer’s unique job skills required.
i am exceedingly fortunate to have a spouse who is very supportive of my career. he was on board to move to a new region of the country 2 weeks after our wedding so that i could go to grad school. he stuck with me through all the shit that mega u dragged me through. and though it was probably fortunate that we did not share living space while i was in the early dissertation-writing phase, he did tolerate (barely) the fact that i was totally consumed by my work for the last few months of the ordeal, right after he came home to stay.
and no, i acknowledge that it’s not like there wasn’t some very major give and take at every step, but i tend to focus on my own failures…
i feel like my placing us here has failed him, and as a consequence, us. and that’s a really shitty feeling. we’re working on a “what next” plan in case things aren’t any better when it’s time to decide whether to stay here any longer. i have lots of factors to consider in this decision.
it’s time for me to share something amusing from my new life so far, instead of frustrations.
the current experiment demands that i get up insanely early every single day and go to work. i’m lucky if i get to sleep in late enough to see the earliest signs of daybreak in my rearview mirror in the morning. usually, i’m not lucky. (i had to do this for a while to use a shared microscope as a grad student, but i could at least sleep in once in a while. this particular situation is painful.)
at any rate, this means i’ve got the very first non-university-owned vehicle to park in the parking lot for the day. and it also means i get total fucking rockstar parking. (sweet!) BUT, this also means i have displaced the former earliest arrival of the day.
that dude is pissed off about the situation. he has started to arrive earlier in an attempt to claim the single most rockstar of parking spaces before i get there.
alright, if that’s important enough for him to get up at absurd-thirty in the morning, whatever. i don’t mind parking 15 feet farther away from the building. but every few days, i have to get to work EVEN EARLIER. and this totally messes with the dude. if i move my car to bring some stuff over from another building, by the time i get back 15 minutes later, his car is in the most-rockstar spot. he must be watching for me to leave, like a hawk.
i’m really amused by this. it’s so trivial.
i’m still getting into things here… have had some major disruptions, finally made some progress, then more disruptions, now i’m hoping for a little peace… it’s been a rollercoaster over here.
thank you to my blog peeps for the sympathetic responses and to those of you who have given helpful advice. i’m figuring out the root of the situation thanks to outside perspectives from others, but have yet to figure out how to handle that situation from my position.
i guess time will tell.
meanwhile, i’m also attempting to do this work-life balance thing, which ceased to exist while i was in graduate school. i did a lot wrong in the last few months of grad school. a lot. i need to do some things for myself. and the fixer and i have a lot of things to make up to each other.
and so concludes my first month as a postdoctoral scientist. there were definitely no care bears or tea parties, to paraphrase the semi-famous saying.
conflict with one of the bosses, conflict in my outside life, impatience and frustration, general adjustments, it was a challenging month. less so than the last month of grad school, or the transition month between the defense and the postdoc. but i wouldn’t want to re-live any of the last 3 months of my life.
on the upside, i received my doctoral diploma today. that was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing. i looked at it for a good 10 minutes. it reminded me that no matter what’s going on now, i was really fortunate for my graduate school experience. and yes, it did prepare me quite well in many ways. but there are some things you just can’t prepare for until you get there.
i was pretty fucking pissed off the other day. today i said fuck it, and laid the shit on the table. what, exactly, did i have to lose anyway? (this is clearly a trait i picked up from grad mentor, and i’m glad for it.) i have a track record of refusing to get stepped on.
the good news: i’ve re-affirmed that i am a motherfucking postdoc. there is sadly little glamor in postdochood, but it’s what i sought out and signed up for.
the bad news: i am not enjoying the transition to this lab management style. at. fucking. all.
after all this upheaval, and time spent searching myself, i’m fairly sure i know what i want out of my career. i’m hoping 2 years as a postdoc will get me where i want to go. fortunately, i’ve been considering this for a few years, and have made some solid connections that are willing help me get there.
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