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.

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.

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.

there was a lot of hopelessness in the middle. after all, i had just spent several years being miserable as a grad student. (excepting my grad lab, i hated damn near every aspect of my grad school experience. i say this now after having had some time to develop some misty nostalgia and finding myself lacking in any of it.) finding myself even MORE miserable as a postdoc was a hard blow to take when i was already down. i constantly questioned myself- and eventually wondered if maybe i just wasn’t cut out for science after all. while i was questioning myself, my confidence was also taking direct hits from the rocky seas i was sailing through at work.

this does not really prime one for looking like a great candidate on a job interview. somehow i managed it well enough. fortunately, i was able to navigate my way to something better and get my career back on track. there are posts and posts i could write about this process, but frankly i’m just now starting to get my writing back on track, and i’m really not about to start getting into that subject yet.

but there are some good lessons i have learned, now that i can look back. and now that i’ve gotten myself on the track i want to take.

1. things are not always what they seem. but sometimes they are, and sometimes you still don’t like them as much as you thought you would.

2. your career direction can always change. you just gotta focus on staying afloat when you do it, and you gotta do it carefully. there are a lot of ways to do it right, but there are more ways to do it wrong.

3. nobody cares more about your career than you do. if you remember anything, remember this. in the end, you have to look out for yourself.

i have things back on the path i was seeking. i’m very fortunate, and i’m very happy to be in my present shoes. i’m getting awesome data, i’m doing epic science, and there are few things i can do professionally that i can imagine being this rewarding. so much of my non-work life has improved by leaps and bounds as direct and indirect results of this career path shift. i got my spouse and my relationship back when i finally got rid of the pressure that had taken over my life. i got my health back, and my weight is down to where i was around the end of my first year of grad school. i got my happiness back with some balance in my life and some time to play with my bike. today, the lessons of the hardships behind me only make me better for the experience. in the thick of it, i never imagined i would be able to say that.

why am i only “lucky” to have the good things in my life? and to counter that, why is something lackluster in my life always due to my own personal failings?

sure, i’ve had many strokes of good fortune in my life, or i wouldn’t be around anymore for one. additionally, i’ve got myriad personal failings, including the neverending desire to throttle the next person who attributes my accomplishments to luck.

but let’s be clear here. i have taken the luck where i could get it, and then moved mountains in my life to get where i am. you have no fucking idea where i started and how far i’ve hauled myself out of that mire to get here. you never will. but i can say that your type, “lucky” comment-maker, is the type that would have told me how very sorry you felt for me back in the day when i was fighting for my life and you were lounging around with an actual roof over your head. the type that felt pity and superiority over me and hoped i would enjoy my inevitable career in unskilled labor.

clearly, i intimidate you if you need to attribute my getting here to sheer luck of the draw. i should take that as a compliment. someday i might. but for now? fuck you.

the word “survivor” is better. it implies that one has encountered a challenge and endured it. and i think some days that’s the best i’ve accomplished anyway.

every summer i feel myself slipping back in time- reality fades and the vivid recollections of summer events long gone invade my senses. at this one milepost, i am stuck, time and time again. no matter how many miles i put between the survivor and those events- no matter how i change my life- no matter anything else- inevitably i run across the “go directly to jail” space on the board. do not pass go. do not go anywhere. you’re never escaping this.

all the years, all the accomplishments, the moving on, the hard work. it all falls away. like it never even happened. and there i am, exposed even under these layers i’ve constructed- waiting, for that something to find me. for that singular something to break me again.

i’ve moved beyond the just-surviving stage. except…

damn. [gets spray-air can, choking, sprays around]

anyway, long story short, i’ve wrangled my career back on whatthefuckever track it’s on (if you can identify it, let me know, because i have no idea where the hell it’s going) and i’m re-assembling my personal shit piece by piece. work is busy but peachy. i got the challenges i was asking for- i got more than i asked for, frankly. i have the science rolling at unprecedented levels of awesome, and i’m on track to produce some nice, solid papers to establish myself in this shift-of-subfield. the personal shit seems harder to regroup than the career, but i suppose that’s a matter of fucked up priorities. i’m workin’ on it. but in the meantime, for something quantifiable, i’m back to my early grad school weight (if not pre-first-year… i can’t say i kept track back then, foolish me.)

i’ve been thinking how the other times i’ve made some big change in life/career phase, i’ve taken it as some kind of eye-opening experience. in particular, college gave me a brand new lease on life in so. many. ways. not the least of which was finally having a reliable roof over my head, but in so many other ways i experienced a life i had never seen before. i wiped the scuffs and the dirt off my trampled soul along the river and in the trails of that place, let it dry and re-harden in the clearings under the sun and the tall grass, and i learned who i was on the inside. i had never had that kind of undistracted opportunity to think and reflect.

but now, in the productive postdoc phase? nothing. i can’t process this new, this unfamiliar.

i realize i need to go home. to that muddy water rushing over the rocks, to those rock faces that induce sheer heart-lifting joy, to the lookout point where the perspective is so very different in every way. ostensibly, yes, the trip is to go visit my family. but in reality? those wild places elsewhere in the state are calling me by name.

it’s been years. i am not that same girl who took the first steps on this trail. i am not the one who made the last hike with the girls before moving out and moving on to something unfamiliar. i’m not the second-year grad student who came back wishing only for things to be simple like they used to. i’m someone different- the experiences necessitate the change.

but who am i now? i want to take a break, to let go of the things dragging on me over the years. i want to spend my hours on the trails actively distracting myself from the things that don’t need to be on my mind. i want to lay on my back on that big rock face in the sun and see nothing between me and the sky. like i used to. i learn things up there that i just can’t figure out where i am right now.

you can’t go home… but you absolutely can be your present self in a setting that helped you change your life for the better once before.

in my first postdoc, they skipped the stepping-on attempts and opted for the steamroller. just a few months and sheer exhaustion of running from that steamroller later, i initiated a job search. if they were going to treat postdocs that way, i wasn’t going to volunteer to sacrifice my career/self-respect/self-confidence for it. i did the science there dispassionately and because i had to, i wrote an award application with full intensity, and i waited. and waited. and waited for that award letter.

in the meantime i got crushed under that steamroller. i fell apart in so many ways, i can’t even describe them all. i even lost sight of who i was- the people i met there never got to know the real me. but i stuck it out and ended things as professionally as possible- because they hadn’t destroyed my self-respect. the day i quit that job was the best day of my post-doctoral life, but it also found me the lowest and most wretched that i had felt/been in many years.

if there ever was a test of my resiliency, that would be it. i’ve seen my share of adversity and bounced back to functionality from all of it, but this was a different kind of monster. it took a lot of work, but a few months after that ordeal ended i’ve mastered yet another comeback. i’ve put the pieces of my life back together once again. the things about myself that i lost have been located and shined up a bit. my sleeves are rolled up, my ass-kicking boots are on, sights are laser-focused on my new goals in my new environment. i have yet to be knocked off-course by some fuckwit with power-abusing tendencies.

so for now, i’m pleased to share with you that i will be blogging in a more scientific slant at my new scientopia digs, neurodynamics! come find me there for all things neuropharmacology, including a few reposts of some of the more decent material i’ve posted over here. i will be hanging onto this blog, but i’m still not 100% sure where this is going. i need a little time to settle in and get my scientific recipes cooking.

but in the meantime, i’ll see you at scientopia!

postdoc #2 is off to a fantastic start. it’s like a different universe in every describable way, but the differences i’ve run into so far have universally been positive. i’m getting my bearings. back to the old routine of meeting new people, figuring them out, being the subject of others trying to figure you out, gaining rapport, all that. the social stuff that i usually manage to make my way through somehow.

this is more exhausting than the heavy-duty science, for me, but critical. and i think i’m doing alright on that so far.

let’s say i have a good feeling about this. i’m just starting to reach the point where i get to do science, and the work has just begun.