small huge update

Umm, by the way:

Monster Paper is in press.

:-D

There are probably lots of other things I could talk about, and I'm feeling a little bad for not updating my blog more frequently these days, but right now I think I want to read my book and get ready for bed.  So... maybe a proper update soon?  (Sorry.)

Vienna (and work, and summer is somehow over)

I do not understand how this summer is over already.  What on earth happened?  Last thing I knew, the spring semester was drawing to a close and I was looking forward to having the summer to get some work done, and suddenly it's the start of the fall semester already.  Argh!

On the bright side, I did get some work done, though.  I resubmitted my Monster Paper (fingers crossed), and I also started a new paper with my former office mate (which is to be submitted in about two weeks), and I also got some really awesome results on a project I've been working on with J.  So things are rolling right along, just in time to start applying for jobs again.  I'm kind of looking forward to the jobs thing now that the Monster Paper is in.  It was really hanging over my head, and now I just feel like, "Okay. Let's DO this."

I also traveled!  How could I possibly go a few months without flying across the country a few times?  (I couldn't.)  Shortly after I got back from El Paso in April, I went to a conference in New Jersey for a week, then I drove back to State College and caught a flight to the west coast so I could spend some time with J (and friends who have now left Berkeley - for good!).  So I was in Berkeley for two weeks in late May/early June, and then I was in State College for a while, and then J was here for two weeks while I worked on Monster Paper (although we did get a chance to do some stuff while he was here, including spending a few days in IL), and then I went to Vienna for a week for another conference.  I just got back late on Sunday night, in fact, and it was a very cool experience.  I still feel kind of weird about going to Europe for a week, and my body doesn't deal with it very well (although I've found that a little bit of melatonin really eases the transition for me), but it was a great opportunity and I took quite a few pictures while I was there.

So without further ado: Vienna.

the Rathaus (City Hall)

Tee-hee!  We did not go there.

Google Translate tells me that this means, "Shit, the ka is hit."
Thanks, Google.

The pedestrian crossing signal is apparently two people holding hands with a heart between them?
That's lovely and everything, but what a weird thing to put on a crossing signal.

The hugest vat of sauerkraut I've ever seen, at the Naschmarkt (open air market).

The back of Schönbrunn Palace.  It's like Versailles, but Germanic.

The gardens at Schönbrunn.

Squinty-eyed selfie at the gardens at Schönbrunn.

Super close up cheetah at the Schönbrunn Zoo.
I have very mixed feelings about zoos in general, but this was a pretty nice zoo, at least.

Emperor penguins! Chillin'.

View of Vienna from the suspension bridge at Schönbrunn Zoo.

The front of Schönbrunn Palace, as I was leaving.

Inside of Café Central. Thanks for the recommendation, K!

My favorite museum was probably the Freud museum, which is in his family's former apartment. There was a HUGE statue of a naked body hanging from the ceiling in the middle of a rather small room (complete with huge and, shall we say, prominent genitalia) and it was pretty hilarious to watch people try to navigate the room and look at the exhibits without staring at the giant penis. Extremely Freudian.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to visit Mozart's house, but I did walk by Beethoven's apartment, and that was pretty cool. It was a really neat city, and I hope I'll be able to go back sometime.

I'm gonna go for a walk now before it gets too dark and chilly.  (What's with the chilly air today?  It can't be fall already!  Aack!)

happy day

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered."

El Paso

So, here I am in El Paso, Texas for three weeks!  In case I haven't had the chance to tell you in person and you're interested in these sorts of things, I did not land a faculty job for next year, so I will be staying in State College for another year.  Except for the times when I'm off doing my forced gallivanting for research purposes, that is.  Which is what brings me to El Paso: I'm here collecting data on English-Spanish bilinguals and enjoying the sunshine and Mexican food.  Here are some pictures from my first week here, which has been very nice, all things considered.

Recovery Mode

I'm in recovery mode right now.  My "stupid brain" is slowly getting better, I think, and by that I mean that the absolute exhaustion and at times borderline despair brought on by the past few months of job searching, etc. seems to be receding slowly into the background.  I did my job interviews.  I submitted my manuscript.  I went to my workshop in D.C.  I'm still waiting to see what will come of those things, if anything, (minus the workshop, because I never cared about the workshop to begin with) but for the time being at least I am done.  I can rest on my potential laurels and not have to worry about any serious looming deadlines for a while, and I can recharge my powers of concentration.  The hardest part about the past few weeks was getting that manuscript in on time, because after a solid month (or two months, depending on whether my LSA interviews count) of traveling and preparing for job interviews, I just didn't have any mental juice left.  I can only concentrate for so long, and beyond that, it becomes increasingly painful to muster the willpower needed to do good work.  Can't I just do crappy work for a while?  Better yet, can't I like, zone out on the couch and watch bad TV?

I have recently learned that I am the #2 choice for both the jobs I interviewed for.  (We're #2!  We're #2!)  This is a very strange position to be in, because it means that depending on how things shake out, I could end up with anywhere between zero and two job offers.  For the first job, they told me they're "in negotiations" with another candidate, and I think what that means is that Candidate #1 is waiting to hear whether he gets any other offers so he can play hardball and then go with the best one.  If Candidate #1 takes another offer, then it will be my turn to negotiate.  For the second job, I heard through the grapevine that Candidate #1 is also currently in negotiations, but I also know from meeting with the chair of the search committee that the department has put in a request to hire two people for the position.  What that means for me is that if they can get the Dean to approve a second hire, then it will be my turn to negotiate for that one.

So in practical terms what this all means is that I'm still sitting around anxiously twiddling my thumbs, dammit, but it also means that I had a pretty darn good showing at my interviews.  Both of the Candidate #1s are a few years ahead of me, and have had a chance to get some publications out, whereas I'm still currently in the process of getting my first "real" publications.  (This is why the recently-submitted manuscript is somewhat crucial.)  If I can almost get two job offers despite not quite having any peer-reviewed publications (I mean, to my credit, I do have a rather large NSF grant on my side...) then I think that means I'm in good shape in the scheme of things, whether one of these jobs ends up coming through or not.  I have quite a few things that will more than likely be published by the end of the year, and then I will be in an excellent position to hit the job market again next year.  But that's the thing: I am so !&#% sick of the @%$* job market that it makes me want to puke thinking about going through all of this again next year.  I guess I shouldn't think about that just yet, though.  I should keep waiting, and trying not to look too far into the future, and just rolling with the punches as they come.

This week is our Spring Break and I have been doing a strange combination of working, vegetating, and exercising.  I finished another draft of my dissertation work (please let it be almost done, please), and I spent two solid days alternating between cooking, wasting time on the Internet, and reading a book (!).  I also joined a gym!  Glory be, it is actually starting to look like spring, and by that I mean that the temperature has been consistently above freezing for like a whole week now, such that there's only a few inches of snow left on the ground!  You can see the grass in some parts!  It's enough to make a person actually want to be outside, so I have gone for a run every day this week, and I'm even starting to feel like a normal human being with a functioning brain and body again.  It would be great if I could lose the five stress pounds I apparently gained over the past two months, but for now, I'm just happy to be outside and moving and feeling like eating fruits and vegetables instead of, like, hot chocolate and cookies.  Even better: J gets here next Saturday for his Spring Break, and I haven't seen him for about two months, so it's about freaking time.

So who knows where I'll be living in August (that old familiar refrain), but for now, things are looking up, at least.

---safe---

You guys, I diiiiiid it!

I finally made it through February and I can be a real live human again!!  I have, like, doctors appointments and an oil change and all kinds of "life" business that I haven't managed to accomplish for the past few months.  But I think I'm going to be okay now.

Gotta run, but more later, maybe.

Vancouver

nerves

Wow, long time, no see, blog readers.  Do I still have blog readers?  I wonder.

I now see that many things have happened since I last posted here, and yet in many ways, it's all the same.  Here are some updates for you.

I ended up submitting five applications for faculty jobs this past year.  Of the five, I was (relatively kindly) rejected from two, asked to interview for two, and still haven't heard back from one.  I'm assuming that last one is a rejection at this point.  But I did indeed interview for the other two at the LSA Annual Meeting in early January, and now I have been invited for on-campus interviews for both of them.  The good news, obviously, is that this means that I will probably someday get a faculty job, whether it works out this year or a bit down the road.  The bad news is that it's incredibly stressful.  I keep telling J, "I'm tired of this life."  And I really am.  Of course it's exciting thinking about getting job offers for either of the places I'll be visiting in February, but it's also absolutely exhausting.  Not only do I have to fly across the country a few more times (because heck, why not, right?), I have to prepare a bunch of long talks that I'll be giving in front of panels of faculty and students who are judging me and deciding if they might want me to come work at their university.  Not to mention the emotional stress involved in never knowing where I'm going to be from one year to the next... coupled with the fact that this next move is hopefully going to be the last.  I'm essentially waiting for the judgment day that finally decides my fate.  Where will I end up?  Or will I stay in State College for another year?  There's really no way to know.  Ever.

And more good/bad news on top of it: the manuscript proposal I submitted was accepted! Of course, this is wonderful news in many (most) respects.  The bad part is that it's also due in February, which means that I'm just a big freaking ball of nerves right now.  I have this simmering sense of low grade panic that I just can't shake; what if I can't get all this work done?  What if all of this stuff I'm trying to do right now is just too much to deal with at one time, and it all ends up sucking?  It feels kind of like juggling a bunch of water balloons or something.  Chaotic, slightly uncomfortable, but maybe a little bit fun?, and if they all hit the ground they'll explode and I'll momentarily feel like I failed in a big way, but then ultimately I'll probably have to laugh at it.  Because who's crazy enough to juggle a bunch of water balloons, and really, who cares if they all explode all over the pavement?  It's just water.

I can play the violin now, sort of.  It's amazing what a few months of practice will do.  I'm glad I have that as a bit of a barometer, I guess; even though my emotional state is very same-old-same-old, and probably will be until I figure out how to exit the job-induced loop in which I find myself, I know that time is passing and I'm accomplishing things, because four months ago I didn't even know how to hold a violin, and now I have callouses on the fingers of my left hand and have played my way through the first Suzuki violin lesson book.  So that's something.

After I had my job interviews at the LSA, I came back to the hotel room and just sobbed.  The interviews actually went fairly well (and I guess this is corroborated by the fact that they turned into campus visits), but I just had to get the nerves out somehow.  After I finished sobbing, I went for a long run along the Willamette River, partially in the rain, and then I came back and sobbed some more.  I'm tired.  I'm tired of this in-between, always-waiting, perpetually-temporary state.  Hopefully it will only last a little bit longer.

IIIIIIII don't wanna work...

... I just want to bang my head on the desk all day.

I have literally spent 31 of the past 45 hours working.  And during that time period, I have only slept once.  That is probably more time since yesterday morning (starting at 3:30 am) than many people (including myself, at times) spend working in an entire week.

On the bright side: I have submitted a job application and an article proposal to one of the best journals in my field, and I have exciting results from the experiments I've been working on.

On the not as bright side: I'm a little worried that I will never be able to think straight again.  It's remarkably similar to writing my dissertation, actually, and it has me a little worried that this is going to become a semi-regular occurrence in my life.  Punctuated periods of ridiculously intense concentration, followed by a refractory period in which I just feel completely stupid and unmotivated to do anything.

I... am done writing.  I am going to drink a glass of wine and stare into space until I fall asleep.  And then I'm going to NOT set an alarm, and then I'm going to lay in bed for like, an hour after I wake up.  AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.

my new toy

"I think I want to learn to play the violin."

"Just... you?"

[looking around]  "Uhh... yeah..."

"Oh, okay.  Usually we have parents come in with their kids."

"Oh.  Uhh, no, just me."

Last night I had a dream that I was playing the banjo.  I was having an absolute blast.  It was just so joyous.  I woke up in the middle of the night, and I just couldn't get it out of my head.  I mean, why not, right?  I've always wanted to play the banjo, and there is absolutely no reason for me to not sign up for banjo lessons.

But then I started thinking: I've always wanted to play the banjo, but I've also always kind of wanted to play the fiddle.  How cool would that be, to be able to play the fiddle?  And the great thing about playing the fiddle is that there's nothing keeping you from playing it like a violin, too.  Violins have a lot of range.  You can play one by itself, and play some awesomely schmaltzy classical piece, or you can play in an orchestra, or you can play in a little trio or quartet or quintet, or you can find a bunch of goofy weirdos who are into Irish dance and join an amazing folk band and just have a blast on the weekends.

Plus, I really know next to nothing about the violin.  It uses a different clef from the piano, it has four strings, and you rest it under your chin when you play, but that's basically all I know.  With the banjo, I've held a banjo before, I used to know how to play the guitar decently... it's just not as exotic to me.

So when I finally got out of bed, I was fixated.  I started looking for banjo and fiddle lessons in State College, and places where you can buy or rent musical instruments.  It turns out there's a music academy here, with lessons for adults and an Irish guy who teaches fiddling.  So like, I'm sold.  There's also a "family music store" that seems to be largely for school-aged kids to rent instruments.  So I drove over to the family music store and had the above conversation, resulting in me holding a violin for the first time, which felt strangely natural.  It turns out you can rent a brand new, beautiful violin (see photo) for $12.72 a month.  Uhhhh yes, please sign me up.

Here is the game plan:

1)  Start lessons next week at the music store.

2)  Take weekly lessons for a few months until the new semester starts at the music academy.

3)  Sign up for a semester of private fiddle lessons.

4)  Rock the freaking house.

Lassen National Park

We went to Lassen Volcanic National Park!  It was super cool.

East Coast Road Trip

We went on a road trip!  Rather than tell you about it, I'll just show you some pictures for now.

Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah

Shenandoah

Shenandoah

the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

the Washington Monument

the White House! it was actually kind of lame

the Capitol Building

I just got back from Geneva last night, and am headed out to California on Wednesday.  (Hooray!)  The Geneva trip was truly excellent, and I expect the California trip will be as well.  I have a lot of work to get done before I leave, but it's really fun work, so I'm looking forward to it.  I'll post a proper update at some point too, probably.

some new results

There is a very good reason why I have not been updating my blog.  Well, sort of.  As you, my faithful readers, are likely aware, my life has been very much in the balance for the past few months.  So many things happened, or almost happened, and then everything very suddenly magically worked out.

Here's the scoop.  I applied for a postdoctoral research grant from the National Science Foundation back in early November.  It was extremely last minute.  Maddeningly so.  I learned about the grant something like a week before the proposal was due.  Thankfully two things had happened: I was already in the process of preparing a different grant proposal, so it wasn't too terribly hard to rewrite that one into a different version for NSF, and the government shutdown had backed things up at NSF so much that they ended up extending the deadline by a week or two, giving me a little extra time.

In any case, it was kind of miserable pulling everything together at the last minute, but I did it, and then I sat.  And waited.  For months.  At the end of January, I learned that my proposal had been sent out for review, which means they sent it to some experts in my field to read what I had written and make comments on it for the big committee meeting.  Then in early March, the committee met, and we heard nothing.  Radio silence.  And then - suddenly - in May, after months of no communication whatsoever from NSF, the status of my proposal magically changed from "pending" to "recommended".

What that means is this: the way NSF works is a big committee meets to discuss all the proposals that have been submitted.  The committee members read the proposals themselves, and also the reviews written by the expert reviewers, and the program manager (the head of the committee) has to write up a summary of all of the discussions, and ultimately make a recommendation for which grants should be funded.   Normally, when the program manager recommends that a grant be funded, it's funded.  So for my grant status to change from "pending" to "recommended" is huge.  The problem was, there has been discussion of a bill in congress called the FIRST act, which is the reauthorization for the NSF budget, and it's kind of a mess, from what I understand.  They're trying to slash science funding, and they're also trying to implement some really damaging changes to the scientific review process.  It's extremely disheartening, to say the least.

So in my case, there was the added issue of the timing of this legislation.  I was really worried that even though my grant was recommended, depending on what was happening with the FIRST act, the program manager's recommendation might get shot down.  And then I would be in the somewhat tragic position of being the only person anyone's ever heard of who had their grant get recommended and then not funded.

But.  But!  On June 1st, the status changed again: from "recommended" to "funded".  That's it - "funded".  And suddenly there's paperwork to fill out and plane tickets that I can buy on my very own grant and my salary is getting changed over to my very own grant as of July 1st.

So all of this time that I have been not blogging, I've been in kind of a precarious mind space, wondering where I would be next year.  Hoping against hope that things would work out with this grant, and wanting to write an update here, but holding my breath because what if, what if it doesn't work out.  In the meantime, I also had a job interview elsewhere (sort of... that's a subject for a different post), and also spent some time convincing myself that truly, the absolute worst case scenario would be for me to move back to Berkeley for a year, and come on, that's not exactly the end of the world.

But here I am, and it's summer in State College, and the weather has been truly lovely and I get to sit in my upstairs office in my apartment that I love, and work on things that I think are interesting, and go for long runs on Sunday mornings, and spend the day on Saturday brewing beer and pulling weeds in the garden plot I'm sharing with my neighbors.  Things have gotten so cozy here.  I'm really feeling at home, and at least part of that is because I now know I can stay here, so I can afford to get attached to it.  I have some really great friends who live in the same apartment complex as me, and some nights we sit out on the porch together, or in the grass behind our houses, munching on snacks and shooting the breeze.  It's a good life, and I'm glad I get to live it for a little while longer.

This summer is about to become a little bit crazy, though, so I'm trying to enjoy the lazy days of summer while I can.  J will be here starting Tuesday (yay!!), and we will have a month of hanging out and probably alternately working from home and going out and exploring the environs.  Then the craziness starts.  I'll be in Geneva for a week (yes, just one week) in July, for a conference.  Then I stop off in PA, do my laundry, and head back out to California almost immediately, where J and I are driving up north (basically on the border with Oregon) for his family reunion.  I'll be back here at the beginning of August, and then I guess it's time for the semester, and it'll be time to start keeping my eyes peeled for faculty jobs.

And that is the story of what I've been up to for the past few months.  Oh, also, I went to my Berkeley graduation and G & S's wedding in May, and it was really wonderful.  I hope they don't mind if I post a picture here.  (It's on the internet elsewhere, so I don't think it should matter.)

I think this is G's 1052nd picture of the day.  I assure you he was quite happy in person.

Tonight I think I'm going to Happy Valley Brewing Company to watch the World Cup, and tomorrow is long run day, and I also have some laundry to do and more weeds to pull.  (Gardening is hard work.  Especially when you only do it in extremely punctuated spurts.  :-P )  I will try to make my next update not take quite so long as this one did (although no promises that I will be able to top the NSF news).

Happy Summer!

some new experiments

... Every day so caffeinated
I wish they were Golden Gated
Fillmore couldn't feel more miles away

So wrap me up, return to sender
Let's forget this five-year bender
Take me to my city by the Bay

I never knew all that I had
Now Alcatraz don't sound so bad
At least they got a hella fine Merlot

If I could wish upon a star
Then I would hitch a cable car
To the place that I can always call my own...

"Save Me,  San Francisco," by Train

*   *   *   *   *

Experiment 1: Effects of Mystery Food Sensitivities on Skin Inflammation

Background.  Remember how the skin on my face has been weirdly inflamed, and I thought I had developed a sensitivity to eggs?  Well, a few weeks back, I had an acute reaction to something, and I have no idea what it was (except that it wasn't eggs, because I haven't been eating any eggs).  I got home from an evening out, and I had these big blotchy red patches all over my stomach.  So I decided to do an elimination diet to try to figure out what in the heck is going on.

Hypothesis.  I have developed a mild allergy to something, and through the power of science, I will figure out what it is.

Participants.  One.  (Me.)

Materials.  Rice, vegetables, fruit, and olive oil.

Procedure.  Cut out all known allergens for a period of approximately three weeks.  Then add one back in at a time and see what happens.

Preliminary results.  I have been subsisting almost entirely on rice, vegetables, fruit, and olive oil for two weeks now.  For the first time in my life, I've been trying to up my meat consumption, because otherwise I get hungry too easily.

During the first week of my "experiment", the skin on my face, where it had been red and inflamed, got all peely and looked like it was healing.  Now most of the inflammation is gone, and it seems like it continues to improve.  I'm getting used to eating this way, although it's kind of a pain in the rear.  It makes it really hard to eat out, and now I'm one of those annoying people who asks things like, "What kind of oil is that fried in?" and "Do you know if the mashed potatoes are made with butter?" or "Does your soup of the day have any gluten in it?"

So, I feel totally weird and annoying, and I also really really miss dairy products.  It would be incredibly hard for me to keep this up, except 1) I want to know why my skin has been being weird, so I can avoid the thing that's been making it weird, and 2) if I treat it like an experiment, it's actually kind of exciting.  In a week I get to start adding foods back in and see what happens!  It should be cool!

*   *   *   *   *

Experiment 2: Trying on New Hats

Background.  It has recently been brought to my attention that hey, actually, there might not be enough money for me to stay on in my current job next year, so I have to apply for positions elsewhere, just in case it doesn't work out.  In writing these applications, I have to admit, it's not that hard for me to get excited at the prospect of going somewhere new.  I submitted an application for a postdoc in Philadelphia today, and it's the one I'm most excited about.  I might be moving to Philadelphia in a few months!  Or maybe Connecticut!  Or maybe to the Netherlands!  Who can say?!

Hypothesis.  In theory, if I treat it like a "Big Adventure!" it's kiiiiind of exciting.  But that might just be the optimist in me trying to make the best of things.  I don't really want to move.  (Especially to the Netherlands, even though it sounds like a very nice job, in a very nice place.)  I would rather stay here and be able to actually carry out the research I want to do instead of having to readjust to a new place, with new people, in a new town, in a new institution, et cetera.  I kind of think it will work out for me to stay here, but I won't know for about a month or so.

Participants.  One.  Me.  Still just me.  Although I have some friends now, and J comes to visit me fairly frequently.

Materials.  Many pages of letters and research proposals and versions of my CV.  Some stress.  A perpetual feeling of vague displacement, as though I am dislodged in space-time, floating about, waiting to settle down someplace where I can actually stay for a while.

Procedure.  Rewrite materials (see above).  Submit them to search committees.  Ask my advisors for more letters of recommendation.  Wait.  Work on the 57th version of my dissertation research manuscript in the meantime.  Start to worry that I will never actually accomplish anything, or have a place that actually fully feels like my home.

Preliminary results.  Mild to moderate unease, occasionally alternating with twinges of excitement that that job in Philly could actually be really awesome.  Or it could be great to stay here another year and finally get to run the study I've been planning.  Or hey, something else will probably work out... right?  Further research is needed.

*   *   *   *   *

Experiment 3: Going the Distance

Background.  J and I were planning on breaking up when I moved to Pennsylvania, and instead we decided to give it a go long distance.  This felt really risky at the time, but also like the best of two undesirable alternatives.

Hypothesis.  I think if we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be okay.

Participants.  Me and J.

Materials.  Plane tickets and about two days' worth of traveling for one of us every 4 - 6 weeks.  Lots of Skype time.

Preliminary results.  A marked result of the present investigation is that it is not uncommon for me to wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where I am.  I am also unable to live in one time zone, such that I am always in some crappy, in between, totally non functional time zone that seems to be inappropriate for both the east and west coasts.  (Maybe if I wind up back in Central time, I'll finally be on the same schedule as everyone else.)  A new hypothesis that emerges from the latter finding is that I am somewhat depressed these days.  This could potentially explain why I've been having trouble making myself work sometimes, and why I have a hard time waking up in the morning.  Of course, the weather has also been total crap for about 5 months now, and the cold dreary gray days also contribute to my desire to sleep in pretty much every day.

*   *   *   *   *

Conclusion.  The present experiments have attempted to isolate the individual factors contributing to the general weirdness of my life lately.  However, the results thus far suggest that perhaps all of these feelings are intertwined, in such a way that renders the primary subject mired in a state that could aptly be characterized as "Perpetual Blah."  Future work should attempt to tease apart the contributing influences of mystery food sensitivities, time zone trouble, weather, and perhaps mild depression due to missing my significant other and the generally puzzling life circumstances in which I find myself, in an attempt to better understand why exactly I've been feeling so blah.  At present, the only obvious recommendation is to keep on keepin' on, to hang out with friends when I can, and to try to go running more often now that it might (finally!) be done snowing and icing.

Dissertation, Part 2 (subtitle: "It Never Actually Ends")

I am so very close to submitting the first paper from my dissertation work.  It is really shaping up, and I'm getting kind of proud of it.  The end game is very weird, though, because the longer you work on something while feeling like it's almost done, the more it starts to feel like you will never actually be done.  It's like the end of a race, when you can see the stupid finish line, and yet no matter how hard you run, it always stays in the distance.  I have watched this paper go from about 10 pages of partial analyses just a few weeks ago to a whopping 46 pages of hard-fought argumentation, as of today, and I've still got a few more to go before I can really put the nail in the coffin.  It just keeps expanding, though!  The only thing I have left to finish up is the general discussion, at the very end, and I have notes for what I want to say, and all of the papers I think I need to cite.  So in a way, it looks SO CLOSE to being done.  And yet, I look at that (relatively short) list of papers I still need to discuss, and then I realize how much more reading I need to do before I can discuss them, because every "mention so-and-so here" note means I need to re-read 15 - 30 pages of someone else's work and think about how exactly it relates to what I'm doing before I can write that section.  And then I end up with a few more paragraphs that are hopefully good, and fair, and well written, but every single one of those takes at least 30 - 45 minutes, and sometimes several hours.

And this is still my dissertation work!  You know, the stuff I "finished" six months ago!  I guess I knew it would be like this - that it's always like this... that this is the career I signed up for, after all - but I am continually amazed at just how long everything takes.  I've been working on this project regularly, in earnest, for about a year now, and I'm just now getting to the point where it's close to being submitted to a journal.  I think it has a good chance of being accepted somewhere decent, which is exciting, but it gets kind of daunting thinking about how many times I'm going to have to go through this very process!  Of course, I can partially console myself with the knowledge that I will presumably get better at this sort of thing as I go, that this may be the hardest paper I ever prepare for publication, since it's my first one and all, but it is kind of daunting thinking about just how much time a project can take, and thinking about finding a way of accomplishing that once I have other significant drains on my time, like teaching, and faculty meetings, and advising students, and writing grants...

So... let's just assume that the paper writing, at least, is going to get easier as I go.  It helps to realize that I haven't been at this very long at all, in the scheme of things, and that all of the researchers I admire have been working on this one tiny little piece of the puzzle that we're all working on for years now, and I just really got started a year ago.  In five or ten or twenty years, I might not have to spend quite so long looking up papers and assimilating new information.  I hope!

Okay, back to work now.  I'm trying to submit this thing by the end of next week, and I think I can do it!

lazy Saturday

Leaving Café Lemont

It's snowing something fierce outside, and I'm sitting at Café Lemont in State College, just letting the cafe noise wash over me and enjoying the hum of warmth and activity.  All of the mugs here are handmade by a lady who sells them in house, and mine has a thick, bulbous ceramic base that you can cup in your hands, and it's full of warm, frothy latte.  My friend and neighbor E and her boyfriend are at a table a few feet away, and she's explaining to him what garden path sentences are, and the couple behind me are code switching between Arabic and English.  I love this café.  It's furnished with what seems to be antique/thift store furniture, and there are these beautiful dreamy paintings on the walls painted by a local artist.  They're the types of art I'd like to have in my house someday, maybe in some far off future when I'm making a professor's salary instead of a postdoc one, and I can do things like buy art from local artists that I like.

Inside Café Lemont

I've been feeling down this week.  Very intermittently, though; it comes and goes, and thankfully it mostly goes.  That is to say, most days I'm really happy and there are so many good things in my life right now.  I love my job and my work, and I'm making some really great friends here.  I've made it a point to exercise every day since I got back from break, and that's been really nice.  It is so cold here right now.  Too cold for running some days, really, and I am not exactly a wimp when it comes to running in the cold.  15 degrees is about my limit, though, because below that and it just hurts your skin and lungs.  So I go running as long as it's not too windy and biting, but that's usually only once a week right now.  The other days, I've been doing strength training-type stuff at home, and I'm getting noticeably stronger, which I really like.  I haven't had much upper body strength since I was playing volleyball and lifting weights regularly in high school, and I'd like to get back to the point where I'm actually strong-strong.  Winter in central PA is a pretty good time to work on that, it turns out.

Last night I had two bad dreams (two!) and I don't know what to make of that; I can't tell if I'm in a weird-sad mood today because of the dreams, or if already being in a slightly weird-sad mood is what brought the dreams on in the first place.  I think it's a little bit of both, unfortunately.  But I woke up in the middle of the night and was just so, so sad and couldn't get back to sleep for a little bit.  Thankfully I did get back to sleep after not too long, but then I had a second bad dream, and then it was morning, so I stayed awake after that.  But it was just not a restful night's sleep, and it's definitely affected my day today.  Bad dreams are funny when you're an adult, too.  Not funny-ha-ha, obviously, but funny-isn't-that-weird.  You'd think they'd go away when you grow up, but really all that changes is the things that feel out of your control enough to make you feel scared.  I don't mean this to be as cryptic and worrying as it sounds.  I'm just musing on the fact that at nearly 30 years old, it's still possible to wake up feeling freaked out from a bad dream!

Well, one of my postdoc friends is here now, so maybe that will help get me out of my funk.  I decided to dress up a little bit today, and it's almost silly how much that perked me up.  I decided to wear a dress and put on some mascara and even a tiny little spritz of perfume, and it's kind of fun to feel the tiniest bit fancier than normal.

* * * * * * *

We just had an awesome conversation about science and programming and spectra, and now I'm feeling much better.  I have these three friends I met through the Penn State Postdoc Society, and they are some of the most interesting, fun, smart women I've ever known.  The one who's here now is an astrophysicist, the one I went out to dinner with last night is a biological anthropologist, and the one who might be joining us later today is a cancer researcher.  So basically we sit around and have hugely nerdy conversations and it is so so so much fun.

So... things are good, in the scheme of things.  But I miss my boyfriend very much, and that sucks, and I still don't know how long I'm going to be here or where I'm going next or for how long, and that kind of sucks too.  (The other side of the coin is that it's fun and exciting by turns, but I definitely vacillate between those feelings with some regularity.)

On a related note, it's looking pretty strongly like I'll be staying here for at least one more year, maybe two, and conceivably even three.  I have a near-guarantee of funding for next year, and I also have two grants that are going to be reviewed very soon, and if one of those comes through (fingers and toes crossed!), then I would have 2-3 years of my very own funding.  So within two months, I will know for sure just how long I'll be staying here, and I think that will help a little bit with my mild feelings of drifting-related anxiety.

Hmph.  I think I'll try to go back to reading Game of Thrones now.