Firm friendship is the key to your success

Twice. Two fortune cookies in a row tell me this.
On this day of Thanksgiving, I am grateful for my friends above everything else (except my parents, my husband and my kids, maybe).

Everynight, I lightly wish I were dead or be close to the end of my life. For trivial reasons, mostly related to my unsuccessful events at work. And I don't want to face problems or fix them. It seems much simpler to just leave them behind to someone else. Of course that will be unprofessional and morally wrong. But if I am dead, how can anyone blame me?

I have no basic "survival, fighting to stay alive" sort of problems. I am healthy. People whom I care are mostly very healthy. None of them are suffering from maltreatment at school, work, etc. I have a steady job with a fair amount of challenges and opportunities. More than some, less than others. Average, or slightly above average when compared to other people in my profession among the first world countries. We own our apartment. There is no civil war in the country I live. Just occasional terrorist attacks, like most other industrialized countries who go and airstrike terrorists on their turf. The city I live in is very safe. I can walk home from a nearby train station passed midnight without fearing for my life.

People who have these issues appear to want to continue living... from distance, from where I can see that's how it seems. They want to survive. They want to live. I, on the other hand, take my life for granted and I wish for "success." But apparently, I would rather "die" than make the necessary effort to be successful. Oh, my. I am spoiled.

I don't have to make any effort to stay alive. That's extremely fortunate because if I had to fight to live, I probably would be dead very quickly. Or perhaps, I will surprise myself by becoming a real warrior and show tremendous will to live. Perhaps, that's how most (or many) people are. We only become motivated when our lives (or the lives of those who matter) are in peril. Then even I will show some sign of life. Otherwise, we become life's lazy freeloaders. I certainly am.

Ah, if I can convince myself that I am actually dying, I can gather my **it together and fix the variable temperature insert, review that article, write more articles, read more articles, make that call to the market research lab, setup the stereo microscope and cook decent dinner for my kids.
 

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

While I do not fully agree, I admit that the lack of integrity is catching up with me.
Loose ends are coming back to haunt me. Karma?

Excuses and catchy phrases I threw in here and there, now seem like "small lies."
And I find myself making more excuses. This has to stop. I have to stop. Need to stick to what I can handle. I am not cut out for treading water in a big ocean on a stormy day. I am 45. I write like a 23 looking for her best career choice. I am too old for this. I should be too old for this, no?

4am, 3am or 5am. Dreams with giant spiders and ants. Days spent on manipulating and sending out excuse messages for failing to manipulate. Those spiders, blocking my way. The doors without knobs that I cannot get back inside, FedEx delivery men coercing me to sign a dubious paper. I don't want to fall asleep, unless I am too tired to dream. My work days are a mess ... for I lack integreity to finish any job. And in between the dream world and the real world, its the worst territory where I sit awake not wanting to go back to either world.

3am and then 5am.

I need some sleep. 

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

That's what we do everyday. It's called "planning in anticipation" and we all work darn hard to plan our moves in anticipation of others' moves. "Others" include every entity outside our own mind, including our own bodily functions, natural phenomena, pure coincidences, whatever.

Looking back at my past plans and looking harder at my present conditions, I must say some plans did work out. I must say, I have been pretty lucky living in the world where so many have fallen vicitm to civil wars, religeous opressions, extreme poverty, etc., starting in their early childhood. I, on the other hand simply led my first-world and middle-class life, protected by my parents, respective governments, and the civility of my neighbors. And even under these circumstances, my plans, long-term and short, have seen non-negligeable success rates. So no, I do not complain. I still think I could have done better, but no, no complains.

Plans are similar to weahter forecasts. Your chance of planning well and being able to execute accordingly falls of exponentiallly with a time constant of anywhere between one week and a year... multiplied by a coefficient that takes in account the number of external factors involved in the plan. If I had too much time to waste (errr, what am I doing right now? never mind) I could probably build a statistically viable data set on "plans made" and their "completion (partial)" to find a correlation function with a more accurate time constant. Perhaps, I should have been a statistical sociologist who mulls over the fluctiations and dissipations in human lives of the first world.

Well, umm... I am not. 
But as a priviledged, first world member, I should be able to make better plans and thus build my future. Here "better" signifies "more realizable and sustainable."

Another day starts. Use it to build a better future.

Happiness is not about the absence of troubles but the skill to overcome them

I had a minor car accident 2 days ago, 1.5 days ago, to be more precise. It was a small one, probaby 50/50. I will never know because the other person, a moped driven by a young man (boy) refused to file a report or call the police. I filed a pre-plainte with the police. My husband is going to call the insurance company today. But he is leaving for a vacation with the kids this morning, in the car with which I had an accident. There is only a foot wide dent (and a couple of smaller ones) on the front door, and a scratch mark on the back door of the passenger side. Doors close fine.

Since then, I have trouble eating and thinking. Apparently, I am a very fragile person. I consider possible outcomes, negative and bad, from this accident and these thoughts frighten me.

My husband can have a bigger accident... a door flies open while driving on highway throwing my daughter out. The wheels come out. The scooter driver, the kid, has suffered a bigger injury than he had originally reckoned. The kid has a mean streak and comes back to torment me. The list goes on.
 Added to the regular list of difficulties, albeit all First-world kinds, I cannot sleep normally and I cannot swallow much.  

The fortune cookie telling me that my happiness depends on my ability to overcome them does not reassure me the least. I don't want to overcome any trouble right now.  I don't want any, really, I don't. If anything goes wrong with my husband's driving and results in injury and or loss of lives of my family members, I will not be able to overcome such a trouble. It's not a trouble. It's not a challenge. It will be a tragedy of the worst kind and I will not even pretend to overcome.

I wish I believed in God, a sort of God that can interfere and protect people from suffering just because they prayed for it. I don't. Not that kind of God, at least. Not sorts of God depicted by world's major religions. But for this particular trip, I fear for their safety and this makes me want to pray for the lack of better ideas to calm me down. Please protect them.

For all other problems, or troubles, rather, I will overcome them. I am a very happy person with a reasonable list of difficulties in life. 

Free your mind, and the rest will follow.

So, what it's saying is .... "There's nothing you can do about it at this point. Let Nature take its course."
This is not exactly what I was hoping to hear. I wished for "Your effort will soon be rewarded," or "Hard times are behind you" or something that signals that my luck turing in a positive direction.

Of course I can interpret this as "I free my mind and everything will turn out fine."

Then the question becomes "how does one free her mind?" and "from what, exactly?"

As I open my fortune cookie only when I have a specific issue (often negative), I reason in this context. This time, it is not a problem that I am dealing with. I am awaiting a verdict to be announced (imminent!) on my piece of work. I don't get to decide. They do. Free my mind, indeed. It serves absolutely no good purpose to ponder and fret over other people's decision. The rest will follow, as usual.

Free my mind, think of something else. It's useless. Gosh, how I wish I could tolerate alcohol to help freeing my mind!

Doing the impossible is kind of fun.

I have a strange feeling that this quote comes from a Disney movie.

It's only fun when you know somewhere in your heart that it can be done. Right now, I don't know if my goals are atteinable at all. They probably aren't. At least not with my skills and now with my brain. I lack the expertise. I lack the intelligence. I am frightened. The hole is getting deeper and deeper. It stopped being fun, but having fun is the only way out of this.... that and just quitting, which is not really a viable option. Because quitting will endanger someone else's career.

I need to dig another, side hole and crawl my way up.

If I can pull this off, I can finally quit, or rise above.

It's raining outside, again.

Fear is just excitement in need of an attitude adjustment.

Yes, I fear and dread the reactions and the judgements that I (we) will receive if we are to speak up. But I have to, we have to before it's too late. And I am not talking about some human rights movement. Just a report on our research results. So why am I so hesistant and scare to disclose what we have discovered? Why am I of being told that someone *thinks* we are wrong?

Lately, my professional life has taken a larger dimension in my life. It has become non-dissociable from my life itself, and more imprtantly from myself. Being denied of my conclusions and being criticized on the work into which I (we) have put in so much energy, is now a judgement on who I am and what I stand for. Isomorphism, a term I have recently learned at a career orientation event. On a nantional level, apparently, France suffers from "isomorphism." French society cannot dissciate its identity, its "raison d'être" from the methods it uses to run its society. Changing the way they function or produce touches its identity such that it cannot accept any changes (at least not easily). An extreme opposite example given was, a-hem, Japan. Japanese society, strongly anchored on the philosophy of "wa-kon-kan-sai" and "wa-kon-yo-sai" can easily accept new and foreign methods while keeping its sould intact. Oh, really?

On a personal level, however.... I have become progressively isomorphic on the professional front. It's probably related to the fact that I am growing older. And this is a very negative development because it slows me down. I require more and more (self) pep-talk to force myself to tackle unpleasant tasks. At the same time, we build who we are with what we do. So it is not surprising that the older we get, the more challenging it becomes to change our ways. The general rule applies. The old people are more conservative. In fact, the old conservative people are just scared people who do not want to be denied of their existence and their legitimacy.

So... the fact that I cannot seem to start re-writing this darn paper and submit it to elsewhere... is it simply the sign of getting old? Is isomorphism an inevitable fact of getting old? Am I old and scared? If so, that's silly. If not, well, I guess I am just lazy. Either way, there's only one way out of this self-loathing.

Work is work, so let's get to work. It's not me. It's just my work. If this doens't work, I will try something else. It's just work. Let's get to work. Let's get it done.
 

Another bad news

That's about all I can take. Another rejection. Apparently, I have been doing it all wrong.
3 big NO's received this year. Monthly NO's. Studded with other unfortunate, unwelcome failures and roadblocks. Nothing advances, nothing gets through and nothing is granted. No rewards, no recognition. What have I done wrong? Comments given in each rejection letter tell me what is wrong. So if I accept (don't have much choice) these wrongs, then where and when did I go wrong? 3 years ago. Was it not well thought through? Apparenly no. Is it too late to correct? Yes and no. For me no. For certain others whom I dragged into this mess, yes. How can I fix it? How can I FIX IT?????

You are filled with a sense of urgency. Be patient or you may end up confused.

When bad news accumulate, a good news becomes more and more 'urgent,' indeed. Am I confused? Yes, I think so. I would use the word "lost" instead of confused, but I suppose I am lost because I am confused. In fact, I am edging toward the panic point every day now.

I have had my share of bad news this year and it's only March 9th. Lately, I find myself feeling relieved and even content when I don't hear or find out a bad news all day when I return from work when I reach home.

2014 was a mix of both good and bad news, all of which were mild in its intensity. And most importantly, I didn't die as I had thought I just might.

But 2015, oh my. The first two months have given me one bad news each. The first one was disheartening. 18 months of work brushed off and belittled by one man who has no expertise in judging our work and refused to get a second opinion. The second was less cruel mostly because we knew that we had very little chance of succeeding from the beginning. At both times, I (and those who were implicated in these works) had to start from swallowing, digesting, briefly falling down on our knees knowing that we really cannot affort the time spent on one's knees, picking ourselves back as we form contingency plans and then we take a big breath. And when we are done exhaling, it's already we are behind the schedule to start fixing the problem the bad news had brought us.
Then there were other less devastating bad news. Electrodes not working, molecules complexing with metal ions, acids reducing other ions unexpectedly, porous membrane getting clogged up with residual water? molecules. And of course, my daughter will have to have 4 milk teeth removed this week and I am so late on doing my taxes, too.

I make list of things that ought to be done. I cross out those tasks, but before I can cross one out, 3 more appears in the form of emails, phone calls, noise from the lab, etc. then my day is gone. yes, I am confused, I am lost and I need time. Need time to think so I can define and construct meaningful workplan and of course, sound research direction. What kills me is that I know how I can buy this time. I need more manpower. But to have more manpower, I need money (burrowed or given) to hire them. To get money, I need grants. To get grants, I need more results. And to have more results, I need to have more manpower and this is the vicious sprial in which I find myself trapped. Some of my more fortunate colleagues have the manpower issue solved and now it appears to be a routine, albeit not an easy one, to fund their work. A scientist like mylsef, who's struggling to start my own group, I either lack all 3 elements (manpower, results and money) or only given the money but not enough to ensure the continous supply of manpower to build a sustainable research group.

I need to make a choice. I don't have much money. My human resource is limited. So I need to concentrate on producing results and just results without worrying about the first two for a while. Or get tons of money first and re-start from there? Oh, yes, I am confused. and I can sure use a good news this month.