you are doomed

I am screwed.
I am lost.
It's over.

The worst thing about the adulthood is that we cannot just walk away.

I mean, we can, but that'll be very irresponsible, harmful (to others) and, well, rude.

So considering those who will be affected by my quitting or giving up, despite my accumulating and apparent incompetence, I cannot just 'get up and leave.'

The new plan must now be my way out. A way out with some dignity, and a job.

How is it possible that at the age of 45, I still don't know what I want? And all I do is complain? to the point that I alienate some of my most previous friends? I have turned into a whinny middle-age lady stuck in the middle management with self-inflicted calamities. Both at work and at home.

But all of it, literally all of it, can be classified as a first-world problem. IOW, I have nothing to complain, really.

Miles are covered one step at a time

Stressed or distressed or depressed.
Can't really tell the difference at this point.
I am facing, as usual, the massive consequence of my failure, inadequacy, shortcomings, whatever.

The biggest mistake I have made is, accepting to do more than I could handle.
Pretending to have the answers I don't have.
Failing to say 'no.'

But if I had admitted to not having solutions. If I had said no and stayed within my small comfort zone... Could I have seen and experienced what I did in the last 12 months? No, I could not.

I will take the plane tomorrow. It will most likely be the most humiliating and uncomfortable trip I have ever had in my professional life. Worse than the one I had a month ago. I will be ridiculed, maybe blamed. Why am I doing this? What have I got myself into?

Here I am wishing for an accident, that will let me 'off the hook.'

I am tired. Maybe, I am just simply, really really tired and the reality is not as awful as I perceive. Maybe, just may be, I am not as pathetic as I feel. Maybe, I will not be received so poorly on the other side of the ocean. Maybe I will be granted the forgiveness that I so crave. Maybe I don't even need to be forgiven.

Why is it that I am always in the position of being forgiven? I never have to forgive others because nobody ever, or hardly ever, wrongs me. I am surrounded by honest people who are wise enough not to promise what they cannot deliver. They don't have to beg for my forgiveness. I, on the other hand, am apologizing constantly. Non-stop. To everyone. For causing them pain, obstacles, extra work, nuisance. Why am I so imperfect?

I deserve whatever is coming my way. Resigned, I go. I will take the plane. To my dreaded, humiliation. Oh, my friend, will you forgive me?

Miles? more like 6000 miles. one step at a time, sure,  but I will by flying at 800 miles/hour. 6000 miles away, awaits my doom. The doom I deserve. One giant step at a time, I go. I plunge, with a defeated smile. I am tired.

The road appears under the feet of the one going

It's 5:30 AM. It's the first day of school (and work). I wake up with a pounding heart like a school child. Because I didn't finish my homework. Being 45 years old and no longer a student, I will not be scolded or punished by the teachers, of course. Rather, the endless to-do list, the low production rate and disapproval and disappointment by my colleagues will do the job of a teacher.  Sleep deprivation for the next several weeks, no months. Yes months 'til mid-May this year. I have not even sorted out my to-do list to determine what to do first. In fact, it has gotten too scary to make the list.

What scares me the most is my diminished mental capacity. In 2015, I have lost the ability to juggle between the parental and professional duties, while I appear to juggle between various professional tasks (at work) just fine. But I cannot get hardly any work done once I come home. I become a mother (not even a wife) and .... that's it. I cannot complete a single task for my work until the next morning. If this is a form of "burn-out" it has lasted over 7 months now. If it is not, then I am suffering from a sort of dementia. A scary thought, indeed.

No matter. I will have to show up at work in less than 3 hours. And I have to start getting the job done. Must make that lengthy To-Do list that I dread making, reading, then adding more. It will be not be an easy, or even an okay start this year. It will be a busy, confusing, and likely an impossible start. But it's a start and I have to life my leg, turn my brain on and get going. And I pray to no one in particular that my brain will start, then may the road appear under my feet.

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.

Accept something that you cannot change, and you will feel better

Oh, Jeez. Where should I start?

Just from what has (not) happened this week....

The solenoid-valves and their vacuum tubing system. Can't fix it. Don't have enough time to, either.

Student coming tomorrow: He won't be able to work on the new high-temperature probe. It won't be ready in 4 weeks' time.

Master's student project: not going well. Cannot find the right redox couple. Don't have enough time to look into the problem. His new Faraday cage is almost ready, but the electrometer has not been ordered. Another delay.

Project money. Don't have the time to check and report changes.

Payment to a company in England. Haven't got around to checking if the payment has been made.

Project proposal. Needs to be done by next Tuesday. Thus need to be sent to everyone by Friday. This! I can do.

Time to drop everything else for the next 4 days.

By accepting something that I cannot change... does this mean I ought to give it up or do it later? I cannot give up on any of these that I have listed above. There are many more things I can add on the list if I include my private life side of "somethings." For one thing, I forgot that my husband's birthday is coming up. For the first time since we met, I forgot his birthday. I know I need to prepare my trip to see my parents, in what! less than 3 weeks. Not to mention the kids' school festival that I am in charge of. There are too many things and too little time. I have said this many times before, but this year, it's different. I simply have too many things to do.  I think this is the first time that working hard is not enough. Yes, there were times in my life that I couldn't get "everything" done. But at the same time, I knew that I could've done more if I had tried harder. This time, it's not the same. I am doing my best and all I can and it's just not enough. I can't. I don't have enough time.

I suppose this is the "something" I need to accept. I cannot do "everything."

Do I feel better? Umm, No.

But this realization forces me to make a priority list.

1. EU Project
2. Master's + Magnetometer (these two must be done in parallel)
3. DD's school festival preparation
4. Trip prep/National project, etc. etc.

So let's get them done. One by one.

Good luck is the result of good planning

This is wrong. There is a "chance" ingredient in the success obtained via "luck." So, no. The statement is wrong. But obviously, the author's intention was to use "good luck" to describe "success" and/or "fortune." I have also seen an idiom T-shirt recently worn by an innocent, yet misguided wearer that said "Winning is a habit. Success is a choice." Now that's a load of crap. Success may be the fruit of consecutive good choices re-enforced by determination, but certainly not one choice.

Tonight's point is: I am feeling the consequence of poor planning that is leading me away from any and all foreseeable success in the past few weeks.

In fact, it's worse than that. I see myself and those closely around me (at work) heading toward a big hole of failure.

I wan to jump off this train.

There, I said it.

I cannot stop the train. I don't know how to change the course without derailing.

Then which "luck" in its pure or in a metaphoric sense can I hope to obtain now? A pure luck will certainly come in handy. All of my experimental apparatus start working as of this week. But that's very unrealistic. Certainly it contradicts all what we know about "success." "Success" is the result of good planning. See above.

 Help from allies (colleagues)? Oh My. I have always been helped more than I have helped the others. Is it time to repeat? I am afraid so. But I need to propose my service in return. What am I good at?  Now I am whining. Time to start planning. Start choosing. I just asked all essential questions in this present paragraph. I need to get help. Know which help and from whom. and know what I can offer in return. The answers are there (in my head) and are clear.

Yes, I can change the course, I can fix the train, I can hook my wagons to another locomotive.

With this being said, I can go back to sleeping peacefully. Blogger is my therapy and in the comfort of knowing that I am the only reader (apart from a few random passers-by) I can become my own listening ears and a therapist. Good night.

Your life will be happy and peaceful

Last Spring, I dreamed that I will die on Feb 16th 2014. In my dream I heard myself announce, matter-of-factly, that "and so this is how I died on the February 16th, 2014." To be perfectly honest, I don't remember if it is Feb 14th or the 16th that I am supposed to, well, die. Nor do I remember "how" exactly I am supposed to leave this life. No matter.

While I have no good reason to believe that this is going to happen and I honestly don't (believe), for the most part, the thought of my own death happening in less than a year has stayed with me for the past 10 months and affected my behavior to a certain degree. For one thing, I started to count number of minutes left 'til my supposedly imminent death. It has also compelled me to accomplish certain long-standing goals, such as getting my act together and obtaining my "Habilitation" degree last summer. I have also be telling my kids how much I love them more often than before. 

On the other hand, my presumed death has made me procrastinate on other less exciting duties under the pretext that "I may not be here (Earth) by same time next year." Tonight is no exception. I really need to be finishing a report on a project. It is not a critical situation. If I fail to provide this in the next couple of days, the rest of the committee members can easily deliver their decision on the project without my input.I do not know if my behavior has become more erratic and my work attitude less reliable since the start of the year. But I do see more unfinished tasks piling up on my desk every morning as I go to work. Scientifically, I am facing a huge wall, yet I am incapable of finish reading articles that my save my research. In a nut shell, if I don't die in 12 days, I will have a lot of catching up to do. Aïe.

It is frustrating, boring, annoying, tiring, sad... but somewhat exciting ... to die.

Hard to explain.

The only other during-sleep-vision with a crystal clear understanding of myself happened when I was a small child, 3? 5 years old, maybe. I was an adult inside, a woman. Waking up to being a child and reciting to my child-self "Ah, yes, I am now a child, I live here, I have a mother. I have a father and a sister.  This is my bedroom. This is my bed. These are my possessions... yes I am me and I must live." That morning, I spent the first few minutes being acquainted or reacquainted with my own surroundings. That day, I started this life as I have known as mine. And that was the same me who declared my own death, a mere 10 months ago. As if I came in contact with my true-self. A strange and rare incident that is probably just my groggy neurons misfiring in random directions during the last few seconds of sleep, but sure as hell felt real. Oh how silly.  

It is still amusing to think that I may start my life over again, rather than being disintegrated into nothing, as I normally would expect. At the moment I die, I wish I could choose which period of my own life (or another person's) I can go back to. I'd prefer very young or 15 y.o. again. The year I moved to the States and relive my mistakes or make different mistakes.So just in case I have correctly predicted my own death through a process that cannot be explained by today's science...., and just in case that I will relive my own life again (and again) or live another life elsewhere (Brazil!) or as another animal (a cat!), I sure hope that my life will be "happy and peaceful." And as for my children, my husband and my parents, "I love you with all my heart. Thank you for being in this life.  I have to go. I love you, love you, love you, love you." 

“Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them." Rita Levi-Montalcini

True. I only wish that this brilliant statement were all true. But we all know this is only half true. Sometimes 'the worst' comes out from difficult moments. Other times, 'next to nothing' comes out. Besides, we don't really fear "difficult moments." We fear "what will come out of them." In most cases, difficult moments are like taking a packed commuter train during the peak rush-hour in downtown Tokyo to go to, say, the airport to catch a plane that will ultimately take you to Rio. It's annoying, but we push our bodies into the sweaty mash of people because you know that there is RIO in the end. But if you are not sure of the destination, or if you realize that the train can change its destination, like Westgate Mall, at any moment, then you are more reluctant to accept the challenge. The point being, if we know that 'the best' will always come out, difficult times don't look so bad.

In my current situation of 100%-self-inflicted difficult times, I fear, Oh yes I fear the outcome. No, I do not fear the difficult moments. They are not enjoyable, but bearable. The recurring questions such as; "Was my ground-breaking idea wrong?," "Did I destroy my student's career?," and ultimately, "Am I destroying my own career" keep me awake at 3-4 am in the morning almost everyday. The gut feeling tells me that I am failing miserably, yet I know that I have not yet exhausted all my resources and I must try harder.

A few years ago, I faced another sort of difficulty. It was against other people who inflicted my life (career, mostly) in a negative way. Now it is against science, or rather, Nature itself. There is no winning if I am wrong. I cannot convince Mother Nature to change its rules. I simply need to find out how it works or why it doesn't work. And I am failing miserably at this game.What then, are my options? Should I continue on this line of research until I have exhausted all possible routes. But what if the conclusion is negative - that I have been wrong all along - in the end? What good will come out of that?? And my students who are following me?

Writing blogs used to alleviate my anguish and helped me go back to sleep. It's not working tonight.

Decide what you want and go for it

There are many idiomatic phrases that carry the same (essential) message as "Decide what you want and go for it." The one that comes to my mind immediately is "Simple in my virtue. Steadfast in my duty." This is an English translation of the motto from my elementary school (and their junior high and the high school, too if I had stayed long enough in Japan). The original text is in French "Simple dans ma vertu. Forte dans mon devoir."

The trickiest thing about following this simple and banal recommendation is in fixing the target (what you want), and not forgetting it (what you going for). I never really understood what the motto meant while I was in school. And for that matter, I highly doubt that the teaching staff, many of them nuns, did either. As a child, I simply had no interest in the essence of the school motto set forth by a group of nuns some hundred plus years ago. The nuns, retrospectively speaking, appeared to be lost in the eternal act of executing their 'duty' and lost the sight of 'virtue.' There were many instances, when 'duty' and 'virtue' were treated as synonyms and worse, 'duty' had completely replaced 'virtue' in their teachings. And THIS irritates me about many -blindly- religious and/or conservative folks, but here I digress.

The point is, the goal (what you want) should be invariable, while the method (how to go for it) should be devised wisely and firmly yet creatively and flexibly. What happens often to many of us, or at least it happens to me more frequently that I like, is that we become too preoccupied by our quotidian errands and obligations that we change our goal more often than our habits. And in the end we forget what is it that we wanted to achieve.

After opening this fortune cookie (yep, I still read my fortune cookies and this one is no exception), I opened my 'notebook of everything' to see what is that I want. This notebook (I am on book#6?) contains my life: the list of errands, meetings, calculations, cooking recipes, doctor's appointments and what not. I am lost without my notebook and my children will be, too. With ever increasing workload and parenting duties, I no longer keep anything in my brain. Everything is written down and dated in this notebook. BUT strangely, there is nothing written about what I *want* to do. Hmmmm... what do I want beyond some general and arbitrary concepts like "world peace" and "clean air" (okay, that's not 'arbitrary' per se,  but at the individual human level, it's as tangible as world peace).

It turns out that I only have incremental goals (I want my HDR (it's a degree), higher salary) and generic wishes (healthy children). Incremental goals are, and should be, part of struggle before reaching the ultimate goal.... so for what purpose am I working so hard to clear these incremental goals, I have some thinking to do now. But first, I have to make breakfast and wake up kids. Darn..

The first step to better times is to imagine them

Much has happened since I last connected to my own blog. This proves once again that I am not the kind of person to be remembered for her record keeping skills.
A man died. His death was unexpected and brought immeasurable amount of pain and complication to those bereaved. His death also brought, rather predictable and measurable consequences to his colleagues, once it happened. For one of his ex-colleagues, me, it has given me the emancipation so sorely needed. My career has morphed and prospered since a year ago and there is no denying that I enjoy the sense of accomplishment. But there is also this lingering feeling that tells me.. that I did not pay for this, albeit small and short, period of professional success. Somebody else has paid the price and I am not entitle to claim the prize....   Regardless of how he was perceived at work, there is little doubt that he had been a dedicated husband and a father; one of the most dear quality that our society seeks in a man.  So why am I the one benefiting from someone else's loss?

Ahhhh.... The fact is, the two entities (my career and the bereavement of the family) are not correlated because I did not cause his death (brain cancer, so we were told). The two simply intersected one another through his death. But a human mind, my mind, does not accept such an over simplified mathematical representation. I started to realize that the two line crossing picture could have been the correct one, if our lives can all be described by, or be forced into via a sheer will power, a straight line. I could have cut all ties with the family, just shrugged them off as bygones. They could have shrugged me and the rest of us at work as bygones and moved on. But we didn't. We exchanged calls, invited each other, car pooled. We shared. We kindled. Now our lives have become twisted. At the beginning the twist pitch was frequent, now we only interact once every few months. Soon every 6 months, then just exchanging new year wishes, maybe. But I know that our lives will cross again and again in the future and that these people are part of my future. I can only hope that my imagined better times and theirs have something in common.


    

You will find recognition for what you do.

That will be a change. But what do I really do?

Ooooh, now I am scared.

It is a good time to finish up old tasks

Old tasks.... old tasks..... I got them! This week's goal:

Write the "Ns" paper. (need one week)

Finish data analysis on FQ measurements (at least 3 days)

Finish the FFT analysis on TQ noise measurements (3-5 days?)

Finish the application documents for the HDR. (2 weeks?)

But .... what about New but pressing tasks???? Must do list:

Finish the PM analysis? (must be done before Wed.)

Start calibrating electrodes (must start before the end of the week)

Finish translation (THIS MORNING)

Go to the bank (can only do it on Wed.)

Take kids to the dentist (appt on Wed.)

Submit the evaluation form (TODAY)

Spend time with kids (everyday between 5pm-9pm)

There's just not enough time when you become a parent.