THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today is a travel day as I make my way home from Woods Hole. I’ve been here for most of the whole week and when I scheduled this trip, I thought I would be spending some time orienting new visitors to our lab space. The scientists spending their summer here were delayed with their paperwork. So I’ve had the lab space mostly to myself, which was good. I believe that I got everything in order in the lab so that it will be ready for our visiting scientists this summer.

The last time I was I here, I joked that I had never been to the Cape when it was warm. I thought by pushing this year’s visit to a little bit later date, I would at least be able to leave my coat behind. The weather was lovely on my first full day here but I spent the day organizing the lab space. The rest of the week felt more like walking around inside someone’s cold wet sneeze. At this point, I’ve come to terms with just embracing the weather in what ever form it comes in when I’m in this area. At least I don’t have to be here in the middle of winter.

This trip, I got invited to tour a bit of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). A former colleague was given her own lab space and she walked me through her very new lab while discussing her plans for the future. I didn’t know her well when she was in Kansas City, but I could not help gushing with pride and joy as I do with all of our graduate students and postdocs who go on to be successful scientists. This is such a scary time to be starting out as scientist and this young scientist admitted that she’s worried about finances, but she’s taking each day as it comes right now. Which is really all any of us can do. We had a depressing conversation about funding cuts where I confessed that we had new graduates and postdocs who had jobs lined up, but then rescinded after this administration put a halt to funding scientific research. One of those postdocs confessed to me that she was applying outside of the US because she couldn’t see a future for her scientific research in this country.

I interrupted this part of our conversation to move the focus back to her success because being offered your very own lab any where, let alone at some place as prestigious as WHOI is a big freakin’ deal. Getting the opportunity to witness, in person, this success is a gift that I needed right now. Because while it is bleak and pretty awful what this administration has and is doing to our scientific community, there is hope. The take-away here is to take each day as it comes and being grateful for small successes in this moment.

GOALS

First day of Fall

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Every time someone reserves time on one of our microscopes, I receive an email informing me of their reservation. The reservations coming into mailbox this week are for dates in October and it keeps freaking me out. First of all we have a two week rule. You cannot book earlier than two weeks in advance. So I see that reservation and start to yell “Hey! You can’t reserve a microscope two weeks in advance!” and I’m all ready to send out a polite but severe email. Then I pause and go “oh….wait…”

October is next fucking week, people!

What happened to summer? Or spring for that matter? How is it the first of Fall and the leaves are suddenly changing colors and it’s cold enough in the mornings that I have to wear a jacket and gloves on the scooter? What do I even do with my time? I feel like I’m wasting so dang much of it on all the wrong stuff. I’M WASTING MY LIFE! I feel like I’m not tapping into my full potential and so I started looking into some sort of daily planner. I found one that I like that has a digital format that I would be able to use on my iPad. This would allow me to use my Apple pen to write and color in stuff. There’s a place at the beginning of each month to write out your goals for that month. The calendar opens for the week with a section for writing out tasks for home and work. Then at the end of each month, there’s a place to evaluate where you are with your goals. Did you accomplish them? If not, why? What can you try differently? That sort of thing.

There’s a lot of appeal to having a digital planner like this. First of all, I would have it with me all the time. I carry my iPad with me most days. I’ve gotten in the habit of writing out my yoga classes in a notebook app and I use the meditation timer for both class and my own practice. The digital planner/calendar would encourage me to use my electronic device in other ways. Other than the yoga classes, the iPad is basically a glorified e-reader/TV. I could be doing a lot more with it. The downside is that the digital planner is not free. It is a one time fee and not a subscription, but it’s still not free. I am hesitant to purchase something I may not use. Then again, I might see it as I would a gym membership: if I’m paying for it, I will use it. Maybe that’s the real reason for hesitating. If I buy it and use it, then I will actually have a written record of the things I’m doing or not doing. Most importantly, a record of the things I failed to do each month. A record of failure. Do I need to spend $40 on that? Or can I just drag out my high school yearbook or all those 4-H record books and throw a pity party for one? Actually…I can’t do that because I threw all of that stuff away when we cleaned out the old house.

I could spin this argument of for and against into a tangle.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. - Brene Brown

I’m getting the damn planner. Sure, it might end up as a record of my failures, but it will also be a record of all of my success.