Why this whole failure thing has been so distracting as of late

So I plan on going into this prelim this Friday to pass.  Seriously.  This week I am going to do everything I can to prepare.  If I start to feel overwhelmed I make a new list to break things down further and cross things off.  I am going to be positive.  I think I should pass because I can design and perform experiments and I know what my work means, even if I need to get better at communicating it.  I also REALLY want to be able to communicate my science well because I want to be able to contribute, too.  I love my work.  I actually love talking about it.  I really do.

But let’s be realistic here.  There is always a possibility of failure.  It happens so rarely the second time around that most people I talk to dismiss it by saying “don’t even think about it because it’s not going to happen.”  The problem is, I’m extraordinarily good at failing even when the cards are stacked in my favor but they’re right to an extent.  Thinking about it is self defeating.  I start to think about how sometimes, even when I try so, so, so hard, it’s not good enough and I miss something, and I fail, so what’s the point?  And I’ve been fighting this.  I need to stay positive and I am determined to do so for the rest of this week, but I feel like I should be prepared in case I get the bad news.  So what is the worst that can happen?  Let’s examine why failing this prelim is generating so much anxiety for me.  Doing this now might help because it’d distract me less this week.  Input on things to think about would be helpful

1. Confrontation.  Just picturing the facial expression of the chair of my committee when he says that they can’t pass me and hearing his voice…it hurts.  It makes my stomach turn.  This time though, it’ll be fast.  There’s no point in trying to analyze where I’ve gone wrong.  I’ll just thank him for his time, let him know I’ll meet with him soon to discuss my future, and leave before the punch hurts.

2. Embarassment.  What the hell was I thinking, that I had a chance?  Did anyone think I had a flying chance?  I should have known better.  I haven’t figured out a way to feel better about this.  I guess I did salvage my dignity by getting so much done last year, but I hate that I barely got any data this summer and I expected to pass with nothing to show for it since I last met with my committee (for the record they didn’t ask for more data, but still, I should have gone above and beyond).

Somewhat related–will people think less of me if I fail?  I mean, even if I was at peace with how I spent the last two years having tried my best (even though I was never dedicated/smart enough), will my labmates, my derby teammates, my professors, everyone else think that I was a total idiot for trying and wasting everyone’s time?  I am scared of being alienated and judged.  I used to not care what people think so much so long as I tried my hardest but I’ve gotten be a harsh judge of myself lately.  I feel like others probably judge me even more harshly.

I think I can probably just start by remember that doing a PhD isn’t for everyone.  Furthermore it always takes a while for me to figure out if I am going to succeed or fail at something.  If I quit in the first 2 years of undergrad I wouldn’t have gotten my bachelor’s.  Believe me, I did plenty of failing before I started succeeding.

3. Having to pick up my life and start all over.  I don’t really have to go into this too much since it’s a heavy one that would devastate anyone.  It involves losing a lot.  Friends, comfort, etc.  But one thing that makes me feel a bit better is that I’d probably be aiming for something a bit more stable in the next round of my life.  It’s a chance.  I’ll have options.  I was just hoping not to have to make these changes now but if I do fail, I’ll probably be much happier a year from now anyways.

This is a downer of a post but a lot of what I listed above was just another way for me to sort out the source of my anxiety.  I’m feeling a bit better.  Time to dispose of these feelings of defeat and failure in hazmat.

My unexpected heroines in science and why I’m trying not to become (too much) of a zombie.

When I first started graduate school I only had a vague idea of what I wanted and no idea how to get it.

First and foremost I wanted to be able to do independent research.

That is definitely my cat.

I just didn’t know at the time when and how to be independent.  It is still a work in progress and hopefully not a futile effort.

The whole learning process was extremely stressful, especially in the beginning.  Even though the stakes are higher now, my first year of graduate school jeopardized my physical and mental health and I had no sense of control.

The day I found out the winner of the Nobel prize for medicine for 2009 was a great one, but I didn’t know it at the time.  I was familiar with the research.  I had already known that telomeres are non-coding DNA segments that protect the ends of our chromosomes.  When chromosomes divide they shorten bit by bit over time due to the replication mechanism.  (From my understanding it just means that the DNA replication machinery needs to hold on to a little bit of the template DNA in order to keep going.  When the template ends, the DNA machinery falls off before the last bit of template can be coded.  It’s like painting the floor and trapping yourself in a corner.  There’s no way to get that last little spot underneath your feet.)  Additionally, chromosomes are subject to additional stresses that can make the ends even more unstable.  Over time chromosomes get shorter with each division.  When the chromosome get short enough, cell division stops and we start to show signs of age.  Telomerase is an enzyme which significantly offsets some of this setback.  They add DNA back to the ends of your chromosomes, rebuilding your telomeres, and although they’re not 100% efficient (your DNA still shortens a bit every time it divides), it makes a huge difference in our longevity.

Apparently Dr. Szostak discovered these DNA segments were present on the ends of the chromosomes in both protozoa and yeast cells which prompted the question of whether multicellular organisms, such as mammals have them.  No one at the time, not even Dr. Szostak, knew the implications for this discovery in the context of human disease and aging.  They just wanted to know how genetics work, how cells divided, and how we got to be how we are.  Most studies at the time were done only in bacteria.  Bacteria are a great starting point for learning about molecular biology but bacterial chromosomes are different.  For the most part, they’re round (unlike our linear chromosomes) so their DNA replication mechanism is slightly different.  They are not good models for eurkaryotic DNA replication (us).  Yeasts are also single-cellular organisms but their cellular organization is much more similar to ours.  At the same time, they grow quickly (like bacteria) and are much more practical to study for many applications than mammals and humans.  They are great models.

So when Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn’s group got the Nobel prize for this discovery I wasn’t surprised.  Plus there’s no better nerdy playground tease than saying “my chromosome are longer than yours!” to someone calling you immature.  But I did not anticipate the impacts this award would have on my own graduate school career.

A few months after the Nobel prize for 2009 was announced Dr. Szostak came to speak at the U of I. That day I had no idea he was even coming until a member of my lab mentioned I should REALLY attend this talk.  I took his advice but arrived 10 minutes late because I couldn’t stop in the middle of what I was doing (typical lab life).

The auditorium was filled.  Every seat, every stair in the aisle, every single bit of space along the wall.  The only spot that was open was, ironically enough, the best spot.  I probably wasn’t supposed to sit there but there was sort of a wall underneath the elevated first row of seats.  I quietly sat down there, not 10 ft away from the speaker.  I couldn’t see the slides without my neck aching (they were REALLY high up), but I was enamored by Dr. Szostak’s lecture on his study of the chemical reactions possibly leading to early life forms.

How many people can say they sat 10 feet away from a Nobel laureate to hear his research?  It was an amazing experience, a perk of graduate school I never even expected.

But that’s not why this day was significant for me.  This day was significant for me actually because I made a second discovery.

I wanted to learn more about Dr. Szostak and the others responsible for the discoveries leading to the 2009 Nobel prize so upon getting home from work, I wiki-ed the group.

There was one other person who shared that Nobel Prize: Dr. Carol Greider.  She was the bleary-eyed graduate student who actually isolated telomerase and showed that it adds DNA repeats to the end of DNA.  She also has dyslexia.  As a result she is a terrible test-taker with GREs that kept her out of some graduate schools.  It was her immediate chemistry with Dr. Blackburn at UC Berkeley that got her in.  This was huge for me because as a first year graduate student I was really having a hard time adjusting.  My ADD and depression certainly weren’t helping.  My ADD medication was being adjusted for financial reasons and I was really trying to avoid antidepressants because the ones I used to take just didn’t work and made me tired.  Also my grades were bad and I was having trouble being efficient about my research.  I had no clue how to be independent and I had no clue how to be an organized graduate student.  I just didn’t know how to work around or with my ADD in the context of doing independent research.  I knew no one in higher level of education with a documented learning disability (LD).  I figured they were probably there, but that they were good at hiding it.  It was an incredibly lonely time.

Learning that Dr. Greider has dyslexia was the starting point of a very long journey for me.  This was significant because for the first time I could see that doing independent research on such a high level has been done even by a someone with LD.  Even though I still had no clue how she did it, just the fact that she DID IT was liberating for me.  Would I have continued even if she kept her dyslexia private?  Probably but the journey would have been worse.  Maybe it would have ended already.  Who knows.

Becoming an independent researcher is a work in progress and honestly, my adviser and my committee members deserve the most credit for shaping me as a scientist as much as possible.  Not some Nobel laureates.  My adviser and my committee members allow me to fail but give me several opportunities to unfail with each succeeding unfail marking a path of progress.  I found that any success I have no longer has to do with conquering my ADD or even pretending it’s not there.  It has to do with innate desire as a scientist to question the world around me.  Yes having ADD makes it difficult for me to focus or connect concepts but asking myself questions and forcing myself to think about every possible way to interpret the work I am doing helps me to overcome these setbacks.  As for my impulsivity and lack of focus?  I’ve had to devise my own positive reinforcement techniques to get into a routine of getting things done.  It is still a never ending battle if and I am stressed out I start to slide down faster than I can crawl out.  Sometimes anything I do is just not enough.

Still, it is the research of Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn that validates another decision I made in the past year: to take care of myself as much as I can given the circumstances.  I made this descision last year because honestly, being hyper-caffienated, hypo-rested and unbelievably anxious was just not working.  I knew I wasn’t being productive so something had to change.

Also sincere apologies to the boy who shared with me his netflix log-in info for the recent explosion in Star Trek-related recommendations on his account.

I am a documentary junkie and recently (thanks to netflix) I watched a National Geographic program on the effects of stress on the body.  Dr. Blackburn did extensive testing studying the blood cells of mothers with severely disabled children compared to mothers of healthy children.  As one would expect, the stress of caring for a disabled child is unrelenting.  What had not been well known until this study are the consequences of this stress at a the cellular level.  The most significant finding from this study revealed that the mothers of disabled children had chromosomes are significantly shorter and even frayed compared to those in the control group.  If Blackburn’s model on chromosome length/age correlation is correct, these blood cells haven’t divided in a very long time because their telomerase activity is so low.  These women aged years faster than those in the control group (I think up 7 years was the figure).  It makes sense.  Stress response hormones have been shown to inhibit processes required for cell division because frankly, when you’re about to get eaten by a lion, replication can wait a few minutes while you devote all your energy to survival.  Many (most?) humans, however, are consistently stressed by things that aren’t life or death and are thus “marinating” in stress hormones.  Some stress is good but when it stunts a number of cellular processes overtime, our basic cellular maintenance gets neglected.  Although we are living longer lives because of our relative advances in technology and science, quality of life DOES affect longevity.  It is a factor.

Or as Dr. Blackburn puts it, “This is real.  This is not just somebody whining.  This is real, medically serious aging going and we can see that it’s actually caused by the chronic stress.”

Obviously academia is another stressful environment and for different reasons.  It’s not the degree of stress that is so damaging (I hand it to these women, by the way) but the fact that we can’t turn it off whether we’re in grad school or struggling to keep labs funded with grant money well past tenure.  So much is at stake on a deadline and I have to ask myself how much I can take and for how much longer?  It’s not just about aging well or living a long life.  For me it’s about living life on my own terms. See, I am still very stressed and anxious and I still don’t always get enough sleep and I still probably drink too much coffee, but Dr. Blackburn’s study makes me feel a bit better about drawing a line somewhere because if cellular division is inhibited under extreme stress it’s probable that our thought processes suffer the consequences as well.  This is guaranteed to result in suboptimal productivity.  On the other hand, a day off at least once a week, roller derby to keep my physical (and thus my mental) endurance up, human contact (yes, a social life, though not at the expense of my research) are far more likely to permit interest and productivity on the bench.  Of course I have trouble knowing where to draw the line on when to allow myself to rest because predicting productivity is crapshoot and resisting impulsivity is also a game sometimes lost.

When I do lose interest in my work I come back to a major fundamental question: am I bored because I’m overwhelmed and depressed or because I’ve really lost true interest in my work?  Can I overcome this depression and regain interest in my work while staying on this same path?  How?  Usually recalibration of my routine, a little TLC, and then some carefully executed discipline revives another productive streak.  It’s a cycle of burnout, rush, burnout, and rush.  But honestly, I don’t know that I have infinite reserves to deal with this.

But right now, who cares.  I may not have to make this decision on my own depending on how my prelim goes.  But I really hope I pass because I’m not finished here.  I have too many things to try.  I want to try teaching and publishing.  I want to go to conferences and collaborate with other people.  I have a another project with a lot of potential.  I also love coming up with solutions to experimental problems and occasionally having them work, even if it’s something as simple as getting a protein to solubilize.  Also, finding that all aspects of my work is showing evolution in progress is really pretty damn cool too.

Come out to play, come out to play, come out to play. And we’ll pretend it’s christmas day in my atomic garden.

::brushs off cobwebs::

Well it has been a while since I last posted.  I’ve been busy and I am exhausted! Oh and the title is from a Bad Religion song, in case you were wondering.  It’s not really related to this post.  I just hate coming up with titles for posts.

Anyways, this weekend was an adventure I needed.  I went into Chicago and got to explore it a bit for the first time ever.  The first thing I did was ride on this ferris wheel:

It was windy and shakey but I wasn’t paying too much attention because I was focused on trying to get decent pictures.  That didn’t work too well but I caught this around the opposite side of Navy Pier:

I had lunch with Sylvia Plaster and later on crashed on Agony Andy‘s couch after an awesome bout watching both Chicago Outfit teams win.

I would hate to be the girl taking that hit (see blur) while an opposing jammer skips through (yellow helmet on outside left).

So even though I got to hang out with some really cool old and new friends, this weekend gave me a lot of much needed alone time.  Alone time driving, alone time exploring, alone time to just think.  I am frustrated.  I usually try not to dwell on being so frustrated because it doesn’t do me much good, but I don’t think I realized for a long time how so freaking frustrated I am.

See, science is my first job, and it’s my full time job at that.  On top of that the stakes are pretty high this semester with my 2nd prelim creeping up and I am busy with class, seminars, lab meeting, and lab work.  Also, if I can’t plan well to study my exams I don’t deserve to go to derby practice the night before an exam.  I don’t deserve to bust out of work early to run home to change and run to practice if I don’t get up early enough to get a full days work in.

And when the stakes are high, my negative reinforcement is to limit roller derby.

And I’m not entirely okay with that.  But the thing is, it’s not a negative reinforcement thing.  It’s more that I’m not taking care of myself enough to play roller derby effectively.  I am not hydrated during the day.  My eating habits aren’t optimal.  Everytime I DO go to practice, I get nauseous and maybe if it’s a bad day, I throw up too.

Still, my work life has been getting much better.  I work closely with an academic coach to prioritize my work, determine reasonable goals for the week, and even if I don’t do them when I say I will, I ultimately do them in a reasonable amount of time.  Pretty much everything I told him I was going to tackle, I have.  With the exception of today I have been taking many steps forward.  Maybe not on the bench at the moment, but I have been doing a lot of reading, studying, slide rearrangement/planning, talking, organizing.  That is good.  I am going to sneak some bench work to get ahead.  My prelim is in 2.5 weeks.  And in a way I have been taking a bit better care of myself.  I’m trying really hard to get my rest and I’ve  been going out less.  Anyways my liver and wallet both need breaks and I definitely don’t have the time.  Still, I <3 my good bartenders for also being my therapists.  Also, during the day when the bars are quiet, it’s surprisingly effective to find a quiet corner and get work done when Expresso Royale is out of tables.

But I wish I never took any break from derby.  I am missing our bout this weekend because I haven’t kept up nearly enough practice points to be bout eligible nor do I have the time to lose two weekends to non-academic related things so close to my prelim.  And this personal weekend I took to Chicago was something I really needed and was so, so, so worth it.

But I am getting out of shape already.  I miss my team and all of the derby girls in the league.  I’m tired of getting physically beaten up so late in the season (oddly from falls just walking around campus) but I can’t get better at derby if I don’t go.  I can’t even maintain my current skill if I don’t go.  And the thing is, I really want to get good.  I want to be like, travel team level.  I mean, I’m not in a rush, so maybe not next season but I’d like to work my way up and play at a much higher level. I’ll be honest, I thought I was going to be happy just playing derby nearby but you know what?  I really want to see what I can do with this.  I really want to see how muscular my legs will get, how fast I’ll ever be able to skate, and if I can ever knock the wind out of a much larger opponant without flying like a pinball.  I’d like to see if I can ever get any core strength, if I can ever get arm whips right, if I can ever have the endurance to be a useful jammer, and if I can stay focused enough to continually execute strategies as a pivot.

I should also go to speed skate.  Those are on mondays.  There is one today.  I actually may go.  I may go because I am so tired and it’s what I least want to be doing right now.  But in a way it might be the best thing.  Because maybe all I want to do is skate a million laps as quickly as I can instead of trying to conceptualize strategies and hitting.  Cause even though perfecting strategies is one of my favorite parts of the game (I can be an excellent coordinator of our rotating wall if I am focused) I am too brain fried to focus on things much more involved than pace lines.

I hate that my season ended after only one bout as a Vice Quad.  What sucks is that the season ends in November and doesn’t restart until January.  If I don’t do derby now, I won’t get a chance to for 3-4 more months.

But in a way it’s sort of better that I end this season wanting more so I can start next season with a bang.  And even though it’s more than 2 months until winter break I am already looking forward to my annual pilgrimage to Bruised Boutique to upgrade my skates (hopefully I can get new plates).

In the months following my prelim and while preparing for the next season I am going to continue to focus on taking better care of myself.  Until then, I am just going to focus on doing whatever it takes to pwn this damn prelim.

-MRSA

Old habits die hard, then come back as zombies.

The beginning of the school year is always a scary time for me.  New class, new schedule, new routine, new seminars.  Every summer, my old habits sneak their way back into my brain and chew my neurons and I spend the better part of september and october fighting them off.  This year they’ve colonized my head even more than I realized.  I mean, I knew I was slipping but I don’t think I realized the extent of the damage until I tried explaining why I thought someone else’s research was interesting.  Then I realized I forgot why I thought it was interesting.  I remembered the diagram.  It was a picture of a cell, with DNA, RNA, and it depicted transcription and sugar molecules and sRNA regulation but I totally forgot the direction the arrows were going in or how it all came together.

Crap.

I was really looking forward to the seminars because I was looking forward to a structured schedule again and learning about other people’s research.  Now I am sort of dreading them because of how tired I’ll feel after listening to someone talk for hours, how my attention span will immediately become tired of following the crazy acronyms, gene/protein names, etc.

And my research?  It’s really overwhelming right now.  I am trying to get several things off the ground at once.  I want  to do it all.  I want to learn new techniques because I love putting more tools in my toolbox.  But I am having so much trouble finishing the things I start.  At this point I’m just having trouble starting.  I am doing things, but not a lot.  I make progress, then I take steps back.  I am afraid to talk to people again.  I’ve withdrawn and I can’t seem to claw my way back into the world I’ve worked so hard to find a place in.

I am plagued by my brain being too tired at the end of the day to pick up a paper and prepare for tomorrow’s experiments.

Being sick this week doesn’t help either.

I think what I need is to take a few papers I REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND, attempt to read them, cry a bit over how I don’t understand them, I dun wanna read em because they aren’t interesting and it’s all fucking overwhelming and I’m just a dumbass, put on my big girl panties, read them through until they’re finished, then attempt to work that magic on getting stuff on my own projects to work.  I also need to remember to ask myself during the seminars, “why would the speaker find this stuff interesting?” and try to remember what he said at the beginning of the lecture.

I don’t know how much of this is ADHD related because I know I am not the only person who goes through this. I do know that my attention span and appreciation for understanding work I am not familiar with has shrunken significantly, which defeats the purpose of going into science.  I need several plans of attack for getting out of this.  This is not me.  And if this does turn out to be me, then I can say goodbye to any chance of ever getting a job one day.

I think I could use a “grad school” buddy to meet for lunch every so often (1x/week?).  Just to talk about how we should be thinking about our research.  This might help me reach out to everyone else more.  Let me know if you’re interested.  Being in science helps but it doesn’t have to be my field.  I know that a lot of people make themselves very available, but I still have a hard time asking for help.  I should start approaching too.

Right now I just feel very, very trapped in my old habits and my old, ineffective way of thinking.  Only I can get myself out.  So in case no one throws me a rope, I need a solid plan of action.

Ack.

An open request to come to my roller derby bout and what to expect:

Friends, family, and coworkers.

All of you know by this point that I play a hard-hitting contact sport.  It has been an expensive, time consuming hobby that quickly became my lifeline during the times I have had to patch up other parts of my life.  In the process, through the intense training ,I have undergone some physical and mental transformations.  I am still me.  I am still the crazy impulsive girl with compromised, fluctuating self-confidence.  But roller derby keeps finding ways to show me that I can do things I never ever thought was possible.

Roller derby is not just girls parading around in hot pants and fishnets.  There’s a bit of that, yes.  But we train hard.  There’s strategy.  There are legal and illegal ways to hit.  Problem solving.  Penalties.  Safety gear.  Team work.  This is not a burlesque.  There are hot pants, but there are also girls who wear noticeable crash pads, basketball shorts, and skirts.  That’s the reason why I love roller derby.  We wear what we are most comfortable in.  It all gets the job done.  We get to come up with an alter ego while we’re at it.

This weekend I will be showcasing my hard work in my first “bout” (game).

I have only played in one other “bout” this summer.  I am not even sure if I should count it.  It was a bit informal, a mixer where a number of players from different leagues are randomly teamed up and compete in two “mini bouts” each, so only one other person from my league was a member of my team for the day.  The rest of my team consisted of players I didn’t even know before that day.  It was an awesome experience.  I sort of count this as a real bout because it was the first time anyone has ever PAID to come watch me play roller derby.  There was an audience.  A kid who smiled when I hi-fived him on the way to the ladies room.  And you know what?  I fucking rocked the game.  Our very outnumbered team only lost by a few points.  In roller derby, when a game can have a score margin as wide as 100-200 points, losing by only a couple points means you’ve really put up a fight.  We were even ahead for a portion of both bouts!  I held our game in more than half the jams.  I was put in a lot.  I WISH people were there to watch me play that game.

This is my first home bout playing with members of my team, the Vice Quads.  I wish my family could be there for this, and my friends from back east too!

I never really thought much about wanting my crowd from the outside world to come visit me in Derbyland for a day, but I talked to a few skaters who said they didn’t want their families and friends to seem them play at first because they wanted to wait until they got “good” at it.

This got me thinking that maybe I should let members of my audience know what to expect when watching me play roller derby:

I want people to come watch me play roller derby, but not just me.  I want people to come watch my TEAM play roller derby.  See, I consider myself a solid player especially as a blocker but I am not by any means a star athlete.  I am not the hardest hitter, the most stable on my skates, or the fastest player.  I might have an off day and lose focus.  Sure I can be fast and reasonably agile but I mostly likely won’t be the one jamming and scoring the points because I just don’t have the endurance for that.  Or, if things have been going similarly to my scrimmages, I may not be put in as much.  My coaches know by now that I hate being benched and wish I were in more lineups, but you know what?  My team kicks just as much ass, if not more if I’m not in a line-up.  EVERYONE on my team worked their asses off to become awesome players.  Please watch and cheer for each of my teammates.  If I am out there and it doesn’t look like I’m doing much, give it time.  It takes a few jams for me to get in a rhythm.  I may not pick up that rhythm if I don’t get put in much.

I have been working on positional blocking.  I might not hit as much (or I might).  Basically all I do is get in the way of the opposing jammer.  It’s relatively energy-saving and really effective.  Don’t worry, I’ll probably throw a good hit when I get the opportunity.

Did I mention that I’m still working on maintaining stability?  I have been getting a lot better at it but this mean I’ll probably fall.  Actually, EVERYONE will probably fall.  But we are trained to fall safely and small.  I’m pretty agile so if someone falls in front of me I’ll just swing around her.  Injuries happen but they happen in all sports.  We have EMTs handy.  Also, remember Curt Schilling when he played with that bloody sock during the Red Sox/Yankees series in 2004?  I know it’s not like he did it hitting someone but how many of you sprained ankles playing soccer or basketball?  We are wary.  We try to minimize injury chances.  You won’t see me doing fancy tricks on the track in the middle of a pack.  I can do em, but I probably won’t during the game (maybe during warm up though).

So here’s the last major reason why I DO want my CU friends and coworkers to come watch me play roller derby:

One year ago when I started playing roller derby at the very end of June, I barely knew how to skate.  If any of you have strapped on crappy-ass rental skates and clung to a wall to stand up have any memory of how scary it is to get off the carpet, you know what an undertaking deciding to learn roller derby is.  I used to be so impressed by people who could skate backwards, and transition from forward to backwards skating.

Now I can.

So come watch me and my team play and WEAR HOT PINK AND TEAL BITCHES.

<3,

MRSA

Attempting to unfail!

All around this weekend kicked ass.

Friday I got zombified courtesy of my dear friend Kat von Beaverhausen

Hungry for brainz.

Saturday I derbied it up in the morning and made some headway as a blocker.  Clearly I’m not jammer material yet.  Endurance is not even close.  The only reason I made it through the pack was my teammates.  Still, wasn’t a bad attempt.

I got a lot of other life related things done on saturday before taking it easy.

Sunday was a pretty sweet day.  I had lunch at a yummy bistro, I drank and knitted with my roommate.  We had sweet tasting BBQ at my friend’s house.

I attempted to relearn how to skateboard while drunk.  It just made sense.  Ma, you might want to skip this part.

Obnoxious cleavage: check
Silly facial expression: check
Vulger board: check
Bloodied elbow: check, wait….bloody elbow?  Need a closer look?

Yep, same elbow.  Bones are fine.

In the end, I have awesome friends.

This summer is definitely much better than last year.  Last summer my life turned me upside down and I landed on my head with a pile of bricks falling on top of me.  Did not deal with that well.

It’s not perfect by a long shot now.  I still fail at a lot, whether it’s work, derby, relationships, whatever.  But I don’t feel like I’m failing as hard.  And I think I’m failing less just enough to keep pushing forward.

So in my quest to continue un-failing I have put together this to do list for the week:

1. work.  Go in every day before noon.  Stay until late or derby practice.

2. look at cars.  Thanks to my dear roommate Jenna for your huge help in taking me.  Get those loans worked out and get a car mechanic to go over a potential vehicle.  Don’t let the tedium get too bad.

3. derby it up long, derby it up hard.  Build up that endurance.  Skate to work.  If it’s early enough, the weather isn’t so bad.

Can’t do roller derby without science, apparently

So I often say I can’t do science without roller derby.  I need the outlet, something else to do, an alter ego, if you will, to jam my way through endless experiments.

I also sometimes say I can’t do roller derby without science, because it’s an expensive sport and my meager grad school income is what allows me to do derby,

But I am also finding that without science, my performance in roller derby is affected too.

See, lately I’ve been going through a post-prelim slump—sort of a depression, if you will.  See, once I get out of the house I’m ok.  But getting out of bed, showering, getting my things together, that’s been a Herculean effort lately.  In fact, yesterday I didn’t even make it to practice.

This is a bit strange you see.  Now that I’ve had more time for derby I feel like in a way I’m already getting “over-derbied”.  This is pretty ridiculous because in the time leading up to my prelim, I’ve cut derby life bare minimum.  I couldn’t even help at bouts because I was so overwhelmed I didn’t want to have something else to think about.  Yes I have more time for derby.  I went to nearly every practice, I helped out at the car wash, and am working actively to try and get stuff up on the website (I’m the website bitch for my team!).

Still, I’ve been struggling to get every other aspect of my life together.  For the most part I’ve been successful.  I rearranged my house, helped get my roommate moved in, did the best I could to keep up with dishes, etc.  I also decided to get things going in terms of getting a car, I sorted out my medical bills/expenses, photocopied my bills and EOBs to send the claims into my secondary insurance.  This is on top of finally paying my bills and mailing my rent check.  I’ve been productive at home, but I sort of forget that.

It shames me to allow myself to go to derby when I can’t even make it to the lab.  Plus lately I’ve felt too stiff to even do decent crossovers.  So yesterday nothing happened at all.  I locked myself in my room, watched Big Bang Theory until I fell asleep, and slept deeply with a lot of things on my mind.  This is both physiological and psychological.  In the mornings my muscles ache and I can barely move.  When this happens, why the hell would I WANT to move when my life is so overwhelming?  I have too much to do.  I have not been productive at work at all.  I thought that today I’d feel so guilty for wasting yesterday I’d REALLY make myself get out of bed.  It sort of worked.  But it wasn’t easier.  It was much, much harder.  I got myself into that trouble.  Time to get myself out.

Now I’m at work.  I may be updating my blog instead of doing something productive but at least I made it out.  I don’t have to worry about derby later.  Less things to worry about carrying to work.

The point of this entry?  This total lack of science is giving me less to live for.  I may be overwhelmed by the work I need to do in my personal life (and even derby), but my research should always come first.  Derby follows because my research gives me the drive to do derby well.  Plus I’m all loosened up from moving around all day.

So I need to start focusing on getting work done again.

While I am at it I’m looking at ways to get rid of my physiological symptoms.  I need a few days off my ADHD drugs but I have no time to do it.  Easing my caffeine intake is helping though.  Makes the caffeine I DO drink more effective.

Sometimes I need to tell myself that.