Out Of Focus

All day long, I've been feeling off-kilter. My mind has been reeling since the moment I woke up.

At first, it was filled with simple, day-to-day questions: Did I pay the electricity bill? Do I have enough money for rent? What experiments will I be doing today? What experiments will my summer students do today? How are my mice doing? Do I have time to put away the dishes before I go to work? Do I need to grab the IV supplies for large group set-up tonight? What should I wear?

And the the spiral began: Am I being a good mentor to my students? Will I make a good teacher? Do I really want to teach? What if all my experiments fail and I prove my work to be a waste of time? Why am I doing a PhD again? Will I ever learn how to manage my money? Am I always going to rely on my parents for money? Am I ever going to be able to afford a house and kids? Am I ever going to have a house and kids? Am I ever going to get married? Is anyone going to ever be able to love someone as broken as myself? Are my motivations for this quest of mine on target? Am I doing this for myself and my health or am I doing this just for my looks? Do I really believe that I will never be loved if I'm this size?

Needless to say, it wasn't the best start to the day.

My mind was already exhausted by the time I came into lab, when the real thinking had to begin. Nevertheless, the day continued on the downward spiral that it started on. First, my undergrad's experiment didn't work out ... again. Then, I realized that a fairly silly mistake that I had made invalidated 2-3 weeks of work I had done. Seizing the opportunity to hit me while I'm down, the notoriously bitter graduate student in our lab decided to suck away all of the remaining hope I had in my project. Our big animal experiment is giving us the exact opposite result of our hypothesis, and even our even-keel boss seems disappointed. I just want to curl up in a little ball and cry.

I sat down at my computer to type this post to whine and to let it all out. I hate it when I get this way and I hate admitting it, especially in such a public (and permament) manner. I feel very exposed, as if I'm standing naked in the middle of a room of strangers. But I promised to be honest, so here it goes. I usually deal with being stressed in the following ways: 1) eat anything my heart desires, 2) cry about it with friends, 3) sleep, 4) drink. Today, I felt torn: I felt this burning desire to drive to Safeway, buy everything I've been keeping myself from eating, and binge until the wee morning hours. I also had a huge desire to go running - to sprint until I couldn't breathe and pass out from exhaustion. Clearly, running is the better option here; but both are pretty much going to extremes (how very like me to do as such). Unfortunately, neither of the options are really available to me, as I'm stuck in lab for the next few hours.

Like many members of my generation, it's hard to find me sans iPod. I can't imagine my day without it. To spice things up a little bit, I've been 'randomizing' what I listen to by closing my eyes and turning the click wheel in every which direction until I hit play. I generally don't even look at the screen to preview what music will be assailing my ears next. As I sat down to write this post, fed up with the day and with my lab and with my life at the moment, I randomized my playlist.

And then everything changed.

As the song started, it's familiar chords and melodies brought tears to my eyes; it was comfortable, like going home. The song, incidentally, was "Wonderful, Merciful, Savior" by Selah. If you've never listened to it, I'd urge you too - it's beautiful. Also, I'm a sucker for the piano, which is pretty highly featured in the song. At any rate, the song reminded me of something - I've been neglecting my devotionals this week. Before I started this quest, I had the goal of making a more consistent morning routine, including a daily devotional. I found that when I started my day with a devotional, the circumstances of my day didn't weigh as heavily on my shoulders as they did today. Focusing my mind on God in the morning focused the rest of my day on Him. I'm not saying that bad days didn't happen then, just that the stress of them didn't stick to me; instead, the stress just rolled off of me and I was able to be joyful despite my circumstances.

And so, beginning tomorrow, the daily devotional will make it's triumphant comeback to my morning routine. Seeing as I'm already cutting it close in the morning, I'll need an extra half an hour or so to give it the time it deserves (and to be honest, it deserves much more time than that). Maybe instead of waking up earlier, I'll just come into lab a little later, say 9:30 am. That seems more reasonable.

Stretched Thin

This hankering for a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's means only one thing - I'm extremely stressed out.

Is it the fact that I've gotten very little sleep in the last few days? Maybe, but I doubt that; I only give up sleep for things I truly love.

Is it the fact that I've had some experiments, including a big (and expensive) animal experiment, fail recently? Potentially, but like 90% of all experiments fail anyway, so it's hard to get attached to the notion that they work properly the first time.

Is it the fact that I've got mucho responsibilities with IV now? Doubt it - I love that stuff ... it's like crack to me.

Is it the fact that I'm trying to teach my undergrad to do stuff that I don't even know how to do or troubleshoot? Maybe, but there's something exciting about teaching on the fly. And I do have a great group of people around me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

Is it the fact that my already lengthy to do list keeps growing longer daily? I don't know about that one; there's something hopeful about a long list of things to do - it means you have somewhere to go and some idea of how to get there.

Is it the fact that I've set myself up for this lofty goal of running the dish, and truly believe that my delusions of grandeur will come true? Again, I doubt it. The delusions of grandeur give me hope.

Is it the fact that I have too many things that I love doing on my plate? That's the answer. I care so much about each thing I'm invested in that I stress about doing things right and getting things done. I pour 120% of myself into things. You try the math - 120% of myself times a flobbity-gillion commitments makes no sense. I wish I had more than two settings - I wish I could pour 80% of myself into something, even 35% sometimes. I may not know much about myself, but I do know this - I'm either 120% in something, or I'm not in it at all.

I know a lot of other people feel this way too, so I feel kind of bad for complaining. But in a way, complaining is incredibly cathartic. When I started writing this post, I was convinced that everything was stressing me out. But when I spelled out every activity on my plate, I realized how much I enjoy each of them. Two and a half more weeks with the undergrad. Then maybe things will calm down.