Lately in my brain it is all about the new. My favorite things that happen are the things that don't happen every day.
Today I made cookies and went for the longest run I've gone on in a long time, for so long I had to walk up all the hills and I sweated until my earphones wouldn't stay in. These things don't happen every day, and that's definitely alright.
I am bored with thinking of the same problems, troubleshooting the same issues, repeating the same protocols every day week month. I spend a good chunk of time at lab looking up new papers and current research and going to seminars, and sometimes I even talk to other people about these things and about the things they're thinking about, but it's not the same as being engaged and challenged personally by my own work.
But I am challenged. It's a challenge to learn how to deal with frustration, how to multitask, discover and define my role in a research community, teach and train others, live within a budget...but I don't feel enriched (yet?) by the (minimal?) progress I've made toward these goals. It took until graduation day to feel like Caltech was worth it, but I don't know if that's thanks to relief, retrospect, or the line-up of commencement speakers telling me so.
I'd love to read the paper that could possibly someday exist that relates to my research. I'm definitely interested, and that interest usually translates into motivation, possibly via a sense of obligation. And I'd love to write that paper, and I'd love to obtain the results that will make this possible by my own hands. Yes, I'd love to do what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'd love to love the process of figuring out how to do it. But it is a lonely thing, and a long long thing, and a long time to be not doing other things, other places, with other people.
I've never wanted an audience--not for myself, or for my writing, or performing, or anything. I'm usually afraid. But I find myself depending on feedback in a sort of embarrassing way. I don't really know if the "thrill" of doing quality science is enough for me. I might really want acknowledgement, because I'd like what I'm doing to matter to someone outside of a closed system.
And then, it's like...well this is great, I've figured out what I want, and how I'm partially fulfilled but not totally--what does this mean? It seems like so much of what I want can be achieved with a PhD--I can be the communicator, the person on committees, the collaborator you email with your cutting-edge questions. The proportion of interesting questions to uninteresting questions in my daily life will increase. I could move out of the field entirely into finance or law or teaching or health or business or writing or nonprofit goodness, and at least have a degree that says I can do capably and think logically. Still I feel like even when you move up, you are chasing money, one way or another, serving the interests of the entity that pays your salary. I don't know.
I miss snowy mountains, I miss my friends and family, I miss doing math problems that don't start C1V1=C2V2, I miss grassy leafy yards and the smell of fall and lakes and rivers and it's just so frustrating that these things are all possible, all attainable, and I'm choosing something else, something with most of its value reserved in its potential, in a place that inconveniences people I love, and I can't consistently convince myself of why.
