Crossroads

I haven't had much inspiration to write lately. This week started off badly with a stomach bug of some kind, which was no fun at all. I still don't have my appetite back completely, which is worrisome in terms of the marathon preparations. Right now I should be eating huge bowls of pasta with tons of bread, and all I could squeeze into my stomach today was half a cup of chicken noodle soup with a few pieces of bread, an apple and a cookie. In terms of the training, I think this isn't too much of a problem. I ran for about 30 minutes on Monday and my legs felt ok even though they were still a little tired from last Friday's long one. I will try to run some medium distance this weekend and then maybe a couple of short ones next week and then that's it. The weather has turned icy here too so it's hard to find motivation to get out of the apartment.

I can't really express how excited I am about Miami! Not only the race, the thought of which has been some source of stress in the past few months, but the time away from here, the warm sunny weather and spending time with friends. Time away from here, NY, the lab, winter, YES, mostly that! Usually I travel a lot in the winter, but this year, I haven't gone anywhere since the season started (except for Philly, which was not a break in any sense of the word) and it's been a little depressing and draining.

Next week I have to give a presentation during lab meeting, which comes up once about every 8-9 months, so it's sort of a big deal, meaning that I have to show progress. My adviser is very demanding, but lately, we've had a better understanding about things. I am not worried about him thinking that I don't work hard enough, because I am confident that I do and he is not unreasonably demanding in terms of how much data we crunch out in the lab. He is a perfectionist though, like most scientists I have met. Also, my project has been in a sort of pit lately. It's hard to admit because it's something I get very attached to. It's sort of my baby. I thought about it so much, put so much time and effort into, and well, at the end, it turned out to be less interesting than we had originally thought so. It's nobody's fault, it's just science. Every time you start working on a project, there is some chance of it not going anywhere or not being very novel and interesting. Some projects are higher risk, some are lower: obviously, the higher the risk, the more potential it has to be very interesting and a very good publication, but also has a higher chance of failure. Like the stock market in a way.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with my mentor about the risks and benefits and about what I want to do and how long I want to do it for. For maybe one of the first times ever, I felt like he really cared about what I wanted and so it wasn't overall bad, but at the end of it, I had to admit that I wasn't cut out for the very high risk stuff that might end up in Cell or some Nature journal. I admitted to him that staying in academia was not a priority for me, rather, I wanted to do something different, even though I enjoy the day-to-day experimental work but not the frustration that's been so much a part of it lately. I know that every grad student goes through this, but some people are more cut out for it than others. I definitely don't have enough patience for it. So at the end, we decided that it would be better if I put my project aside for a bit and started thinking about and working on something else, only slightly related to what I've been doing for the past year and a half.

I feel like I am at a strange crossroads. Not just in terms of deciding which direction to go to in my research, but in a more general way too. I need to be in control of things at all times. I need to know that the projects I am working on make sense and are going in a forward direction; I need to feel that I am ready to run the marathon, even if it's not really the case; I need to know if the guy I like likes me back, right now, without a doubt. In short, I hare uncertainties. They stress me out. Maybe uncertainty is not so bad. After all, the unpredictability of life is what makes it so exciting. I need to decide whether I want to be the kind of person who is always in control, and thus, always feels secure, or if I can let myself not be in control and still feel good about myself. I think that I want to try to give up some of the control and stop wanting and trying and fighting so hard all the time.

In Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, the protagonist climbs into a deep well to be in the darkness and be able to think when too many overwhelming things happen in his life. Once inside the well, someone pulls up his ladder and so he gets stuck for a few days. At that point, the situation is completely out of his control: whether or not the person who took away his ladder brings it back will decide his fate. It's an incredibly vulnerable position to be in, but I think that in some way, to lose control like that - don't have to be in a deep well without a ladder to feel that way - can teach us something important. I want to let go and put the remote control of my life down for a while. See where it flows on its own.

Oh, yet another Murakami reference comes to mind:
"A road without an entrance or exit is a strange thing, when you stop to think about it. The fundamental principle of things like roads and rivers is for them to flow. Block them and they stagnate."