2013’s Ambitions

 

Oh, 2013!  If you were a person, I would give you a high five because I am so happy to see you.  I’m actually really surprised at my joy in welcoming the new year because usually January 1st feels like another day.  This year is different.  Last year was so hard that my head and my heart agreed that we all needed a fresh start.  2013 is a good excuse to declare the start of something new and happy.

In 2012, my word for the year was devotion.  For 2013, my word is finish, which will make sense when you see what my biggest projects of the year are.  But I also want 2013 to be a year of fun and happiness, with some lighthearted projects to balance out my more serious pursuits.  I’m not really making resolutions here—I already feel like I’m a work in progress, with resolutions to be kinder, more loving, more forgiving, more present.  I am always striving to maintain a healthy balance, to make my ambition sustainable with my need for time to relax, reflect, drink some wine, and have fun.  So while I’ve sort of ditched the idea of resolutions, I love the idea of setting intentions for the new year.  Without further ado, here is my list.

* Finish.  My two big projects for the year are my first-author paper and my first marathon.  My boss and I literally just discussed the paper, and we agree that I’m really close to wrapping up my current project into a manuscript.  We’re waiting for the news about the grant we submitted last month, but for now, it’s full speed ahead toward the finish line on my story.  I’m estimating that I have about two solid months of experimental work to complete, and maybe hopefully I can start writing the paper while I’m working on those experiments.

The second project is 26.2 miles long and five months of training: a marathon!  I am equal parts excited and apprehensive about this.  The plan is to run a full marathon in October.  After some deliberation, I have settled on the Detroit Marathon.  I’ll be writing about my marathon experience over at Feels Like Flying, so feel free to pop in over there if you want to hear more.  Right now, I’m training for a half-marathon in March—I ran ~7 miles this morning, and it was glorious.  I love winter in Texas.

* Explore.  This one is a more lighthearted goal.  Like many young women, I was inspired by Eat, Pray, Love, and the country that resonated the most with me from that book was Italy.  I don’t really care if it’s cliché—we all do lots of things that are cliché.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth doing.  This year I’d like to learn some Italian and practice my Italian cooking.  I don’t have a plan for my language lessons yet, but for the cooking, I’m thinking of getting my paws on one of Marcella Hazan’s books.  (I should have asked Santa to bring me one!  Shoot.)

The other topic I want to explore is Vincent Van Gogh and his beautiful paintings.  I have always had a soft spot for Van Gogh.  His work makes me feel happy and peaceful.  I want to read a Van Gogh biography.  I also want to buy this print, which reminds me of the neighborhood in which I grew up.  Something about those tall trees…

* Sparkle and glitter.  I tend to be a “get the basics done” person.  I don’t always embrace the little things that add something special to an occasion.  This year I want to make more of an effort to do small, special things.  For example, last week I wore eyeshadow two times!  It was a record-setting week.  But I had a funny moment in the morning where I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, You look perfectly lovely without any makeup.  And I still believe that—I am a minimalist at heart, despite my chronic overpacking for travel.

“Sparkle and glitter” is me giving myself permission for more than just the basics.  I’m not entirely sure what this will mean over the course of a year.  But I’m excited to see where this idea takes me.  Maybe mimosas after the marathon?  Or some sparkly shoes?  Some new furniture for my patio so I can properly enjoy Texas in the springtime?  I’m open to suggestions for this category!

* * *
So that’s that: three themes for the new year.  I hope your 2013 is off to a great start, too!

PS  Photo credit goes to my niece Lydia, who took that photo accidentally while she was playing around with my camera.

“You are doing it!”

I’m still glowing with happiness over here, even though today is grey and rainy.  The winds are so strong out there that they almost snatched my umbrella out of my hands!  But now, I’m back inside, sitting on my cozy blue couch, writing to you, and I am calm and happy and well-fed.  Life is good.

Before I tell you about this week, I want to confide that when I returned to Texas from Michigan, I did not want to go back to work.  It was a deep, visceral feeling that nagged at me for four days while I struggled to reacquaint myself with my work rhythms.  I did not want to take care of my flies, I did not want to start doing experiments again, I did not want to look at data or think about science.  In short, I wanted to stay on vacation forever.  That didn’t happen, of course, because I’m not independently wealthy.  Even if I’d had an extra week or two of vacation, eventually I knew I would want to go back to work because really, I love my work.  I just hate going back to work when I have no food to eat, a huge pile of laundry to do, and what can only be described as an emotional hangover from the holidays.

But during that week, my boss asked if I would be up for giving a talk to the whole department the next week, and I said yes.  I knew there was a good chance I would be giving a talk in January since he had mentioned it back in December, but getting the official notice meant that I had to end my whining and get back in the science saddle.  So that’s what I did.  I prepared my talk for its first vetting by my boss, and I made a bunch of revisions.  Two days later, I presented the talk to my lab, listened to my colleagues’ comments, then made more revisions.  The next day, I presented my talk to the whole department, which is an incredibly diverse group of scientists: we have people who study everything from intracellular transport to DNA replication to cancer to behavior.  This talk was my first opportunity to show my work to people outside my lab, and I had no idea what to expect from the audience.  As much as I feel confident about my decision to pursue my project, I have a certain amount of healthy anxiety about what other scientists might think.  They could think I’m full of crap, for example.  And while I am not a very confrontational person, it would be my professional duty to defend my work and more importantly, to explain it in such a way that it makes sense to my general science audience.

But I’m lucky in that I’ve grown up in labs that hold themselves to a very high standard.  If I could convince my boss that my project has merit, then surely the department would be an easier sell!  After all that work—two practice runs, two rounds of revision, and several hours of rehearsing by myself—my talk went beautifully.  There were lots of questions afterward, but they were all of the curious variety, not the “I think you are full of crap” variety.  The new chair of my department asked an insightful question about the topic, revealing the end of our knowledge about the area in which I’m working.  I always find it sort of liberating to say, “Nobody really knows how that works,” because it both validates the question and allows me to acknowledge that I understand the importance of the question.  And when nobody knows how it works, it means the field is wide open for discovery.  That’s exciting.

As a general rule, I think that asking other people to validate your decisions can be dangerous.  But it was so wonderful to give a talk that was well-received and to listen to other people’s enthusiasm about the project.  I felt lifted up by the reaction from my department, and it was really the perfect antidote to my post-holiday slump.  During my first week back at work, I gave myself a pep talk in which I said, “You are doing it!  You are bringing this project, this knowledge, into existence.  And that’s just so cool—to be the medium that is generating new knowledge about a poorly understood topic*.”  I feel like I’ve finally found a way to bridge the gap between my intellectual interests and my need to connect spirituality to my work.  By seeing myself as a medium for science, I can acknowledge the weird relationship I have with my work where failure is a routine part of the job.  But sometimes, everything comes together, and we begin to weave the data into a story.  In those moments, when I can see the fibers creating something lovely and strong, I remember why I wanted to be a scientist in the first place.

* I study female sexual behavior in fruit flies.  You can read more about my work in the interview I did for Amber, “Featured Career: Scientist.”

Tonight

Tonight I would write a long, rambling blog post about how this week was the best work week ever.  But you know, it’s 7:50 PM on a Friday night, and I’m short on words.  I am just feeling so happy and fuzzy about the week that I want to wallow in it for a few days.  I want to remember this feeling when the doubt and the anxiety and the fretting start to creep up on me again.  Tonight I feel none of those things—I just feel happy.  Happy, with a mug of decaf coffee, a few cookies, some Big Love on DVD, and a friend waiting to talk to me.

There will be time tomorrow for that long, rambling blog post.  Or maybe it will be short and sweet.  I don’t know.  For now, I want to wish you and yours a happy, fuzzy weekend.

See you tomorrow!

Devotion in 2012: My Resolution Review

 

I for one am thrilled that 2012 is over.  I’m even more thrilled that I did not become pregnant, an alcoholic, or both.  (You think I’m kidding.  I’m not.)  I am probably less happy and healthy than I was at the start of 2012, but I didn’t start digging my grave either.  I’m okay.  I survived.  I have a chance at a new year now, a metaphorical fresh start.  I learned a lot. 

Today I want to review my resolutions from 2012 with an eye toward what worked, what didn’t, and where to go from here.

* Publish, publish, publish.  I had hoped to publish my first-author paper by the end of 2012.  That did not happen.  I did however submit three grants (one was a resubmission) and self-publish a piece on scientists and teaching that The Chronicle was not interested in publishing.  (The Chronicle is more geared toward the humanities anyway in my estimation, so it’s not super surprising that they didn’t take my piece.)

I put an enormous amount of work into those grants, and I’m hopeful that we’ll get funding for my project this year.  Whatever the outcome, though, I am at peace knowing that I did everything I could to stick with my work during a very difficult year.

As a bonus, I also published 139 posts on the ol’ blog here, and I am darn close to publishing 600 posts total.  Pretty cool!

Verdict: I am going to declare this resolution a success!

* Peace and quiet.  I had resolved to establish some practices to make peace and quiet a routine part of my life as a way to manage my chronic anxiety.  I wrote, “For this year, I am going to try a 2x2 approach: yoga twice a week where I do a 20+-minute session, and two evenings a week during which dinner is a quiet, candlelit meal.”

Yeah, that didn’t happen.  In a year when quiet time usually led to me crying inconsolably (and I cried a lot at night—it was awful), I started to avoid spending time alone with my thoughts.  My days already have plenty of built-in quiet time, such as when I’m running or biking, and I just couldn’t take more of it.  There was too much sadness in my heart.

I did, however, practice yoga once a week most weeks, and I almost always do some yoga stretches before bed.  Toward the end of the year, I rediscovered Gabrielle Bernstein and have become more interested in trying to meditate.  Mostly, though, I remember this quote and feel better:

“Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety.”

So now, whenever I feel I am waiting for something to change, I remember that I am certain of the outcome: it’s going to be okay.  I don’t know the specifics, but it’s going to be okay. 

Verdict: Resolution fail, but it’s going to be okay. 

* Thoughtful consumerism.  I’m really pleased with how this resolution turned out.  Let me say upfront that I did NOT do what I proposed at the beginning of 2012.  I didn’t pursue any blog-based partnerships with green or sustainable living companies.  But I did use the idea of thoughtful consumerism to spend more time writing about my approaches to thoughtful consumerism.  I wrote about biking for your groceries, awesome wrapsacks for carrying your belongings, and simplifying my life with small decisions.  I dabbled in veganism for a month and emerged much more aware of how subversive it is to choose not to eat animals.  Toward the end of the year, I started a series on freedom and what it means to me, and I’m going to keep writing on that topic as time permits.  (This post is the most current one in that series and contains links to the other posts, if you’re interested.)

Verdict: Success!  I loved all these projects.    

* Bonus: “Devotion” as my single-word intention for 2012.  That single word really carried me through a hard year.  I thought about it frequently, and it reinforced my commitment to all that I have created and built in my life.  It provided a kind of metaphysical foundation for me when I felt like I was in freefall.  Devotion.  It’s powerful stuff.  Devotion is a prayer, a wish, a hope.  It’s being present in the moment.  But it’s also remembering that life is bigger than whatever is weighing your heart down right now.  Devotion is the union of past, present, and future, woven together into the actions you choose for today.  2012 was a year that needed devotion.  I feel like a warrior.

Verdict: Success.

Some years we thrive, others we just survive.  2012, we are finished.  And I believe that 2013 is going to be a better year.

Three Things for Thursday

* A man who calls himself “an unabashed feminist.”   This fabulous line is from my friend Daine, who wrote a very eloquent post on his position as a future abortion-provider and advocate for women.  As Daine puts it, “Although the debate around abortion often centers on the exceptions, I feel passionately that abortion is moral and should be legal at any stage before viability.”  Regardless of your position on abortion, his post is worth a read because it will make you think very, very hard about the issues at hand when we talk about abortion.

* Shaved orange zest.  When I say shaved, I mean shaved with a vegetable peeler so you get these long, lovely slices of zest, which can then be chopped into smaller pieces.  I like how the chopped pieces have more chew to them than grated zest—they have more of a presence in a cooked or baked dish, and I love that.

* My first bunch of collard greens.  Yay for greens!  I’ve had a craving for greens all week.  Last night at HEB, the kale was feeling pretty sad, but the collards were looking pretty and perky.  I took the collards home with me, sliced them into ribbons, fried some onions in olive oil, added the collards along with some garlic, shaved orange zest, salt, and chili pepper, and stewed the whole mess for a bit.  I ate my greens over rice, and they were delicious.  I see more collard greens in my future.

Happy Thursday, friends!

The Freedom to Love and Be Loved

Hey, hey!  It’s another installment in my on-going series on the many meanings of freedom.  You can read the first three installments here: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Infinite navel-gazer that I am, I spend a lot of time thinking about love and kindness and how these ideas manifest themselves in my life.  There are few things more important to the human experience than love, but I think it’s always important to remember that love is so much bigger and richer than romantic love.  Even romantic love itself is more satisfying in the context of a friendship—that’s a lesson that Matt taught me.

Another lesson that has stuck with me from recent experiences is that there is nothing like a serious crisis to reveal a person’s true colors.  It’s one thing to yammer on about love and kindness when everything is good and happy; it’s quite another to put those principles into practice when you’re being squashed by life.  I think that’s part of why I’ve struggled so hard with 2012: because I wanted to prove to myself that I could live according to my own values.  Heaven knows I had plenty of moments when I just wanted to run away from my problems or, at the very least, hide in a closet until the storms blew over.

But I chose not to hide.  I tried to be brave.  My brand of bravery demanded a certain amount of honesty that was, to be honest, scary even for me.  That’s what I wanted to write about today: the way that honesty in relationships frees us to be our true selves.  Honesty is what lets us love and be loved.  Honesty is the union of courage and vulnerability.

I’ve struggled a lot in my relationships this year.  A friend whom I assumed would be there for me failed to do so, which was deeply disappointing.  Another friendship threatened to sail into forbidden territory, so I had to throw out my anchor on that one.  In both of these cases, I felt like I was out of my element, overwhelmed by need and grief.  How do you say to a person, “You can’t give me what I need”?  It sounds like an accusation, and yet it would have been the most honest thing to say.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that some friendships simply have built-in limitations, and this is okay.  With some people, I can’t have a deeper connection due to personality mismatches or outside commitments that deserve respect.  I wonder if being with Matt spoiled me because I felt like I could tell him anything, and without his steady presence, I wanted, no, I needed a replacement.  But some losses can’t be replaced on demand.

* * *

This week I’ve been thinking about the difference between being liked and being loved.  Jessica Valenti wrote this provocative piece about the female desire to be liked at the cost of being true to our authentic selves.  What I wonder is this: what is the distinction between wanted to be kind versus wanting to be liked?  To put it bluntly, I could give two shits about being liked.  That doesn’t matter to me at all.  But I care very deeply about being kind, and I’m not entirely sure what the difference is.  Maybe the distinction is arbitrary.  To me, being kind is some combination of the following:

* Help where you can.

* Act with love.

* Know the difference between speaking your truth and saying something mean.  Honor the truth; stay away from being mean-spirited.

* Assume good intentions.  (I cannot tell you how valuable this one has been for me.)

Four guidelines is pretty succinct, don’t you think?  This list works for me in professional and personal settings, and I like to think that it has relieved a lot of anxiety about being liked by others.  Because I’m encouraged to speak my truth and assume good intentions, it keeps me focused on finding common ground.  As a friend of mine said about her relationship with her fiancé, “I like to win, you like to win, so let’s win together.”  I really like that.

Built into Jessica Valenti’s analysis is the insidious notion that women can choose to be liked or they can choose to be successful.  I think there is a third option: we can choose kindness as we pursue our goals.  Inherent for me in kindness is gently pushing aside my own ego because let’s face it, it’s not all about me.  For many of us, success is something we seek in cooperation or collaboration with others—spouses, families, colleagues, bosses.  I would like to believe kindness honors the collective quality of our experiences.

Maybe I’m lucky in that I have always moved through life with a deep sense of my own worth.  I don’t have to care about whether other people like me because I know I have so much more to offer than a shallow likeability.  I am not an easy-going person, which means I’m not always easy to like.  I know this.  (And oh, my family and friends—they know this too, poor souls.)  But what I lack in shallow likeability I make up for in the depth of my relationships: an appreciation of other people’s strengths, a willingness to hear and consider positions that differ from mine, the way it’s not hard for me to apologize and open up the chance for meaningful conversation.  In short, by not trying to be liked, I choose the freedom to be loved for who I really am. 

Not-so-Deep Thoughts on a New Year

One of the problems with being an academic/vegetarian/feminist is that your analytical skills don’t turn themselves off ever.  Or at least mine do not.  Being so sensitive to the unfairnesses and cruelty of the world can be painful, so the following passages resonated with me as something worth striving for.

“’I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.’”

“The ability to live at the surface, to take the events of daily life with the meanings they present rather than to seek their hidden purpose, to find happiness and joy in what there already is, finds its easiest expression in a pre-Christian age.  Indeed, not just a pre-Christian age, but a pre-Buddhist, pre-Platonic, pre-Hinduist, and pre-Confucian one as well.”

(Both passages are quotes in order from All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, but the first passage is from Moby Dick.  Bold added by me.)

Maybe it’s okay to seek the surface as a way of protecting ourselves against daily frustration.  Then again, maybe I’m too far gone to ever skate so lightly over the surface of things.