The suspense, she’s a-killin’ me!

Sometimes I get too emotionally involved in my lab work. Things fail and I feel like a failure. I add the wrong thing to the wrong tube and I question why I’m here. . . but this emotional investment is paltry compared to the upcoming presidential election. Folks, I’m just ready for this election cycle to be over. I mean, if I try to imagine the other candidate winning, I just sit in slack-jawed horror. It will make me question the world I live in. I won’t freaking move to Canada because I think that will just make things worse: if we all leave, we just brain-drain the country. Ugh. I just need it to be over.

On perfume:
After a long stint perfume-less, I’ve been looking for something not from Bath and Bodyworks that would be nice for fall. I’m sure it sounds a bit silly, but I just wanted something a little more grown-up. A little sexier and more sophisticated. I of course tumbled into a run of internet research on perfumes, becoming obsessed with the blot “Now Smell This.” I even ordered some samples of some niche fragrances that sounded good: more spicy-herbal with a bit of incense. Well, bless Andy for putting up with me smelling like some sort of sauna/wood kiln all weekend. I’d tried several promising leads at the Macy’s perfume counter, like Ralph Lauren’s “Notorious” and “Gucci by Gucci” which smelled good, but a little too much of one thing or another. In the end, I went to Anthropologie, my “god I wish I had the money to buy everything here” store and tried out tons of perfumes there. I would go over to the shelf, spray something on an unused spot on my arm, and then walk a loop around the store smelling it. I eventually settled in on Sula’s “Stiletto Musk” which sounds more dangerous than it actually is: a nice spicy, musky smell that doesn’t wear me. And for a fraction of the cost of all the other options out there. I feel smart AND sophisticated. Hah!

On living:
My current reading has been a workbook on dealing with anxiety and stress, and it’s been fascinating and slightly life-changing. The basic gist is this: instead of avoiding stressful thoughts and situations (which is nearly impossible) you let yourself confront the thoughts and then let them go. They don’t get to run your life. It’s pretty much the same message as “Feel the Fear, and Do it Anyway” which I couldn’t get through because it was kindof simpering and overly self-helpy. This workbook is nice because the message is: what you feel won’t ever go away, but it doesn’t have to stop you from living. You can still move forward if you’re carrying anxiety. And when you take the focus off avoiding anxiety, you start focusing on what IS important to you. It made me realize there are a lot of things I’ve put on hold or stopped enjoying because I’ve been living with the constant guilt and anxiety that I should be working harder, that soon I will be found out as an imposter who somehow tricked everyone into thinking she was a scientist. These fears won’t go away—they haven’t in the last 5 years at least—and frankly I bet even when I stop being a grad student they’ll just adopt a new talking point. But I am definitely fed up with those thoughts running my life. Darn it.