breaking a promise

I promised not to do this at my new job, and I’ve been good so far. Today though, not so much.

I’ve been thinking a bit too much lately and yesterday I went to a talk, got referred to in a what I would call “a tad bit rude” (sorry no details) and today I got invitations for two of the biggest conferences in my former field. I won’t go of course, since I have left that field and won’t go to conferences again (if I stay in this gig that is). And then last week and this I have been trying to set up experiments as planned, needed some feedback since ”it’s crucial that we do them _exactly_ as they do them there, even if you have done these type of assays before” and in the middle of the run through with a former post doc colleague he said “you do know to change tips when you do a dilutions series, right?”. And no, it was not a joke.

That was followed by a lot of “do you know this?”, all very basic stuff that I would assume anyone who has a degree in biology would know… And again I was reminded that to some of them I am now lower than them... and therefore I need to reconfirm my status again?! Then I listened to another talk from a “highly thought of person” who didn’t know the difference between a “true replicate” and “duplicate values to make sure the value is correct”. Let’s go with, it’s very important not to mix them up if you are doing statistical analysis and degrees of freedom. Of course, no one wanted to hear that there wasn’t actually significant values since they didn’t have 4 values to compare but only 2 since they were derived from the same set.

Great day. Absolutely splendid. I can’t say that today is any better. And what I have done the last couple of days, a monkey can do (or a someone with two arms and half a brain). I mean, cleaning BSCs? Aliqouting standards? Thawing frozen stuff to mix and freeze again? (And I did that as a post doc too though... so I know that this isn't something unheard of really. Just me feeling sorry for myself.)

I wonder if it would be a good idea to just take a short trip out on the country side over a weekend to get away, and feel sorry for myself and see if I can find something to brighten the mood because right not, it ain’t looking good at all.

Maybe if I could go to the gym and work out really hard (haven’t been able for a while due to personal things) that would solve some of this?

And sorry, this was exactly the reason why I didn’t want to blog (I had much more appropriate subjects to write about and I didn’t want to do this from work either but it’s a bit too much at the moment. Something got to go…. And if it isn’t this, I’d be crying and seriously, I don’t cry at work anymore.)

Off to do more things to show that I am good at this, not disliking this at all, and pull myself together. There are always days when you don’t feel happy at work. Just bite and go through it I guess. I’m just envious of the people I left. Funny, I need to remember what it was like two years ago… perspective.