Dear Me: the unpaid account version

Dear Me.

It’s 2011. Another number marking another 365 days that I can’t get back. I’m almost 23.

Let’s look at what I’ve achieved since 1988.

I got good GCSEs and great A levels. I have a first class degree from a first rate university and there’s a scientific paper out there with my name on it. This time last year I was applying for PhDs. Right now, I’m on the course that was my first choice. I worked for a year and saved. I went on holidays . I got a pension.

And yet I live in a virtually constant state of discontent. Perhaps it’s just part of being human, but everyone else around me seems so much more adjusted to this world.

This year I would like to have more time for things other than work, and I would like to give myself a break from myself. I am, of course, at precisely the wrong time in my life and university to do both of those things. I am three months into my four year PhD. I have just written my first report, which I would really like not to be the worst among the six of us on my course. I would like the next one not to be so stressful which means that I am going to have to do more reading and work during the term. An interesting concept for someone who was often not leaving the lab until after seven, having been there since nine.

Since I finished my time as an undergrad things have been gradually improving, so perhaps this year I will make a breakthrough. There are so many things to do before the end of the summer that I’m going to have to change my work ethic to get it all done, well, without losing my mind or giving up sleep (which will have the same effect anyway). I really have to stop spending quite so much time on Facebook, or perusing random websites mooning over pictures of Jared Leto’s half naked body. During the day I could spend that time working. During the evening I could spend it writing. I imagine that the most sensible thing to do would be to have an enforced day off from work a week (in my first draft I had written ‘year’. That says a lot), but as I’m about to start work in a stem cell lab that will require my presence seven days a week, that’s perhaps not the most sensible resolution.

I should also try and get a little more clued up on this whole stem cell business. A fellow student sent me a list of the key papers, and I was contemplating trying to read one a day whenever possible. That’s a dangerous time frame to give myself. It will slip from every day, to every day that I’m not spending entirely in the lab, to one a week, to one a month, and before you know it I’ll be buried beneath a pile of papers with the deadline for my thesis rapidly approaching.

Then there is this writing malarkey. I cannot claim to have ever been particularly brilliant, but once upon a time I liked to believe that I was a cut above [most of] the rest. I started my magnus opus aged 14 but it remains, unfinished, on my shelf. It has now accompanied me to two universities and a number of foreign locations, but mainly just spends its time gathering dust between flushes of creativity. I have long considered my two main characters to be real people, which is perhaps why I seem to have lost the need to actually write about their lives. However, this is the year that something must be done, for better or for worse, since the continued presence in my mind of Emily and Aaron seems quite successful in blocking my creativity.

There is also Contraband, an idea that is two years old. The idea came to me, as they always do, when I was in the middle of my final year project, and my exams, and finals at York, and breaking up with Jonny (who I have now been happily un-broken up with for 18 months), and so I had no time or energy to actually follow it up. Since finishing at York and spending a year in the world of work, I have had lots of time, though perhaps not the energy, and succeeded in writing really very little of it, mainly because I had an idea, rather than a whole story, to start with. Considering it will all be done within somewhere between 5000 and 10000 words, I should just write the damned thing and get it out of the way. I’ve made a start this evening, doing my usual thing of just re-writing old stuff rather than tackling the gaps that are actually holding me up.

I also want to write for my university science magazine, BlueSci. However, there are two things holding me back. The first is that I find writing to be a very organic process. This includes all kinds of writing, as my recent report has shown. I can’t sit and write something from start to finish. I do a bit here and a bit there as lines come to me, and I play and rework until I fit everything together. Rather like a jigsaw, for want of a more original analogy. The idea of being a general newsy-type writer fills me with dread. The idea of having to just come up with 400 words on a random topic plucked out of the sky is daunting because it is not how I usually write. I should probably give it a go, it’ll probably teach me a few lessons about how to write to a deadline and how to keep my mind focused on the task, as well has how not to use 50 words when ten will do. It would also just be great to see my name in print.

Perhaps NaNoWriMo would get me into the habit of writing. It’s just that there never seems to be a good time to give it a go. It would require me to actually take time out of other things, like work, and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to get over the guilt of doing that.

For something totally different, and in the desperate effort to get me to focus on something other than work, I would like to have my green belt in Jiu Jitsu by the end of the year. Of course, that will require me to actually go back. Since my first grading to yellow belt at the end of November, in which I spectacularly screwed up my back without even noticing, I’ve found excuses not to go like ‘I was in the lab until late’ or ‘I had to pack to go home’. But now I am back in Cambridge there is really no excuse and tomorrow I shall hit the dojo (probably literally, when I get thrown). It will be the first step towards orange belt, by actually trying to do the yellow belt stuff properly. It’s hard work, it’s physically demanding. I resent that at times I have to get up in front of everyone and humiliate myself by demonstrating how little I’ve managed to retain of what we’ve been taught during the session. But that’s precisely why I need to go. I need to get over my fear of performing and of failing. I can only see the potential benefits to my work and social life of giving it a go. I also need to stop taking it so seriously: it is not, grading excepted, a test. It is supposed to be fun and to teach me the skills that could some day save my life. So, orange belt in June and green next November.

Although I’ve just remembered that my PhD proposal is due in the middle of June, so perhaps not?

Work-life balance. Work-life balance.

That also means that I should probably take up running again but I don’t really fancy it, at least until the weather warms up. I enjoyed being able to run four miles, but I don’t enjoy numb extremities. I was going to try and run the 2012 London Marathon but part of me just can’t be bothered.

I would also like, very much, to spend more time with my boyfriend and to not always feel as though we’re saying goodbye. He may be joining the Navy later in the year, so there is a somewhat ‘now or never’ feel to things. I have to work on not feeling so guilty taking time out to see him, considering how spending time just lazing around with him lights me up far brighter than study has ever managed. I also have to stop worrying about things that might not even happen. I have to not get hysterical about the thought of him leaving on a ship for months at a time when he hasn’t even had the interviews yet.

Mostly, as with a lot of things in my life, I wish to not care whether this gets any recognition at all, particularly as I’ve just noticed that only paid accounts are eligible.

Resolution number one: always take time to read the instructions.

Still trying to love you,

Me.