18 March 2013

      I feel like I want to do something important. like this drive is the single thing that drives me the most. I feel like I haven't done anything important so far but I would like to direct my energies (all my energies and time) to doing something important. It's agonizingly vague, but then I've been feeling this for years so,what do I do? I also know when I am doing something important and when I am not. It is a very stark feeling. I felt for a time that the best avenue to do something important would be science. Like that in science one has the greatest chance (and I consider most work that is directed towards discoveries and advancement to be, in large part, pure luck) at making an improvement for the world, the greatest chance at making an impact in the lives of others, the world. This pull toward science (after three years no less, two of those in a neuroscience lab) was tempered toward the end there by a disillusionment with the entirely tedious grant/money situation, a realization at the gigantic gap between basic and applied research (I wanted to do the latter but was firmly on track to work in the former), a realization at my lack of self-direction, and a particularly strong feeling that (and this is just my opinion so no desire to piss others off here) a certain ivory tower narcissism and navel gazing in many areas of biology (and I'm sure other areas) research.
          Also i get bored reading academic research papers,
                                                                                        it's really unfortunate.
          I had, for six months, what would have been a really nice job that was related to my field right out of school. A job that would have been really nice if the CEO hadn't been hiding how bad the company had been doing and decided to resign and take a few of us down with him (yo but I'm not bitter though).
          While I won't be so audacious to call myself a writer (not only is this, ultimately, up to others to decide, but it seems that the only people that identify as writers are eternally stuck in YA-SF writing groups, et c.) I have found that, in the two tiny months I've been writing, I've had more flow and felt vastly more productive than during five years of school or working. Of course it is impossible to predict how long this will last. I may get bored with writing just as quickly as science, who knows.