PSA after a week in the vortex

You know those weeks that make you feel like you’re living in a vortex, with no sense of which direction is up or down (much less what time or day it is) all week long? And you can’t really care either because regardless all you’ll do is wake up and race to work and (16-18 hrs later) return home and pass out, just to do it all again the next morning? That has been my week. There was no running no reading no knitting and no cooking (pb & j & coffee don’t count).

If deciding to bring the whole damn French press to work at 4 am on a Sunday isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is. (My appreciation for this t-shirt is equally worrisome.)

Why is the concept of a big picture so difficult for some people (smart people…really smart people) to recognize? At this point I’d be satisfied with recognition. Acceptance would be a gift from god, never mind understanding. Recognition of the space-time continuum would also be fantastic – not having to perpetually justify why I haven’t completed a +48 hr experiment in <24 hrs. Finally, a common perspective of sleep being a necessity rather than a luxury would be wonderful. Unfortunately, the current dictator of my life (one of aforementioned really smart people) struggles with all of the above. HARD.

With this in mind, my PSA for the weekend is directed towards anyone who:

Doesn’t take the required 15 seconds and 12 brain cells to calculate how long it takes to do something, and then compare it to the time elapsed since asking your graduate student/postdoc/employee to do said something, before badgering aforementioned brain-on-a-stick about having done it already
Graduate student/postdoc/employee = brain-on-a-stick
Sees no difference between 3 pm and 3 am…on any of the 7 days of the week
NIH proposal and DARPA quarterly report deadlines slow the passage of time down to a screeching halt and put everything else that is happening in the world on hold

For anyone that the above 4 criteria apply (this is a digital assessment/step function, if you think >0 but <4 points pertain to you, you are in denial…all 4 apply) STOP IT!!

STOP IT NOW!! You are being irritating, exhausting, demotivating, and irrational!!

This t-shirt is awesome, until it literally applies to you. I highly suggest that you don’t let that happen (I’ll be making DAMN sure it doesn’t happen to me).