Another personal crisis....

This week was crazy. I went to a conference thinking that I would have an idea of the things that would be said in the presentations, but for a lot of them, I didn’t. Actually for too many of them I didn’t.
Andreas was great. Despite the fact that I am older than him by one year I feel like he is my big brother. He is so much more mature than I and in terms of career success he is beyond me. He is a postdoc in my lab and if you could only see how well he plans and does his experiments. I only wish I do experiments like that. Andreas carried this trip and converted it into something that could have just been a weeks worth of feminine hissy fits. There still were hissy fits but not as much as there would have been without him. He comforted me soooo much without doing anything at all, just being himself. I wish I could be like that. I told he brought out the best in people. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could just accept every one the way they are.
The thing with Andreas though, is that when he is in the lab, he is completely different. So I am going to have to remember that on Tuesday.
Anyways, Andreas made the party. Because of him we met around 5 guys. Which to me means 5 new friends while to Brianna it means 5 new possible husbands. Most of them were from Germany but there was one from Britain. The two that I will never forget are Bjorn and Jez. Bjorn, I never got to see his work, but he was super nice and good looking. I had never met a guy that was such a gentleman. He had married his first girlfriend after 7 years of being together 2 years ago. He wore a thick gold plain ring on his finger.
Jez was from Britain. He wore no ring, but he was engaged. His parents were mix, his mother from India and his father, I guess British. He had the accent. He also had the brain. At first I thought he was a very nerdy looking guy and I wondered about his work. Then, next thing I know he presents his work and it is beautiful. I am talking about Beau-ti-ful!!! work. He’d published in Science, Cell, and Nature in 3 years of Graduate school. I wanted to die. I still want to die. And then he was so gentle so serene so graceful.
I guess I talk about these people because I wish I were them in some ways. I wish I were that intelligent that gentle, that serene, that likable that influential.
I can’t help but be depressed. I am thirty years old and I don’t think I’ll ever publish in Science. And I just want to die. I feel like I deserve to die. What part of the puzzle am I? Lately I feel that I am not part of it at all. What is my purpose? I wish God would stop playing the silent treatment and just tell me already. Why does he expect me to read his mind?
Last night I called Carlos and I just started crying. I couldn’t help it. I needed to cry. What else could I possibly do except cry? But after talking to him I went back to the group we had found and they made me dance. While dancing I felt like God was right there with me. I know, you skeptic kitties are about to vomit but just give me a chanc to explain.
I said, “God I don’t feel good at all. What is going on? Why am I feeling so bad when I am doing exactly what I thought you wanted me to do? Why is this hurting?” and he said, “This is it Isa. This is where you decide what you want to do. This is when you just do it. Did you think it would be easy? Did you think I would make it easy for you? Whats the fucking point in that (yeah in order for him to keep my attention he cusses too)? If it were an easy mission I could have given it to anyone but I actually needed you for it and the truth is that you are doing a hell of crappy job. Pathetic really.”
And then all of the sudden I got this burst of energy. I danced it off. And I made a decision. I am going to work, as hard as humanly possible. There is only one problem. I am scared to do things on my own for the first time. And this is keeping me from doing anything at all.
No more. I just have to do it that is all.
Tomorrow I am going to read 3 papers on finding ligands. I am going to look at the paper that used RNAse to see what I have to do. On Tuesday I am going to ask Wes where I could possibly find some RNAse if at all.

And I am going to do it.