acceptance

I'm an up and down kind of person. The highs are high, the lows are low. It's not DSM worthy highs, not clinically depressed lows, but I don't seem to just have "bad" days and "good" days. Days are REALLY REALLY GREAT or really really horrible. Like last week I heard that I won another fellowship, and then this week I spilled coffee over everything in my car, so I just threw everything out on my driveway and cried in the front seat while Lena waited patiently and confused on the front porch for me to open the door.

Lab work is kind of the same. I never have run of the mill productive days, I just get these waves of malaise and unproductivity, and then suddenly everything clicks and I am incredibly productive.

I talk to my dad a lot about all of this; the good and bad days, and the productivity thing. His response is always the same, "you just need to work on being even-keeled." Last night, he brought L back to our house at 7 because I was having a VERY PRODUCTIVE as well as GREAT day and needed to ride the wave, and I articulated this to him, again. Then, for the first time he says to me, "Well, that's just the way you are, and you should just go with it."

It's that self-acceptance theme. The stop-giving-yourself-a-hard-time theme. The gotta-be-me theme. I can't express how thankful I am that I am in a place that forgives me the time of figuring this all out.