Sometimes lab is really hard and life is really hard and it feels like everyone wants so much from me even if it's just a biography and a picture of my daughter and these things are so overwhelming and anxiety inducing that I don't know what to do. My happy place is alone in my bed asleep but that doesn't work, that's called 'depression.' My new happy place is just learning. I'm isolating a bunch of bacteria for myself and it's wonderfully calming. Streaking them onto plate, noting colors and shapes, when colonies appear. Science! Life! The unknown!
Yesterday [two days ago, actually, I wrote this yesterday] I extracted DNA and PCR'ed up the 16S region and sent if off for sequencing and today [yesterday] I waited for results and got them. I can name these cells (babies) that I isolated (found), grew (raised), and save them. I'm not using our fancy label maker because anxiety attack, so I'm hand labeling my tubes, and with each label, each date and initial, it feels like I am labeling my anxieties: naming them, acknowledging them, putting them away.
I really am so happy that I didn't break my headphones, but with the news today I can't be happy about that, because of the news.
How does the news impact the delicate ones. It is hard to let myself be anxious and weird. Hard to let myself be silly over little things. Even harder when the news is the news.
There is so much outrage, so much anger, so much sadness and pain in the world. I want to not listen, but that is the definition of privilege. But it is hard to listen. It is hard to feel all of these things on top of the little things.
Headphones. Music. Drowning out the world. Drowning. Drowning. DROWNING.
Here. Listen to this song. Listen. Just listen.
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