New year, same old work

Finally the holidays are completely over, no more stress about people not being present at work or having to delay orders for consumables because a company is still not working.

Still, the long holidays were enough to fully charge my batteries so these days I am able to do laboratory work, reply to all emails and even advance in my manuscript writing. This really makes me feel optimistic for the year.

Of course this is not likely to last more than a couple more of weeks, but I plan to take as much advantage as possible, I am planning to even study for the Japanese proficiency test this year, that level 1 seems possible if I take it after a couple months of focused study...

Christmas Miracle

Last week I had a small dinner with members of my old lab (my current one didn't have a "year-end party") and had a nice time talking about everything and nothing. I got news about an old acquaintance overseas and ate delicious food (though a little expensive).
So I was pretty happy at the end and could not hope for anything better, but one of the participants at the dinner had a really nice surprise for me.
This guest knew about my problems with the toxic stalker who was sending me horrible emails on a regular basis. And that this stalker had started working at my old place of employment, which made the decision to leave that place much easier. 

Apparently, this friend at the dinner knew a lot of people at my old job and connected the dots from what I had said earlier about this problem, so he guessed the identity of the stalker without me having to say the name. So when the stalker came up in conversations he had with a friend in the same department, he casually asked about it. And it turns out that the stalker is leaving that place and Tokyo altogheter! (will not write time and destination because of the small chance someone might know who I am talking about!)
Lately, I have not thought about it so much, but I also had to remain cautious because it was quite possible that the stalker might try to make trouble for me, and since part of my daily commute involved a shared station, there was always a little discomfort.
Not anymore! It may be a small detail, but now that I know that the stalker does not live in the same city, everything seems a little easier, looser. And, of course, it opens up a few more job opportunities in the future. I think I could not have wished for better news, I am quite happy.
Apart from that, something really nice happened at work, but I will write about that later. 

Slow progress

Still with the problems I had by being online too much things are better but not as much as I planned.

The student I was helping got a nice fat scholarship to go overseas so I will not need to help that much from now on.

The reviews dropped quite a lot and I am now doing two at the time and from relatively easy topics.

I abandoned twitter and probably also threads, but found out a huge community of scientists on bluesky so I might lose a lot of time there.

Anyway, I can dedidate more time to my actual job and this week I managed to put all the electronic laboratory notebook into the physical one (a few months worth of experiments), which makes me feel much more at peace. 

Now, if the experiments finally go as I want I might publish something for this fiscal year... I hope.

Interesting day

...and strangely the least interesting part was my work at the lab (since I am in the middle of several projects so there is nothing interesting until I can get some results later in the week).

First the international news that project a lot of troubles in the world thanks to the elections in the USA, but that was to a certain point completely expected, many friends like to be very optimistic on these kind of things but I tend to be more realistic and understand since a couple of decades ago that happy endings and miracles are not something you can depend on, and that bad people routinely get away with their deeds without problem.

Second is that I got a couple of invitations with old friends to go out and have fun, which was unexpected since it has been quite long since we meet. I am looking forward to going with them even if I am quite tired recently.

And finally some interesting news from a coworker that happily got a few more options in her future, but that makes it complicated her current situation at the lab if she chooses to take advantage of the chance, one of those good things to be worried about.

So changes and time slips around, interesting times indeed.

Online activity burnout

I have been neglecting this blog for a while, partly because work in the lab has been busy as usual, but also because I have been very active online in my "spare time".
Peer reviewing takes a lot of time for every single article, then I volunteer some time in some online spaces to answer questions about biological and molecular research, also one of my former students is applying for some positions overseas and I am helping her, then some social media activity about vaccines, infections and how to read and interpret research papers. In the end I have almost no time left for hobbies, even on the train every day I think about how best to formulate an answer or comment.
But I fully intend to keep writing here, so maybe I will go easy on the social media and take a break from peer reviewing for a month or so.

Crippling headache.

Mondays are usually difficult (change of pace from the weekend, extra work at the beginning of the week, often at least one meeting), but today it was complicated by a terrible headache. 
No other symptom, no alcohol involved, no extra stress, but I can hardly open my eyes without feeling the light as needles and every heartbeat as a drum in my head. Just in case, I used the blood pressure machine at work to see if that was involved, but I am still in the normal range (well, 135 systolic, which is already out, but not that unusual for me).
September is not starting off well for me, I hope some painkillers will help because starting Wednesday I have a lot of extra work and a small business trip to prepare for and I would hate to have this headache the whole time.

Unexpected recovery

A few days ago, I was sitting in one of the train stations I use for my daily commute, thinking about work and some problems I still need to solve. Then I noticed someone right in front of me, and from the back it looked like the source of those horrible emails I used to receive until a few years ago.
I know where this "source" of bad wishes works, and this station is probably also used to commute there, so it was quite possible that this was it. 
Up until a year ago, I think I would have panicked and probably run away at this point, but this time I was actually calm and reacted much more rationally, leaving the place, taking another train and not even looking back to confirm my suspicions.
In the end I never knew if it was the stalker or not, but fortunately it doesn't seem to matter anymore, I find it very nice that this source of negativity doesn't have any power over me anymore and I can live my life in peace after all those years where I felt this shadow looming over me.
I am quite proud of myself, even if this may seem like something easy or natural for other people to achieve, for me it took quite a long time to reach this point, so I think I am justified in enjoying it. Good for me! 

Paper writing.

Emergency data collection and immediate report of intermediate result period is finally over, a lot of things were just about to be known and I had to make a few presentations in academic meetings, so the obvious thing to do is to finish as much as possible in the least amount of time so I would be justified in writing a few more sentences on my presentations.

The unfortunate part is that I was able to give my presentations in English, which was confortable for me, but it also made the almost universally Japanese audience not exactly participative, so I got almost no question. I will have to work on my professional Japanese more so I can at least ensure the audience know I can deal with questions in Japanese.

From now my focus switched to writting manuscripts, of which I have 3 pending, one almost lost because of time since the research, and I will have to check with my old supervisor to see if it can be saved, another with my previous workplace, which became radioactive (thankfully because of reasons completely unrelated to me or my work) and one about the work I am currently doing. 

I will focus for 2 weeks and see what happens, maybe I can rescue at least one paper from this and then be a little more confortable having more time for the other two. 

Also I met an old friend from my previous place of work, I though he would be a little unfriendly because I had to leave that position even when he offered me a permanent position, but actually he tried to recruit me again (after I publish something), it seems I left a good impression after all. 

Scientific Presentations week.

My work is not exactly Nobel Prize-worthy, but it is interesting and hopefully useful in the medium term. And since I'm not ready to publish it yet, that means I can't give an oral presentation on it, just a poster and a flash talk.
But of course this is good enough to give it my best shot, so this week I am in full presentation mode. Getting all the materials ready, printing out guides, modifying my poster, and endlessly practicing what I am going to say to fill my allotted time with useful things about my work without unnecessary details. 
One point of difficulty is that most people will be presenting (and interested in) a quite different area of research, so I really need to present my work from a very basic perspective in order to be clear. Nevertheless, most of my old work was in that different field, so at least I have the experience of knowing what kind of things (from vocabulary to techniques) are new to the audience, so I hope I will be able to adapt my talk to them.
It is also a lot of fun because I am really interested in what everyone else is presenting, even if it is not even remotely related to my current work, it is a little bit like going back a few years and going to these kinds of scientific meetings all the time.

Remembering good times and avoiding the bad

Recently I got invited to go drinking with a couple of very old friends, and I usually enjoy doing this kind of things (specially since I have a hard time making new friends so I have to take care of the old ones), but this time it was a little bit complicated since one of those friends usually likes to talk about a person that I really don't want to remember as soon as she gets a little bit drunk.

But I really wanted to release some stress of the recent workload so I made plans... Prepared a few topics that I know she would pick up and be interested immediately, also kept in mind a few excuses in case she insisted in talking about the toxic person and finally prepared myself to have a serious talk with my friend about how I don't appreciate that topic.

Fortunately the evening went much better than usual, not for nothing we know each other for many years, 8 or 9 times I clearly saw the talk being slowly being directed toward dark parts of my history and with a little bit of effort I managed to completely avoid the topic without spoiling the mood. We all got to enjoy a nice outing and the talk was fun and productive. I never imagined that all that was necessary was to pay attention to the "flow" of the conversation and have something prepared to get the attention towards positive things instead of bad memories.

I feel proud I got better at driving the conversation, even if it is only between good friends, maybe soon I will be able to do the same with strangers.