Some minor hiccups, but the last month has been quite productive. It feels good to develop something almost from scratch in a relatively short amount of time.
Apart from 2 other projects that are stuck, my work last month focused on a research proposal of my own, using an in-house tool, I designed a research plan that was approved so I could get the resources to start it, prepared and ordered everything necessary (from reagents to plasmids and cells), then did some preliminary testing that confirmed the feasibility of the plan, solved a few unexpected problems, and then just tested everything I could think of in vitro until I got results solid enough to convince my P.I. that the idea had merit.
February will be even busier as I start my own animal experiments in mice (small scale at first), while writing two more papers (hopefully getting them out of the way), exploring a collaboration with another lab (which unfortunately is having some problems right now, so I don't know how well that will go), and also helping with a big in vivo work from another collaborator.
This is what I imagined my work would be when I started my Ph.D., and it has taken long years to get to this point, but I can proudly say that it came from my own efforts, so I am really happy about it.
Of course there are many sources of stress, but getting a good day's work can work wonders as an anti-stress measure, even if things don't go smoothly, having some progress does a lot of good for my mental health.