Frustrating today. On Friday, I was led to believe that a DARPA program manager might be interested in ideas relating to thermal management of satellites. It sounded like a job for AHTF. I've been wanting to get DARPA funding for this for a while now: it's high-risk high-reward, and could be useful for a variety of defense applications. A couple years ago, Prof. Qiliang Li encouraged me to go big with the idea. He said, "this is not an NSF idea; this is a DARPA idea." (Sidenote: I appreciate him for encouraging me like that. I could write a separate post about people like him and John Martin who lift others up.)
Anyway, after looking through the opportunity announcement for this year's DARPA Young Faculty Award, I couldn't find any of their interest areas that fit neatly with this idea. I got sucked into my usual pattern of impostor syndrome, feeling like I don't have the skills, etc. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and missing out on an opportunity to watch a show with Jayme and we got into a minor tiff. I started to get down on myself.
And then I stopped. I thought, "I can refuse." I can refuse to go down that self-defeating path ever again. If I take that mental energy and channel it instead into actually doing something, what could I achieve? It's not actually as hard as I made it out to be.
On Jocko Willink's podcast, Jonny Kim said something to the effect of: "If you get back up every single time you fail, you will have a positive impact on the world." He also said, "I'm not gifted. I'm not smarter than everybody else. I'm not stronger. I just have the ability to stick to a plan and not quit." Grit paragon.
No matter what happens with any of these opportunities, I will never give up.
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