April 21

 A running list of the chores I do regularly:

• Turning the porch lights on and off every night/morning
• Get WaPo newspaper on Sundays
• Shovel walk (during winter) (usually)
• Mow lawn (during summer)
• Making coffee in the mornings
• Feeding Agnes (>50% of nights)
• Doing dishes (~75% of the time)
• Taking the trash/recycle bins in/out on Tuesdays/Wednesdays
• Laundry
• Picking up take-out (usually)

Things I do some of the time:

• Grocery shopping

Things Jayme does:

• Clean litterboxes
• Cook
• Grocery shopping
• Order food
• Order home furnishings, appliances, etc.
• 
  

April 20

Some good things happened today. 

Derek Chauvin was convicted on all counts. Right result.

I went for a 7-mile bike ride on a gorgeous spring evening.

I took a couple hours off. Enjoyed myself. Listened to a lot of music - Bakar to Bach to Vulfpeck.

I've got a gig to prepare for in a month or so. What happens if I hit the woodshed a bit every single day?

This is what I'm working on right now. To take one step at a time, intentionally. I need to forget getting the perfect plan for every week. It's more important to execute an imperfect but OK plan than it is to have a perfect plan and not execute anything.

For the upcoming grants, my attitude is "let me just throw some words together on the page that, while they may be imperfect, have my gusto and passion behind them." Might as well be damn interested in what I'm proposing. For the CAREER 1st attempt: I have a feeling what the panel will say. I don't care. I'm interested in this idea and want to see where it goes.

I'm at my best when I forget myself. When I forget about thinking about concentrating and just dissolve - without thinking. Whatever it takes to get into the groove.

April 14

It is not enough to talk like a future MacArthur fellow; you need to be inspired like a future MacArthur fellow. They are passionate people. They pour themselves into their craft and spend years honing it, not for no reason.

It's worth asking the question: what inspires me? 

I've had a couple of Eureka moments so far as a faculty. Seeing the TiO2/Au particles swim for the first time. Seeing the Ni layer appear on the piece of gold foil. And now, I can add getting my first paper on work done as an independent faculty accepted.

I want to cultivate more beginner's mind. I want to speak from an inspired place more often.

Yes. It's good to speak well and be articulate and cut down on "umms." But the soul has to be in it at the same time.

April 13

 I hate when we have these fights.

I have really been spread thin over the past few days. Over the weekend, we didn't sleep very well because Agnes kept rampaging through the house at 5 AM. I had way too much stuff to do over the weekend because I'm getting ready for an NSF panel (5 proposals) and a mock NSF CAREER panel (4 proposals) and everything was due the same day (yesterday). I also have a proposal of my own due on Friday. Yesterday (Monday), I was all over the place, going to Fairfax to get a package and then the lab and then my office, trying to get it all done. On top of that, we have 5 figures' worth of taxes to pay this year and we're still figuring out how we're going to do it.

I had another frazzled day today. I checked in on Shrishti because I was worried she would injure herself in the lab. I taught two classes. I reviewed 3 CAREER proposals, which was over three hours of work. 

I had the "do not disturb" sign on my office door, and Jayme came in anyway after knocking. That was OK. I wanted to see her and talk to her briefly, and maybe chat a little bit about the proposals I was reviewing. But we kept chatting. And eventually I grew physically uncomfortable (kind of like when we were watching In Bruges at Dad's house way back when). I was just on the cusp of submitting my proposal reviews. I didn't know where to say it, but when she was talking about something related to Natalie's grades in school I must have raised my hands slightly and hinted that I wanted to finish. 

"You've got work you need to finish. I'm sorry," she said and was immediately *incredibly* sad and embarrassed. That made *me* stressed even more, and I said so.

And then things snowballed out of control. She said I seemed "exasperated" with her because of the way I positioned my hands. If I was so exasperated, why did I talk to her for a few minutes after she came in through a DND sign? And under the circumstances, don't I have a right to be a little annoyed?

The thing I want her to understand is that I am under tremendous pressure to get research results and publish papers and win $1029481029375 in grant funding, and I don't think she fully appreciates how hard this all is and how much I really do in a day. This is difficult enough on its own, but the last 3 years, laden with layers of guilt about her situation, have made it harder. She is extremely good at making me feel guilty about her suffering. Part of that's on me. I am a very courteous, respectful person who cares for others. To a fault sometimes.

We are both super frazzled right now. Calming down with a beer or two. We will get through this, but this was surely an infuriating thing. I'm mad at her, also a bit mad at myself for whatever part I may have played in things getting out of hand. Sometimes when I'm really stressed out I snap in this sort of way.

April 7 accountability

Today I woke up around 8:30 and had breakfast. I sent a few emails at home and went to the lab. Did a bit of good work with Garrett in the lab, but got an unusual result with the experiment. More research is needed.

Good research meetings today with the Conafay Group and with Remi. 

I wrote for 1:32 today, and I think I did well - I finished the edits to the response document and significantly improved it. 

Was able to write down some cogent arguments for the first proposal review I did. Trailed off a bit at the end there though, and slipped away into various indulgences. Need to be better about doing this work earlier in the day in the future.

I've been implementing gradatim ferociter in the lab experiments and been pretty happy with it. I look forward to continuing and experimenting with this technique in the coming days.