August 30

If I want to bring in more grants like Remi or Parag or Siddhartha...I need to write more proposals. I need to work for it. It won't come easy.

I need to have a fire in my belly. 

Talk to Remi in fluent français. Talk to Paulo in fluent español.

I need to work on projects that fulfill me, that sate my soul, that I am excited to get out of bed in the morning and work on. 

I am getting there.

August 23

Inspired by Paddy the Baddy, and a few events that happened today, I figured out what I need to do.

Take charge. Dominate like an MMA fighter. 

I will assert myself. I will charge ahead. I will tell Shrishti to plow forward with the PEGylation, but in a smarter way. I will be the leader of the IPF project that it needs. I will act like a man...in a good way.

Manliness shouldn't be a bad word. 

August 18

I felt like a leader today. We were having a meeting between Jorge, Luis, and me. Despite the fact that I am new to the IPF game, I feel like I was able to take charge of the conversation and make some decisions. 

I am a little miffed to realize that I did not do any writing today. That cannot happen again. I really need to get back on the wagon. I realized this evening that I spent a little too much time recreating - running, watching The Sopranos with Jayme, then FailArmy videos, then showering. That is nice to do once in a while, but I can't let it be the norm. I have too much to do.

I need to make a strategic plan for the next few years. It needs to be doable. It needs to be ambitious. It needs to be concrete. Many times in the past 3.5 years I have felt somewhat rudderless. It starts with having good goals, and then breaking those goals into doable chunks, and then actually doing the chunks with care.

I need to make specific, smart, desirable, attainable, realistic goals for the rest of this week:

1. Strategic plan progress: map out the next year.
2. Set up a meeting with Lamar, specify a timeline for writing the proposal.
3. Meet with Shabnam, make a timeline for writing the proposal
4. Reach out to 3 potential contributors to the book project
5. Write my sections of the Micromachines review paper. It's really not that big of a deal.

Tomorrow morning, I start by doing my part on the Micromachines review. That needs to be the priority since it's due on August 31 and I haven't done much on it yet. Also, preparing figures always takes longer than you think it will. That's starting at 8. And if I can go longer than 9, I will. Then meeting with Shabnam at 10 - probably makes sense to do that from home. Then I drive to Starbucks (double star day!) and grab lunch somewhere. (I need to rethink my lunches. It's been way too long, and I enjoy going out to lunch too much, but it needs to be reduced.) Mid-day emailing will need to target some potential contributors whom I'd love to have: maybe someone at Penn State, someone like John Gibbs perhaps, and maybe someone international like Peer Fischer or Oliver Schmidt. Then meeting with Nathan at 1 about capstone and with David & Joy at 2 about her paper. Then more writing until 4 or so, when I start getting ready to go to the gig.

Let's go.