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Aug. 13th, 2004 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oiranLooking for 3-hole punch, digging through the coffins/detritus boxes from last job in Seattle. Desk toys, personal rolodex cards, the notepad I liked to use because it didn't have the name of an antiemetic or iron booster on it, the pens I paid for because, well, ditto. And then I found the button I'd wear around on my lab coat (our "uniform" so that patients could tell we were staff - nothing more). In addition to the various colored cancer "ribbons", i.e. enameled tack pins, I had a big, round button made by a patient, someone whose life we'd helped prolonged, which reads "RESEARCH CURES CANCER," red on white. He made hundreds of them. Every time there was a Cancer Center event, he'd make more, boxes and boxes of them.
I did not find the 3-hole punch, but I sat and stared at the button.
After working in the field for a number of years, I tend to think that research actually tricks cancer. Sometimes the cancer is stupid and stays down; other times, it figures out a way around the "cure" and pops up again - different organs, different manifestation, more tenacious, or maybe just faster this time.
A lot of information that I actually understood at the time I was working with it is now completely over my head. I am not a chemist. I am not a scientist of any kind. That I could write studies which were apparently things of beauty and precision is almost fantastical. I can't remember them, really, though I remember the subjects and discussions and occasional arguments with physicians and drug company scientists. Pancreatic cancer. Breast cancer. Going backwards, redoing someone else's shoddy work that lumped ovarian and breast cancers together in a Phase I that was supposed to funnel everyone into a Phase II breast study.
I also remember being forced to apologize to the person who did/oversaw the shoddy work for saying it was poorly done in front of others and thus supposedly ruining her professional career. Well, I'm the one lurking in an attic in my pajamas and she's the one working on her PhD, bathed in praise, so I don't think me pointing out she did sloppy work hurt her all that much.
I am not cut out for working with other people. I make "mistakes" like that all the time. It just seems to me that if you do a half-assed job, especially when it involves other people's health…well, you're clearly in the wrong, aren't you? God. I could go on and on and on about this, but it's not…not worth it. Mine is a naïve approach, one that has yet to be rewarded, yet I persist in my politically hopeless ways.
I'm actually afraid of getting a job and running into incompetence and somehow saying the wrong thing, or showing someone up, or otherwise screwing up in a manner I think of as "social," but which is the same thing as "business" here. There are no business decisions made here (the Southeast), so far as I can tell. It's all about friends/social connections. I try hard not to be a judgmental know-it-all, but it leaks out anyway.
All this panic from a stupid button. And I don't even want to work in research any more.
~~~
Still not writing. Afraid to. Intimidated by stories I love, discouraged by crap that seems to be widely adored. Think what's the point, what's the point? until I've drilled myself down into the ground with it, the weight and sharpness of doubt keeping me from going anywhere until I come up with a plausible answer.
It's not coming, that answer.
Is this what others call writer's block? I don't feel blocked so much as forbidden from participating until I have a good reason to do so.
Had a rush of relief a week or so ago, looking at a YnM story that's perhaps two-thirds done. Figured out what was wrong, what would make it right. But then...what would be the point? Gah.
~~~
Got my first set of circular knitting needles for a fairly straightforward project. Am now afraid to cast on, for fear of new process. I feel stupid, because--what? I'll get tangled up and die? I become afraid of ruining fabric by cutting it, ditto paper.
This tense inertia lifestyle is so not working.
I did not find the 3-hole punch, but I sat and stared at the button.
After working in the field for a number of years, I tend to think that research actually tricks cancer. Sometimes the cancer is stupid and stays down; other times, it figures out a way around the "cure" and pops up again - different organs, different manifestation, more tenacious, or maybe just faster this time.
A lot of information that I actually understood at the time I was working with it is now completely over my head. I am not a chemist. I am not a scientist of any kind. That I could write studies which were apparently things of beauty and precision is almost fantastical. I can't remember them, really, though I remember the subjects and discussions and occasional arguments with physicians and drug company scientists. Pancreatic cancer. Breast cancer. Going backwards, redoing someone else's shoddy work that lumped ovarian and breast cancers together in a Phase I that was supposed to funnel everyone into a Phase II breast study.
I also remember being forced to apologize to the person who did/oversaw the shoddy work for saying it was poorly done in front of others and thus supposedly ruining her professional career. Well, I'm the one lurking in an attic in my pajamas and she's the one working on her PhD, bathed in praise, so I don't think me pointing out she did sloppy work hurt her all that much.
I am not cut out for working with other people. I make "mistakes" like that all the time. It just seems to me that if you do a half-assed job, especially when it involves other people's health…well, you're clearly in the wrong, aren't you? God. I could go on and on and on about this, but it's not…not worth it. Mine is a naïve approach, one that has yet to be rewarded, yet I persist in my politically hopeless ways.
I'm actually afraid of getting a job and running into incompetence and somehow saying the wrong thing, or showing someone up, or otherwise screwing up in a manner I think of as "social," but which is the same thing as "business" here. There are no business decisions made here (the Southeast), so far as I can tell. It's all about friends/social connections. I try hard not to be a judgmental know-it-all, but it leaks out anyway.
All this panic from a stupid button. And I don't even want to work in research any more.
~~~
Still not writing. Afraid to. Intimidated by stories I love, discouraged by crap that seems to be widely adored. Think what's the point, what's the point? until I've drilled myself down into the ground with it, the weight and sharpness of doubt keeping me from going anywhere until I come up with a plausible answer.
It's not coming, that answer.
Is this what others call writer's block? I don't feel blocked so much as forbidden from participating until I have a good reason to do so.
Had a rush of relief a week or so ago, looking at a YnM story that's perhaps two-thirds done. Figured out what was wrong, what would make it right. But then...what would be the point? Gah.
~~~
Got my first set of circular knitting needles for a fairly straightforward project. Am now afraid to cast on, for fear of new process. I feel stupid, because--what? I'll get tangled up and die? I become afraid of ruining fabric by cutting it, ditto paper.
This tense inertia lifestyle is so not working.
