Speed.
I’ve been trying to run faster the past week. When I had a personal trainer in St. Louis, she told me: “If you want to run faster, you have to run faster.” As there often is, there’s complexity in tautology. For a while, I got a little faster just by going out and running at the same effort level. Because I was getting into shape, and I could just sort of improve, without a huge amount of effort being put into speed. Don’t get me wrong, there was a huge amount of effort just put in to moving. But I wasn’t trying to go fast.
And I didn’t really think I wanted to go fast. I had a basic goal of running 10K in under an hour, which requires about 9:40 miles. That’s a good clip, but it isn’t anything too impressive. But it’s a reasonably fast jogging speed for a late 30s dude, which is what I was at the time. And I did that. Last year, in the spring of 2013, I ran ten kilometers in about 59:30, and I was happy, and it felt like a big accomplishment. Then I stopped trying to run any faster, and started trying to run further. I got slower, but that was ok. Because I was running 10, 11, 13 miles at a time, and that was a major accomplishment of its own.
Now, having run two half-marathons with BB, I am torn between two goals. I want to get faster, because faster is fitter and my main goal in all of this is to not get diabetes. For that, I need to stay trim, and I need to have good cardiovascular fitness. But I also am finding myself more and more pulled in by the ambition of completing a full marathon. At least once. I think.
But I’m also compelled by the idea of, say, finishing a half marathon in under two hours, which is a wildly ambitious goal for me. That requires running 13.1 miles in a row faster than 9:10 min/mile. That seems almost impossible. Or at least it did, until yesterday. Yesterday, I ran 10K (6.21 miles) in 55:22. That’s 8:52 min/mile. Which is crazy fast, for me. Tuesday, I ran 5K (3.11 miles) in 25:57, or about 8:18 min/mile. Which is blazing speed for me. Like, beyond what I thought was possible.
But if you want to run faster, you have to run faster. I had to increase my effort level, be prepared to fail, and run like hell. And I did. And I didn’t fail. And maybe, that 2 hour half-marathon is a possibility. Maybe that full marathon is on the horizon. My friend @scicurious tells me that running faster will help me run further too. If for no other reason than that I can go a further distance in the same amount of time.
And then, BB and I can run together, faster, further. And maybe I can stave off the specter of metabolic infirmity until I’m old and tired. I feel good. I’m doing things I didn’t know I could do. Things I didn’t know I wanted to try. But now I’m here. This is kind of amazing to me. And I’m happy. I’m going to get the image below inked on my right calf. Run like hell.
Contribution to Science!
Hurrah, haroo! I have had a paper accepted! It felt like it was never going to happen again. This is an exciting one for me because it is the first (and probably only) paper from my little tiny grant that I got shortly after arriving at MECMC. That grant paid for two interns for a year and a trip to London. The work resulted in policy shifts at my hospital, because the client department had quantified evidence to buttress their requests. And it resulted in this paper, where we describe the work as a case study and tell others how to do the work in their own environments.
I consider it a major success, especially because my interns, undergraduates at VFU and UHR respectively (OK, technically one has now graduated), are the co-first authors. I know some people don’t like co-firsts as a concept, and I’m aware of the problems. But they worked very hard, and collaborated constantly. In the “acknowledgements” we state, “Authors [a] and [b] are listed alphabetically.”
The journal is a mid-level medical journal with an audience of MDs, which is exactly what I’m going for, as I’ve written before. I know that it means that my work will not get the publicity that I might get if I were submitting to engineering journals. But I also believe that changing quality improvement practice means exposing medical decision-makers to this work prior to trying to convince them to do it in their own clinics.
It’s exciting to put my science/engineering out there for the world to use. I hope somebody bothers to read it.
Professional Advancement.
The foundations of my empire at MECMC are beginning to be laid. I have been here now for about 18 months. After two consecutive good performance reviews, I am being promoted. It’s not a major promotion in terms of my job, from an institutional perspective. But it’s a big deal to me. I was asked to write the position description, and I did. And I specifically wrote into it that I will have time to write papers, and represent the institution externally at conferences and symposia, as well as representing my department at hospital-wide events like grand rounds and “Patient Safety Day” etc..
The new position comes with a better title. I picked it, but I’m not super happy with it. I’d like something clean, but there are a few institutional rules about broadcasting levels that require me to pick a particular prefix. And then it’s a matter of distinguishing myself from the IT positions that are engineers, while also hopefully having a title which will signify to grant reviewers and associate editors that I’m academically capable. I settled on a title similar to what I had at my last gig. Of course, now, writing this, I’ve thought of the perfect title and it’s too late.
Nevertheless. I am advancing. This is the first step on my way to having a small “department” of my own. Really a laboratory-sized group of people who will do simulation and quality research and practice at MECMC and disseminate broadly. My manager has said that come spring, we will be looking to hire people that will report to me personally, and I can begin directing larger projects and more comprehensive treatments of our systems.
Hopefully, this will all lead to a body of work that makes a contribution to the field of heathcare quality engineering. And a nice and comfortable career for me in ECC. Or perhaps a stepping stone to a position as a professor of health policy or something. At this point, I’m never taking the Assistant Professor gig on my way to tenure. But I might well work here for 10 more years and then accept a position at the associate level, or something like that. Assuming I can keep up my publication and funding record, which I believe that being at MECMC will help me with*.
So I’m excited. My day-to-day life is not going to change much. I’m getting a new title, a little more autonomy about projects and directions, a small pay bump, and eventually some full-time people to direct on my projects. I’m 40 years old. I have a lot of karmic debt to pay back, that I fucked up my life so badly and yet have managed to land well. I’m happy where I am, and I had better do right by whatever got me here.
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*Go read Proflike Substance’s post on institutional pride.
Obsession in Sobriety.
Alcoholism is a disease of obsessions. It’s a disease of many things. I guess what I really mean is, “I’m about to talk about obsessions in alcoholism.” Because alcoholism is also a disease of isolation, of depression, etc.. It’s impossible to lay alcoholism at the feet of any one descriptor. But one powerful characteristic that nearly every alcoholic I know shares is obsession. And it may manifest in a million ways.
Some of us (though not me) are diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive. That’s a serious mental illness about which I know little and can offer no insight. I suffer from any number of mental illnesses, but thankfully, that isn’t one of them. However, I am familiar, at least, with the sense of being obsessed with something, to the extent that it dominates my thoughts, and I find myself arranging my life around the object of my obsession.
For a very long time, that was alcohol. But I was obsessive long before I began drinking alcoholically. In seventh grade, I memorized 150 digits of pi. I would become fascinated with various hobbies, and learn everything I could about them. I would be incensed if others didn’t share my interest: it was like a personal rejection for someone to be less interested in a topic than I was. This was especially problematic when, from about age 14 to about age 23, I was obsessed with religion. I was properly insufferable.
And then, of course, I was obsessed with alcohol. Not just with getting and drinking alcohol, but with learning about it. I brewed beer. Good beer! I was good at it. I bought a CO2 tank and a pony keg and a refrigerator and brewed beer and had excellent home-brewed beer on tap on a regular basis. That fell off, of course, as I grew more indolent and decided that purchasing alcohol was far less labor intensive than making it.
My obsession with alcohol increased, until it dominated everything in my life. If you’re reading this, you probably know the story.
In sobriety, my fundamental nature has not changed. I continue to obsess. I find it strangely soothing to discuss the same concepts over and over. I continue to get deeply interested in topics of questionable value and invest time, and effort, and money in learning and studying them. Lately, my obsessions have been men’s fashion and fitness/running. Luckily, these are complementary. As I run more, and lose weight and change shape, I have to buy new clothes.
It’s pretty common for sober alcoholics to be runners. I have known many. Some who ran before quitting. Some like me who began after. Running is deeply satisfying for obsession. It provides endless metrics to consider. Speed, distance, events, equipment, how to train, how to eat, everything. And I think it’s reasonably productive.
Obsession can be a negative even when it’s focused on something positive. Fitness is great, but if working at it causes me to neglect other things in my life, or results in serious injuries, or costs too much money, then it’s not constructive for me. So far, other than annoying people on twitter and at the office with too-long discussions of running, I think I’m still on the “healthy” side of my fitness obsession. I aim to stay there.
I’m grateful that I have the capacity to channel my obsessive nature into things that are positive now. Steps 6 and 7 of the 12 are about recognizing one’s character defects, becoming willing for them to be removed, and asking for that to happen. If you believe in God, then that’s generally what you do. My spiritual concepts are less concrete than “God”. So I find that to accomplish step 7 in a way that’s meaningful for me, I need to make regular efforts at diminishing and releasing my character defects with the help of others.
When it comes to obsessions, that means either recognizing them and trying to accept where I am and how I feel (like about my house), or channeling them into positives (like running). Focusing my obsessions on constructive things, or at least on non-harmful things, it crucial to my continued sobriety. When I fail to do that, I can spin in circles, frustrated and bewildered, until relief from that awful state seems to require anesthesia. And then, drinking might seem like a good idea. By focusing on fitness and health, I think I’m helping to buttress myself against that: I know how bad for me drinking is.
So yes. I know I talk too much about running. I know I’m focusing on it and jabbering and bothering. That’s for me. I’m kind of a nutcase, dear reader. But this is a kind of madness that builds me up, I think, instead of dissolving me away.
Alcohol is not an Excuse.
Drunk people do terrible things. We’ve all experienced this. Whether because we’ve done something stupid and horrible while drunk, or because we’ve been harmed by a drunk person whom we know. And we know these people, or we are these people, and so we also know that they, or we, would never do such things sober. It must be the alcohol. It makes us do terrible things, when we drink too much. Alcohol is the problem.
No.
I don’t believe that alcohol is the problem. I don’t believe that alcohol is my problem. Yes, I’m an alcoholic and because I’m an alcoholic there is no safe amount of alcohol I can drink, because I can’t stop after a safe amount of alcohol. I will keep drinking until I can neither walk nor see. But before that, I will drive, brawl, insult, harass, or do any number of other terrible things that I know are wrong.
Alcohol is not the problem, because I know all those things are wrong, and I know that I don’t do them when I’m sober. And yet, knowing that, I chose to drink. Alcohol didn’t make me do bad things. Alcohol allowed me to do things I know are wrong. It allowed me to slip off the constraints of social propriety and say what I wanted to say, do what I wanted to do, express my desire for instant gratification and consumption, despite knowing that those things were wrong.
I do not believe that any habitual drunk is under any illusions that the things we do when we’re drunk are wrong. Not just later when we sober up and look back (or are told, because we don’t remember) and cringe at the messes we’ve made. But immediately. In the moment. We know what we’re doing is wrong, is injurious, is insulting, but we don’t care. And we knew that we would be brought to that state by drinking, and we drank in order to get to that state.
The matter of choice and compulsion in alcoholics is strange and delicate. There’s a duality that is not entirely reconcilable. I drank in a way that was utterly out of my control. I had no capacity to moderate or abstain. I knew what I was doing. I made the choice to drink every time. I enjoy the effects produced by alcohol. I knew the consequences of my drinking, and I drank anyway, fully aware of the choice I was making, and its effects on others and risks to my health and liberty.
But alcohol is never an excuse for bad behavior. It is not exculpatory. If anything, it is aggravating. When habitual drunks drink, we are doing it precisely because we like how being drunk makes us feel. We like that more than we dislike how our behavior hurts others. But we are not blind to it. We may be in denial about it, but denial is not unwittingness. We are not deceived by our denial.
Alcohol is an aggravating factor rather than mitigating because we know how we behave when we drink. We know it hurts others, and yet we continue to drink. We drink on purpose in order to put ourselves in the situation where we can behave badly, and use the alcohol as an excuse. To say, “I’d never do that sober, I wasn’t me! You can’t be mad at the real me.” To have a convenient scapegoat for our misdeeds.
But that is alcoholic insanity perfectly encapsulated: we know how we hurt others, and yet we drink again. It is not insane that drunk, we commit crimes, we harass women, we endanger ourselves and others. That’s what drunks do. The behavior isn’t the insanity. The insanity is that we see that, we suffer the humiliation when we sober up, and then we drink again. Because we prefer our intoxication to the rights and agency of others.
Recovery must include a genuine recognition of this behavior. Of our choice to harm others rather than to modulate our own actions. And we cannot simply apologize, again, for our drunken destructiveness and expect to return to our position in our community. Even if our change is real, it takes time to rebuild lost trust. Apologies are not amends. And sometimes our drinking costs us permanently. To be sober, we must accept and even embrace that. To regain stature anywhere, we must be willing to accept that we may have permanently lost it elsewhere.
We don’t recover in order to regain what we’ve lost and erase our humiliations. Recovery from alcoholism is about deciding that the way we’ve been living is bankrupt, and we need to become people worthy of respect. From ourselves. From whatever we believe in. When our own acts are objectionable to us, not because they cost us stature, or cause us humiliation, but because we cannot live as persons who place our own indulgence above others’ welfare. Then we may recover. Not only ourselves, but among those we’ve harmed.
An Academic Memorial.
Yesterday I attended the memorial service of Mort Friedman, a Vice Dean and Professor at Columbia. He served that university for 56 years. He died suddenly a few months ago, but at advanced age. He was universally beloved, and prodigiously accomplished. A professor whose contributions, even measured against other long-time Ivy League professors, is impressive. He was lauded highly, as a man and as an inspiration to others, by those who knew and loved him, who studied with and under him.
Dean Friedman was the acolyte and colleague of my own great-uncle, Raymond Mindlin, a professor at Columbia for many years in the same department. His passing represents one of the last threads to a generation of my own family which is gone now. It was sad to see him pass, but it is difficult to mourn too deeply for a man who lived a life that nearly anyone would envy. The words of praise, yesterday, were equally split between synonyms of “brilliant”, and of “beloved”.
Dean Friedman was important to my own career. Wisely counseling me once to stop being an idiot, recognize that great writers actually write, they don’t just drink and smoke, and finish my doctorate. He put it more gently than that, but the message was true and clear. I followed his advice, and a good thing of it, too.
The memorial has me thinking this morning of my own career now. I am a very minor academic. I will always be a minor academic. Google Scholar informs me of a new citation to my work this morning! That’s 36 now. But some of those are from my own papers. I have many friends of course with hundreds and thousands. Some many thousands. But I have a niche field and I have made the choice to publish in journals where my work may not be high profile to the people likely to cite my work. I am carving out a very small, very specialized arena for myself. It may not be the best plan.
When my time comes, my professional achievements are not likely to be the first thing to fall from the lips of those remembering me. And yes, that makes me sad some. Prior to my drinking days, I was regarded as a bright light by those who considered my potential to influence the course of systems engineering. I gave up a lot in order to drink the way I did. Probably. Maybe I was never that good to begin with.
Now, I hope to have a different legacy. Yes, I hope my academic contributions are well-regarded. But I am not deluded about their actual impact. No, instead I hope that people will think I was useful. That I helped people. That I contributed something to those needing help with alcoholism and other addictions. That I continued to grow throughout my life. That when I was wrong I admitted it and tried to rectify my errors. That I learned from failure as from success.
I’ll miss Morty. He did right by generations of students. By generations of junior colleagues. A legacy to aspire to. A life to admire. An example to emulate. And it is important, I think, to have a few unreachable goals. People to chase that I know I can never catch. I want to be driven to do more my whole life. Because my natural inclination is to do nothing. To rest. To wait. To slide. I need impossible hurdles to leap. Or I will never strive at all.
Philadelphia Defeated.
Well, my run in the Philadelphia Rock and Roll half marathon is over. BB and I ran the whole thing side by side and crossed the finish line together at just under 2:18. That’s more than 20 minutes faster than our run in Pittsburgh last May. I feel good about it. I’ll write more Tuesday. For now, here’s my finisher medal:
Musings and Anxieties.
I had a great final training run. 6.7 miles, 67 minutes. Dead on 10:01 minutes per mile. Makes me quite happy to be there. I’ll be aiming for a slightly slower pace for the half marathon Sunday. My goal is to get in between a 10:30 and 11:00 min/mi pace. That corresponds to a total time of about 2:25:00, or a little faster. I am excited for the race and I think I’ll be in good shape for it. I’ll post a post-race picture of the medal.
In general, of course, my real fitness goals haven’t changed. Don’t get diabetes. Don’t have a stroke in my late 50s like my dad. Look decent naked. Be able to go hiking and traveling in my 70s and 80s. Stay healthy and physically effective through middle age. Stay mentally sharp. The sorts of things that being physically active and moderately athletic allow a person to do. I’m on course. I’m doing the things that I have to do to get to where I want to be and that feels good.
But I am sitting on some anxiety today too. My mom will be meeting me in Philadelphia for the race. Which means she’ll be meeting BB. Introducing partners to parents is always nerve-wracking. This is no exception. But BB is kind and outgoing. Mom likes me. There’s every reason to think it will go well. But that doesn’t prevent my mind from worrying.
All things considered, all is well. The position description for my promotion is being sent to HR. I should find out hopefully by the end of October if I’m getting promoted. This would be an excellent thing, and even though it would not actually mean much in the way of financial benefits, it would be a remarkably positive development for my ego.
I’m taking Monday off of work and going to New York for a funeral. Then mom and I are meeting several old friends for dinner. And then I come back to ECC and crashing. I expect it to be a good, but full and emotionally tiring weekend. I think the long run will be just the thing I need to make it through. With my new and electrifying partner step-for-step at my side.
Running On – Thoughts on Mediocrity.
Tonight I will run 10K as my last training run for the Philadelphia Rock and Roll Half-Marathon Sunday. This will be my second half-marathon and I’m very excited for it. When I ran Pittsburgh in May, I was not terribly well prepared. The longest run I had done leading up to it was 10 miles. The run was long and slow and difficult, but I did it. I also did it at the cost of a lingering foot “injury” that bothered me much of the early summer. Simple nerve fuckery, nothing serious or overly painful, and since resolved.
This time, I’m quite well prepped, I think. BB and I have been doing long runs every weekend, and I’ve been doing 2 or 3 other runs every week. I’ve run 130ish miles in the past 7 weeks. My longest run, last Saturday, was 11.3 miles. I feel fit for the half, and decidedly better than I was in May. This half should also be easier: Pittsburgh is hilly. Philadelphia is not. The weather should be about the same, I think. I don’t trust forecasts three days out, but such as it is, it’s a good one. As long as it isn’t 80+ and humid at 8am, I’ll be OK.
In some ways, I’m disappointed by where running half-marathons has gotten me. I am still 183 pounds, which is a bit overweight for my height. I am soft through the middle despite two months now also working out at the gym twice a week. I have never been in great shape, and I am not in great shape now. I am forced to conclude that running half-marathons is not that hard. It’s something that a human being in perfectly mediocre shape can accomplish. It’s unexceptional.
I do a lot of crowing about unexceptional things. I’m big on bluster. I exult in papers and grants when they get accepted and funded. But the truth is, I’ve never gotten an exceptional journal to publish me. I’ve never gotten an exceptional grant. I am not professionally exceptional. I’m mediocre. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy being mediocre. I’ve been operating at B+ level since I was six years old. And I’ll stay there, contentedly.
But I want you to think that I’m an A+. I want to do B+ work for A+ credit. I want to do B+ training for A+ results. I want to write B+ papers for A+ journals. And so sometimes, I crow about B+s to try to make people think they’re A+s. Sometimes it works. But then I feel hollow for knowing the truth, and additionally feeling like a liar. Or feeling like I rode purse-strings and coat-tails to a higher perch than I’ve earned.
I am not what I present myself as. Not really. I’m not as good as I want you to believe. And this isn’t Impostor Syndrome, though I have that too. I’m talking about a deliberate, conscious attempt to present myself in a better light than I’ve earned. I don’t work as hard as my bosses think I do. I’m not as accomplished or experienced with respect to research and grants as I think my tweeting and blogging suggests. I have published only 9 papers in journals that shouldn’t be used to line animal cages. I have won only four real grants, of which only three were accepted and completed. None were larger than an R03.
Sometimes, it’s not Impostor Syndrome. Sometimes, we’re just not as good as we wish we were. That’s me. I’m a mediocre engineer and middling scientist. But I’ve found the right place for me. Where my B+ is seen as high performing. I’m happy there. I wish I were the kind of person who knew how to give A+ effort. But I’m not. I never have been. And the same is true with fitness. I run half marathons because they’re easy, not because they’re hard. I can do that, and people seem impressed.
I need that validation. I hunger for social credit. But I also know that my time here is limited. I like being the inspirational figure: I’m an alcoholic and I’m an ex-smoker and I was obese and now I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I’m only sort-of fat and I run miles and miles and isn’t it all so goddamned inspirational? Aren’t you impressed with me? You should be! I’m very impressive!
At some point though, I slide off that pedestal I like to be on. And then I’m just this dude who expects lavish attention for ordinary feats of humanity. And that’s dull, trending towards repugnant. I need to find ways to be me, and be ordinary, and accept that about myself. To relent from my iron-grip throttling of praise and just be a normal person doing normal things among friends. I don’t know how to do that right now. I don’t really know what that looks like or feels like.
It’s a journey that takes me to many ports of call. I’ve been at this one a long time.
What Makes a Scientist?
I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday about “what makes a scientist”. Now, I’ve written here that I’m not really a scientist, and that’s true. I’m an engineer. While I use scientific principles to test hypotheses, my real job is about designing and building computer simulations and using them to make predictions. The scientific process gets entangled there, but I don’t generally, really have to apply academic rigor and scientific reductionism to the work that I do. I’m a holistic engineer, as it were. I look at broad systems through a coarse lens.
However, from the perspective of using repeatable methods to observe, study, and understand the world, and then encapsulating that understanding to be disseminated to others, of course I’m a scientist. I am generating knowledge about human-interactive hybrid dynamic systems and how they behave, how we study them, and how we can intervene in them to make them behave in more useful ways. That’s science.
My friend and I were talking about grants and papers, and my friend asserted that no one who is awful at writing grants and papers can be a “fine scientist”, essentially by definition. At least, not in the modern world’s structure for producing science. Such a person cannot be an effective independent investigator. If you can’t write grants, and you can’t get papers out, then you might be great at designing experiments, taking and interpreting data, and testing hypotheses, but you won’t be able to do much science because you won’t have resources. Without grants you can’t do experiments, without experiments you can’t write papers, without papers, you can’t get grants.
So the ancillary aspects of “science”, the administrative business of lab budgeting and grantsmanship and paper writing are parceled with being a good scientist, de facto even if not philosophically. Some people will lament this, I suppose. But in the system we’ve built, I think it’s true. In order to be a decent scientist, for the most part, you need to be a decent writer of grants and papers. Mostly.
So, what makes a scientist? What’s the definition you use?
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*UPDATE: This is focused on “being a PI”. Grad students, postdocs, technicians, etc., are all obviously scientists.
Infactorium 