Having Your Shit Together.
I’ve had a couple of discussions recently with several people about what it means to have one’s shit together. My new girlfriend told me, about a month ago, about a conversation she had with her coworkers, in which she was describing me to them for the first time. She described me as (presumably among other things) “a healthcare engineer at [MECMC]”. The response she got from her friends? “Oh. So he has his shit together.” Which is nice, but not quite the point, I think. I think understanding this matters to me because the traditional, outcome-oriented model of professional and personal success is not, to me, an indicator of having one’s shit together.
A couple of my conversations have centered around lives in flux. My life was recently in major flux. I have friends going through divorces and trials with mental illness. Friends new to sobriety struggling with the concepts and with taking the steps required for recovery. We are all, constantly, transitioning from one stage of life to another. We are all, constantly, undergoing trials that test us and make us weary. Too many of us face that alone, either because we have no support, or because we don’t want to ask for help.
We are trained to look at outcomes as indicators. If the patient recovers, the intervention was a success. If our grant is funded, we were more deserving than others whose were not. But we know, or we should know, that these things are not so simple. Patients recover all the time with no intervention at all. This is how homeopathy “works” – give the patient nothing wrapped in a fancy package and wait for natural healing or the placebo effect. Fine grants go unfunded. Sometimes crap sneaks though.
We use these proxies because we often can’t tell the mechanism behind what’s actually happening. Some medical interventions really do work, in carefully-designed randomized controlled trials, despite having no known mechanism. We look at people’s outcomes in life: nice home, nice car, nice job, attractive spouse, and we assume that these things mean that they have earned their accomplishments. And for the most part, it’s probably true. They have. But that doesn’t mean that people without those things didn’t work hard, or deserve them.
Because we can’t know people’s motivations. We can’t know their hearts’ desires. We don’t know what drives another person unless we know them, intimately. The things that I value in my life may be utterly different from those that you do, and each of our values may be differently judged by the machine of traditional evaluation of things. But we all, even the most enlightened and modern, judge the people around us according to our own definitions of what is right and good and noble and just. Whether by a traditional moral yardstick or our own alternative metric.
And I’m certainly not immune. I can be as judgmental as anyone. I regularly see couples in MECMC, a man in a t-shirt and shorts with his hands empty. His female partner in full niqab, usually carrying a diaper bag and pushing a stroller. It’s hard for me not to judge them. It looks, to my eyes, misogynistic and cruel and just plainly, wildly unfair and toxic. But it is not my life. And while I want to work for a society where no one is subjected to that (or any lifestyle!) against their will, I also want to live in a society where everyone is free to make their own choices. I cannot understand anyone making that set of choices, but that’s the point: I cannot understand. People needn’t concern themselves with my understanding when making their choices.
So this is a long-winded way of meandering, perhaps, to the point of all this. What does it mean to have one’s shit together? If it isn’t about the outcomes of our lives, and it isn’t about the motivations that drive us? It’s perfectly reasonable to be looking to associate with people who have their shit together. We all want partners who support us and colleagues who advance projects and friends whom we can rely on. How do we find those people?
To me, having my shit together means that I am working daily toward controlling the entropy in my life. Maintaining my sobriety. That’s first. Doing the things that I am contracted to do for work. Being reliable for my friends and my new girlfriend. One of the things I have tried to adhere to for the past five or so years, since sobering up, is a line from the movie Heat: “I say what I mean, and I do what I say.” Obviously, I’m not perfect at that. I’ve failed many times (sometimes hurtfully, sometimes spectacularly) and will many more. But it’s a good principle.
Having one’s shit together means – to me – that despite the outcomes, we work to improve our selves and our surroundings. Despite the fits and starts we all have. Knowing that half the time, the best we can do is tread water. Knowing that sometimes making progress means stepping back to reset. Knowing that to move forward, we must regularly rest. It means keeping up with the requirements of life as best we can in the constantly difficult and trying circumstances. It means acknowledging and respecting the swales and peaks of emotion that attend that.
I most admire the people who make their own choices and follow their own paths while still engaging with the apparatus of society. Who are driven by their own desires, but temper their indulgence. Who are successful at what they care about, and supportive of those who care about different things than they do. Who have the determination to make progress in the face of despair and turmoil. And inside, I think most of us are like that. I’m hopeful. Because I think people are good.
Feeling Isolated.
Am I fitting in? I don’t know. I’m not sure I know how to discern it. We got our new operating plan for the new fiscal year today. MECMC is an academic medical center, so our fiscal year mimics the academic year. i.e., July 1 – June 30. There was, apparently, a massive shakeup in people’s work assignments. I mean, I can tell there was a big shakeup, but it was apparently also unprecedented. I can’t really tell the mood. I’m not good at taking those kinds of temperatures.
I hope I’m fitting in. But I don’t do things that I feel like someone who’s fitting in would do. I don’t eat with my coworkers. The ones I get along with and have conversations with are older than me. I’ve always fit in with the older crowd. People my own age have always been… cooler than me. I don’t know how to be the right kind of social. No one has ever accused me of being cool or socially adept. Every once in a while I’ll be a part of a gathering or group that feels comfortable and I feel like I fit in. I’ll participate and have fun. Those are the times that I usually find out later that I was a total asshole without realizing it.
So at work, I’ve been trying to be low-key and low-profile. This has resulted in my not really getting to know anyone. And people here don’t eat together anyway. Everyone works all the time. I’m not like that. I like to chat and take breaks and have lunch. I can’t concentrate on coding 8 straight hours. I usually have a problem that I can’t solve, something like that. It takes time for it to percolate from my subconscious to my fingertips, where I can turn it into code. And I’m lazy. Always have been.
But I wonder if I’ve made mis-steps that have resulted in my coworkers not really being interested in getting to know me. Have I talked too much about academics? Have I insinuated that an academic calling is “better” somehow than what they do? I know I have a tendency to come off as arrogant. I don’t mean to, truly. But I have a way of submitting my opinion as if it is fact that can seem to some to be insufferable, I know. To others, it comes off as confidence. To many, I think, it comes off as compensating for insecurity, which is probably closest to the truth. I work hard at not doing it. But it’s a habit I formed in childhood that’s easy to fall back into before I’m thinking about it.
I’m working reasonably hard though, and I feel like I’m making basic accomplishments that will speak well of me. But I don’t feel like I’m really connecting with the people. We’ll see. I’m lobbying for a short course in Boston in August. Hopefully several people will be able to go and that’ll be a good chance to meet people in a different context. In the meantime, I’m feeling like I don’t really know anyone here. I have met some AA people. And some work people. But I don’t really do anything with either group outside of meetings and work. I don’t know how to make friends, really.
But things are all right. I’ll make friends. I’m just a little outside of my comfort zone. I know it takes time. Things will grow. I just hope that I can deliver in the environment I’m in. And I’m nervous about it. It’s ok. I’m allowed to be nervous. I just need to let it inspire me, rather than paralyze me.
Twitter is my Google.
I get a decent amount of shit for just asking people on Twitter things I can google. And that’s fine. I’m fond of saying that “Twitter is my Google” when I get it. But there’s a reason I do it beyond the simple desperate grasp at any kind of human contact in this post-personal, hand-sanitized, digital-synthetic world. Google has changed.
It used to be that Google opened windows to the world. The truly great thing about it was how anti-contextual it was. When I sat down and started googling, I never knew where I’d end up, what I’d find. It brought the world to my computer screen, vivid and arresting and strange. Fascinating glimpses at the broad sweep of human experience.
That’s just not true anymore. The ad-revenue driven model, and constant need to maximize receipts, has made Google focus on search results likely to result in me spending money at a local, or internet, business. It stores what I search for, and as much other information about me as it can, and uses that information to contextualize my search results to places that I can engage in commerce. And it is handsomely paid to do so.
And I don’t really have a problem with that. Google is welcome to develop whatever business model they like; I’m not telling them to change. But it means that I enjoy using their service less. I don’t web-surf to find out where I can spend money. Well, not very much. Sometimes I surf looking for a retail outlet, or importer. Mostly, when I am searching, I’m searching to learn about the world.
But Google has gradually replaced the wilds of the internet that I used to find in my searches with local businesses and routine results that don’t really inform me. My google-world (the first page of my search results) has contracted to advertisements and a few results in downtown ECC. It’s extra work to go find the exciting, novel, thrilling things out there. As the internet has become successfully commercialized, its wonder has diminished.
So, yes. Twitter is my Google. I have access to a huge variety of brilliant, individually contextualized actual human beings. With ideas and opinions and interests and access to the whole world in alarmingly unpredictable ways. People with experience and opinion who are not trying to tell me what I want to hear in hopes of me giving them money. Sometimes, I ask, and I don’t get anything back. That’s OK too. It spurs me to ask more interesting questions.
When I ask a question of Google, I get simple, algorithmic, hygienic, and standardized results with a clear purpose that is not my purpose. When I ask a question of the throng on Twitter, I have no idea what I’ll get. But I know it won’t be slickly commercial and stultifying. And I know that I am connecting with people, instead of being fed milquetoast by a machine.
My Weekend, with Thoughts on Aging.
This weekend I went to Providence for a friend’s 40th birthday party, and brought my new girlfriend. He and his wife just had a baby – their first – and the four-week-old girl is an amazingly cute little thing. I’m not especially drawn to the idea of being a parent myself, but I like babies and children. I held her some, and fed her. I have young nieces and a nephew that I’ve spent some time with as very young children, and I have half-brothers much younger than me that I sort of think of as nephews. So I’ve been around little kids a decent amount in my life for someone without children.
I have fairly well-developed memories of my childhood. I’ve always had a good memory, and I stopped drinking prior to doing too much damage to it. I’ve never been good with names, but I have a good aural memory, and I can recall events in my life going back to a very, very early age. Sometimes that’s nice. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. Early childhood can be full of fear and disorientation, and pains are new and all the more shocking for it. I recall vividly the sense-memory of agonizing new experiences that would become commonplace and therefore unremarkable.
I’m fortunate to be, right now, in the big middle of my life. Perhaps my middle should have been longer. Perhaps it should’ve started when I was 22 instead of 33. But I drank those years. But I should not dismiss them either. They were not entirely lost or wasted. I remember them. I made many bad decisions, but I also had many wonderful experiences. I traveled the world, and studied a lot of mathematics. I laid a cracked and shoddy foundation for the rest of my life during those years. But after I sobered up, I filled in a lot of the crevices. It’s still never going to support a great edifice. But I think I can build a home on it.
I am nearly 39 years old. And I feel very confident saying that I am, today, much younger than I was five-and-a-half years ago. Thinner, fitter, stronger, freer. Doing work that matters, I hope. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I take regular care of my mental health. I associate with people in meaningful ways. I am social. I remember it occurring to me, a few years ago, just what a dreadful and damning verdict “anti-social” is. As a teenager, we took it as a badge of honor, being anti-social. That it meant we weren’t blindly following the rules, stupidly conforming.
But of course, I wasn’t actually anti-social as a teenager in any meaningful way. I just wasn’t popular. My friends and I were compensating for our inability to fit in with the popular crowd by latching on to a buzzword that we thought made us special. We were, essentially, posers. We were just posing at a different standard, and one we didn’t understand. And in fact, I wasn’t even meaningfully faux-anti-social. I was a good kid, with pretty good grades, who had a bunch of misfit friends who were good kids with pretty good grades. I wanted desperately to be popular and couldn’t make it work. I still can’t.
I have communities that I participate in. I enjoy it, for the most part. I make social mistakes and have to walk things back. I feel uncomfortable and say the wrong things. Sometimes, I say the wrong thing on purpose. At the party there was a wine distributor. He was talking about his product, and I was listening politely. He was a bit bombastic, but I am decidedly guilty of that myself. He offered me some wine and I said, “No, thanks.” Then he pestered me about drinking, asking me, “What’s your poison? Liquor? Beer?”
I’ve never been in that situation. In more than five years, whenever I said, “No, thanks,” that was the end of it. This guy hounded me. He was really interested in what I drank. So I looked him straight in the eye and said: “I’m an alcoholic.” That stopped him dead. But he didn’t take it badly. And I didn’t say it angrily, or anything. Just a simple, straightforward statement that very clearly communicated that I didn’t have anything to contribute here.
Now that I’m in the middle of my life, I feel useful and fulfilled in ways that I wasn’t aware were possible. Making a contribution is incredibly meaningful. I’m unsure, precisely, how to perform in my new job in exactly the right way to be considered valuable. But I believe that if I develop my simulations, and publish a few papers, and maybe win a few small grants, I’ll be in pretty good shape. I’ve done well in my professional career managing people’s expectations of me and my work, and delivering what I say I will. Not perfectly, but reasonably.
Sometimes, looking at my career and my planning for the future, I almost feel like I’m in a race to be done. How do I get from here to retirement to death with everything handled? I need to take more time to stop and enjoy myself as I am now. And I’m trying. A new relationship always helps with that. Moments spent in repose with a companion are always slow and redolent with presence. Existing in the present tense is all too brief for me. I tend to process toward the future. But it is wonderful in the brief moments I can attain it.
AA’s program is about being centered in the moment. Existing. Experiencing. Living for today. Today I don’t drink. And that’s a wonderful way to manage my sobriety. It works for me. But one can’t live one’s whole life precisely in the moment. We have to plan, to prepare. To do today what I can to build towards tomorrow. Or we would never accomplish anything, and that’s not being of value to others, not making use of one’s gifts.
Aging is inevitable. But I don’t need to meekly surrender to decrepitude the way my father did. As I said above, I am younger than I was five years ago. I am younger than I was ten years ago. And if I keep on how I am going now, and I have just a bit of luck, I believe I can be youthful for a long time. Grateful in my body for the life I’ve been allowed to return to, from a wretched prison of addiction and morbidity. The world opens its doors, I have found, when I have the courage to knock at them.
Fellowship Among the Reclaimed.
I am starting to really feel at home in my Wednesday night men’s group. There is a core group of five or six men who are consistently there, and have long-term sobriety. We regularly go out to eat after the meeting. I’m really beginning to connect with the men and feel comfortable among them. It takes time. It takes time for me to feel settled and able to open up. It takes time for a group of men who all know each other to accept a new person into their group.
Yesterday the topic of discussion was those cultural and city events like “Taste of ECC” where people can go and sample beers from local microbreweries and restaurants and have fun getting sloshed outside on a gorgeous spring day, etc.. Some of the guys really miss that. I’m ambivalent. I don’t like those crowds, and I didn’t when I was a drinker. I ended up feeling frustrated that I couldn’t really get enough and then had to get home to where I could drink the way I wanted to.
I ended up sharing that I kinda stopped drinking beer long before I stopped drinking. It just didn’t get me anywhere fast enough. Sure, I drank beer at the baseball game, or whatever. But I couldn’t get drunk fast enough on beer. I needed wine or liquor for that. I liked good beer. A lot. But the time came that I was mostly choosing beers for their alcohol content, not their flavor.
I think one of the really crucial reasons that AA works is that it’s a social system. There’s good evidence that social groups have powerful influences, good or bad, on the individuals in the group. Smoking[1], Fitness[2], and many other things are well known to respond to the social environments that people inhabit. Being among a group of men with long-term sobriety helps reinforce the things about sobriety that I love. It helps provide me with accountability. And part of that is the deep shame and horror I know I would feel if I were to drink and have to confess it to them. I am willing to do a lot in order not to feel that. Luckily, all I have to do is not drink.
My commitment to AA is bolstered by AA’s commitment to me. It’s bijective and adaptive. As my needs change, the things I get from AA change too. As my abilities change, what I give back evolves. I have to recognize that I am now one of the men who is approaching “long-term sobriety”. I have much to offer new people. I have much to offer other people who have more time in the program too. I can draw from a wealth of experiences I’ve had in sobriety to offer aid to people in many different stages of the program, and life.
One of the promises in AA is that we will come to see how our experience can benefit others. What a promise! As drinkers, we couldn’t care less how anything we did could benefit anyone. We cared about getting more liquor, and about knocking down the impediments to our inebriation. The promise that I will see how my experience can be of value contains within it the implicit promise that I will value being of benefit to others. And I do.
AA holds many promises. They’ve essentially all come true for me. Some days more than others. But this I know: I have become a member of the fellowship of the reclaimed. I am not always right. I am not always good, even. But I am sober. And I am working to be a better man. And that by itself is a small kind of miracle.
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[1]Ross L, Thomsen BL, Boesen SH, Frederiksen K, Lund R, Munk C, Dalton SO, Bidstrup PE, Kjær SK, Tjønneland A, Johansen C. Social relations and smoking abstinence among ever-smokers: A report from two large population-based Danish cohort studies. Scand J Public Health. 2013 Apr 10. [Epub ahead of print]
[2]Warner LM, Ziegelmann JP, Schüz B, Wurm S, Schwarzer R. Synergistic effect of social support and self-efficacy on physical exercise in older adults. J Aging Phys Act. 2011 Jul;19(3):249-61.
A Peculiar Glowing Sensation.
So, I’ve begun seeing someone. I’m not going to go into any great detail here about the actual relationship. Even on a confessional blog of this sort, there are private matters. But I think it’s appropriate to catalog my emotions and sensations. The beginning of a relationship is bewildering. I fluctuate between giddiness and excitement and a strange terrible fear that it’s all going to end in seconds, before it even gets going. Between thrill and terror.
My general fear when dating, these days, has been that it will be discovered that I am an alcoholic too soon. Before a woman has gotten to know me at all. That she’ll fasten her mind to that fact and abandon any attempts to get to know me; the me that is here not alongside my alcoholism, not despite it, but because of it. The grown-up, responsible, free and excited-to-be-alive me that inhabits this poor flesh because I have addressed my disease. But with this woman, that isn’t an issue. She is already well acquainted with alcoholism (though she is not an alcoholic). My sobriety is not a factor for her.
She is an academic. Her field is a long ways from mine, and I frankly don’t understand it when she talks about her work. But she’s excited by it, and it’s interesting to hear the plain-language version of her research. She’s also into fitness, which is good for me. We’ve been running together some. I was afraid that I wouldn’t like running with a partner. Matching speeds seemed like it would be difficult. But she runs at a similar pace to me. I can’t keep up with her on a short tempo run, but when we go out for 3-6 miles, it feels like we set the same pace. My fear, rooted in my inability to connect on a fitness-level with my ex-wife, was misplaced. She cooks amazingly and appreciates my music. She’s funny and also laughs at my jokes. We seem to enjoy similar things.
Because it’s new and fresh and strange, I’ve been skipping my Sunday meeting to see her. I need to not do that too much. And I’ve talked with her about it. She’s totally understanding. She gets that my sobriety has to be well-maintained. If I don’t do that, there’s little point in trying to have a relationship. Anything that comes before my sobriety I am going to lose.
So. I am seeing a lovely young woman. She’s beautiful and brilliant. It’s been going on about a month. I’m excited. My old fears of not being good enough surface regularly and vehemently. What if she discovers what I’m really like? What if she doesn’t? What if I’m already being the me I want to be, and she likes that person? What then? What now? What if this is real the way it feels real?
I am finding myself drowning in riches of the spirit. My career is apparently flourishing. I have an exciting romance. I love the city I have newly established myself in. I am sober and reasonably sane. I have done no deeds that deserve this. I doubt such deeds exist. But I am working hard to earn the things that I already seem to have. Whatever it is, out there, that seems to be blessing me, I shall endeavor to be worthy of.
The Ethics of Expenditure.
A couple of conversations about money have interested me lately. The first was a twitter conversation I had with @sciliz, and the second is going on in the comments over at Doc Becca’s place. Essentially, both conversations were about the ethics of spending more money than is required on things like food and clothing. It’s not something I’ve ever put an extraordinary amount of thought into. But it will surprise no one who knows me that I am one of the people who spends more than is necessary on clothes and food.
I come from privilege. There’s no question about that. And from more privilege than is already inherent in being a white, male American. My family is one of reasonable means, which allowed me to graduate from school without debt. I have had just about every advantage in life that one can have. I try to be conscious about that. I try to be magnanimous. I try to be aware of how my fortunes have colored my perceptions. And I’ve traveled to some of the poorest places on earth, to gain perspective. Recognizing and doing those things, I hope, allows me to understand the world better than isolating myself in the gilded ivory tower.
But I cannot agree with the attitude that spending more than is necessary on staples is unethical. In fact, I think it many cases it may be preferable to spending money on cheaply made, mass-produced goods. Yes, it represents privilege. But it also represents redistribution. When a person buys a $1,000 suit jacket (as was the example in my conversation on twitter), that money doesn’t evaporate. The salespeople are usually commissioned. The clothes are generally made by artisans with good jobs. When a person buys a $45 suit jacket from Walmart, it’s probably made in a sweatshop in China or Bangladesh. The salespeople make minimum wage, usually without benefits, certainly without commission.
Many people truly benefit from the sale of a high-end product. Cheaply-made, mass-produced products support a system of exploitation and extraction that primarily benefits people like the Waltons.
Now, there’s a lot of real estate between those extremes. And $1,000 suit jacket doesn’t even represent an extreme! And yes, there’s certainly a bit of justification. But I don’t believe that people need to apologize for spending the money they earn. The idea that the only ethical things to do with money are to subsist, prepare for emergencies, and give it away is absurd I think. There is nothing wrong with accepting what people will pay to do your job, even if it is a lot. There is nothing wrong with spending your income so long as you are prudent with your reserves.
And I do believe a bit in noblesse oblige. People who’ve been fortunate enough to find themselves with high incomes and large pots of wealth certainly do have an obligation to be charitable. The great charitable foundations set up by famous families are important, but more important is that individuals are charitable with the people in their lives. We all need to be generous with time and treasure as we can.
But the ethics of how we choose to spend our money is far more complex than “expensive things are bad and cheap things are good.” Ideally, we could know how the products we buy are made, and support those that make reasonable profits while paying their workers well. That have good corporate consciences and do good in their communities. But there’s often no way to tell what those things are. I propose we are guided by our own consciences. And that we recognize that how others choose to comport themselves financially may not be malicious or thoughtless, but the result of a calculus that is simply different from our own, not less moral.
Much Needed Break.
I don’t know about you, loyal readership, but I am in dire need of the upcoming three-day weekend. Work has been good, but I’m deeply unfocused today. As I was the latter half of yesterday. I’m having trouble not counting my grant-chickens. I need to relax and let things go and be at ease. One of the things that we are striving for, in AA, almost universally, is serenity. I’m not a huge fan of the word, but I understand and hunger after the concept. I long to feel at ease, peaceful. Tranquil. Maybe that’s the word. I am seeking emotional tranquility.
I write that with the same fingers that wrote about loving the rollercoaster of grant submission. It’s complicated, I guess. But emotional tranquility does not, I think, preclude highs and lows. It means that I understand and accept them, as part of life, part of being, without them running away with me. Without distress. Emotional slopes are understandable and inevitable. Emotional crises, I think, are not. A well-prepared mind and heart can manage through the swales of trial without panic and frantic grasping.
I have simple plans of seeing friends and spending time engaging in fitness activities and maybe going to the zoo. I have a dinner date planned too, at a restaurant near my apartment that I haven’t tried yet, but which has an excellent reputation. Mostly, I’m just looking forward to the time. It’s likely to be cool and rainy in ECC. It’ll be good to spend time indoors.
Here at MECMC, I get fewer vacations than I did at my old position. We only get 7 holidays instead of 10. So, fewer three-day weekends. Because of how Christmas and Independence Day fall, it’s only 4 this year. The difference between 4 three-day weekends and 7 three-day weekends is huge, from a rejuvenation point of view. For me, a three-day weekend is an incredible luxurious feeling. And it’s deeply needed to restore my mental focus.
So, I asked my boss if I could take July 5th off. I don’t like taking time my first year, but this is only one day. And it gives me a four-day break. I won’t take a real vacation until I’ve been here a year or so. But a day here or there around a holiday to get a 4 day weekend? I think I can do that. I need to do that. I won’t be much good to anyone if I don’t make time for myself. People in academia talk a lot about work/life balance. Well, this is mine. I need time off. I need to travel. I need to see the people I care about deeply. So that’s what I’ll do. This weekend. And in July.
Submitted.
Well, my grant is away. It should be a short turnaround. It was a miniscule application, one page including the budget. And the process for negotiating MECMC’s sponsored projects gateway for grant submissions was confusing. But I think I got it done correctly. I really do enjoy the thrill of submitting a grant. It’s a little like jumping out of an airplane. Exciting, thrilling, and if it goes even the slightest bit wrong, you die. Well, not exactly. But you get the point. Especially now that I don’t have to depend on grant money to maintain my position, I’m relived of the anxiety associated with grant submission, but still feel the excitement. Of course, if it isn’t funded, I’ll have the same crushing disappointment. But not the existential fear for my job.
And once again, the online world gave me excellent support, with two of my twitter science friends performing external review on the grant, giving me recommendations for improvement. I think it’s a strong application, given the restrictions on the application format. I’m excited. My department is going to have a strange awakening when they realize that the funds come to the research department and that I have control over them. I’ll end up transferring a lot of the money to them of course, for assets they own, but as PI, I’ll have the purse strings. I’m not entirely sure how they’ll respond to that. They’ve never worked with research before.
But I’m not worried. And I’ll play ball. Providing funds to my department will be an excellent feather in my cap, and come with decided perks for me. I somehow doubt I’ll have to spend my (very) little slush fund on my first conference, for example, if I win this grant. But I also need to temper my expectations. Even an opportunity like this one, with limited eligibility and a small enough budget to make many of the eligible researchers unlikely to pursue it, funding is very competitive. The most likely outcome is that I will not receive the award. After all, I don’t have any idea how many applications they’ll receive or how many awards they’re making.
I’m just thrilled to be where I am. I just submitted a grant as PI at a seriously major institution of health and research. I don’t know how I got to be where I am. I don’t know that I deserve it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But I’m grateful for the opportunity, and intend to do as well as I can with it.
Productivity.
I feel very productive today. I finished my tiny grant (not terribly difficult when it’s only one page), and will be submitting it by Friday. It’s kind of an open-ended idea, but that’s to be expected for a pilot grant. We are trying to build the groundwork for a bigger submission in the future. Or at least, we’re trying to convince the funding agency that we’re going to be laying the groundwork for a bigger submission later. I’m not sure that’s what we’re actually doing, because I’m not sure my department is willing to commit to the kind of investment of time and trouble I’d need to make in order to write a major NIH or AHRQ grant.
But the people who administer the funds for this grant are aware of me, and still seem to think of me as a hotshot new guy. The funding is institutional money from one of MECMC’s partner universities. And with any luck, they’ll want to give me some funding and opportunity before I reveal that I’m an idiot. And of course, I’d love to be developing ideas for grant submissions. And writing grants. As long as my job doesn’t depend on their success. I don’t want to talk myself back into a soft-money position.
And I also got my first protocol at MECMC through the IRB. Well, actually, I didn’t write a protocol. I wrote a tiny blurb about what I was essentially doing, and how I only used deidentified data, and they agreed that under the rules it does not constitute human subjects research. This gives me carte blanche to simulate and then publish the results. That’s very exciting. I am now permitted, sans restriction, to do what I came to MECMC to do: create simulations, improve health care delivery processes, and publish the results.
I’m a happy engineer, my fellow denizens of the web. And a happy scientist.
Infactorium 