Infirmity.
My grant is with my grants manager for round two of corrections and minor changes. It’s annoying to have her come back with: “The file named ‘filename01.pdf’ should be named ‘filename_01.pdf’.” Yeah? Then fucking change it. You’re the administrator. That’s administration. But oh well. It’s done. She says the second round looks good. We’re going to submit it to eRA Commons today. And then I can forget about many things for a long time. I am sick sick. I stayed home in the afternoon yesterday, and now I’m going back home to sleep, and then watch more Downton Abbey, which is awesome.
Good night.
Putting Away the Grant.
My grant is almost done. It’s not nearly as good as it would have been if I’d been invested in staying where I am, instead of being invested in getting the hell out for the last 4 months. But it’s not terrible, and it’s got two major things going for it. The first is that I was informed by my PO that the funding agency has been looking for it. They’re eager to see me submit based on my pilot study, which was essentially an R03eq. It’s nice to know that they’ve been eager to see the results of my pilot and are hopeful about continuing to fund my ideas. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That attitude will last exactly until they read the first sentence of my abstract. The new grant needs to be strong to be funded.
The sec0nd reason is that it’s small. Yes, I’m writing an R01eq. But I’m writing it for three years and $500K. I’ve been told by many scientists on twitter that I’m insane for doing that. However, my PO says that that will actually position me very strongly. I don’t know about the NSF or NIH. But my funding agency is looking at any way they can to curtail costs and increase the number of awards they make. Investigators who pad the budgets are getting dinged. My last grant was at the full 4 year, $1.1M max, and the expense was commented upon negatively by reviewers.
So, I have a lean, inexpensive, shorter-term grant application that is specifically anticipated by the funding agency based on my prior work. That’s all hopeful. But the truth is, I don’t expect it to be funded on first submission (even though my pilot study was.). I expect it to be reasonably scored and get constructive, directed comments which will allow me to resubmit a fundable A1. Which I don’t think I have time for. And in the meantime, I just hope like hell that PECMC offers me a post.
The System of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Last night I was talking to a friend who’s been sober about 7 and a half months. She’s gotten a new sponsor, who seems really fantastic. She also has been talking to a younger woman, who had about 30 days and then relapsed, despite the fact that the young woman is under eviction proceedings and about to lose her job. We’re alcoholics, after all. Drinking is what we do. Even at the worst possible time. The young woman has called my friend again, and appears to be planning to come back to a meeting.
I told my friend: “Don’t try to save her. Just be there when she wants it enough to do the work. Help her if you can, but you can’t save this girl.” That’s sad, but it’s true. We cannot save anyone from this disease. We can only be there when they’re ready to change. People are on their own journeys. When I said those things to my friend, she replied: “That’s exactly what my sponsor told me.”
Of course it was. I’d known it would be. I’ve never met my friend’s sponsor. And she has many more years of sobriety than I do. And lives in a different city. But I knew that she’d give almost exactly the same advice and counsel as I was giving. Because anyone who’s been in recovery for any length of time knows it. We learn it from each other, and we see it for ourselves. New people come in. They seem to get it. Then they drink. People chronically relapse. People die. People commit suicide.
The great tragedy of addiction is that no one can be saved from it. People can be prevented from drinking, or using. But that’s not saved from addiction. That’s simply being shunted into a different kind of prison. Recovery comes from willingness to abandon one’s self. Recognition that our addiction has defeated us, and then the honesty and open-mindedness to embrace a new path. A path that confronts our pain and shame and fear head on, tirelessly, while surrendering to the powerlessness that we exhibit in the face of the substances that control us.
You will hear essentially this same advice from almost every member of AA who has more than a year or two of sobriety under their belt, and most of those with less than that. You can’t save anyone. You can help those who are willing to surrender. You can’t make someone take recovery seriously. They will get it or they won’t.
I am powerless over alcohol. When I consume it, I lose the ability, immediately, to regulate how much or how often I drink. And I am powerless over how others consume alcohol as well. My sponsee isn’t drinking. But he’s also not writing his step-work. He’s working. That’s all very, very good. But I have no idea if he’ll achieve sustained remission from alcoholism or not. I hope he will, and I’ll help him do it, if he’s willing. But I can’t make it happen.
But the system of Alcoholics Anonymous is powerful. Millions of us stand here, ready, able. Each with our own take on recovery, but well rooted on the collective wisdom of our powerlessness. And in the surrender that gives us all such incredible strength. Alone, I am a useless, miserable drunk. As a node in the network of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am part of a fabric of recovery that envelops the world. We are the net that catches you, when everything else has failed.
A Thorough Recapitulation.
OK. So. I write this still vibrating a bit from what I feel was a very successful day of interviews along with my job talk. But I’ll try to write it in a way that might be of service to people who are trying to do similar things in the future. What with this whole newfangled societal-engagement-through-the-Internet-and-social-responsibility thing that I’ve gotten hooked into on twitter. The trip was absolutely whirlwind. I flew out Tuesday evening, which became Tuesday night because my plane was delayed almost three hours because of weather in ECC. Then I got there and was told by the hotel that I would be paying for the room, not PECMC. I sent an email to HR there, and they stormed the castle. There’s a line item on my credit card I’m told will be coming off.
So I got in way to late to meet the friends I’d set up dinner plans with. So I went to the hotel bar and had a burger and listened to a surprisingly good mash-up of “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Stayin’ Alive”. Then I had cookies and fell into a fitful sleep, awaking every other hour.
I got up in the morning, acquired coffee, killed a couple of hours looking at my talk and generally being stressed, making a few last-minute changes, and then took a cab to PECMC. The cab driver was chatty and pleasant. Had good things to say about ECC, and PECMC. In fact, I haven’t heard a single negative word about PECMC, from anyone. Every single person, who works there, or who lives in ECC, or who just knows the reputation of the institution, that I’ve talked to has said some variation of: “PECMC is a first class organization and a great place to work and research.” I’m just spectacularly excited about them.
So I got there about 20 minutes early, and sat in the lobby nervous. I felt like I was having a bad hair day. But I was dressed well. My mother taught me to always own one really nice suit, and good shoes, and a nice overcoat. “There are times when you want to be able to walk in knowing that you’ll be the best-dressed person in the room.” I did. And I was. There is a kind of confidence I’ve found that comes in professional situations from being elegantly but conservatively dressed, and especially being in a jacket when everyone else is in shirt-sleeves. The uniform says that I’m in command of the situation. Like, if we walked outside and society had collapsed into cannibalism and plague-ridden biker gangs were rounding up the weak to work in the meth-labs, I’d be the obvious pick to lead the small band of protagonists to the last remaining civilized Island Paradise (or Canada). Like that.
I met with my contact and her colleague. An RN-administrator in the quality improvement team. They sat me down in a starkly bare office that was part of a big move they’re in the process of completing. We talked comfortably and collegially for a full hour. They wanted to know about me, what I do, how I do it. I wanted to know if they understood the kind of effort that goes in to health care simulations and were prepared to make that kind of investment of time and resources. They’re already engaged in a lot of simulation work, but they don’t have experts who know how to write the code or manage the projects. So there’s a backlog of work essentially waiting for me.
The next interview was a lunch interview with their project manager team. Three young (late 20s to early 30s, it seemed), very bright, very engaged people who seemed really excited about the prospect of having someone who’s an expert in this stuff in part so that they could stop doing it. They’re project managers. Not engineers. But they struck me as good, competent, excited project managers.
After that, it was time for my talk. We walked across the huge, glorious campus with shiny glass and elegant brick and stone buildings to a lecture room, where we tried to attach my laptop to their system but it didn’t work. So I started my lecture from my flash drive (Prepare! I also had it on a CD, and I had emailed it to myself. The last of those ideas was taken from a twitterer.). I was disappointed because that meant that I could only show one of my simulations, rather than both. But they had me start, and then their IT person came and fixed the problem, silently and quickly, during my talk, and then seamlessly switched me over to the laptop so I could give the entire talk. It’s how a classy organization works. At my current place, that would have required scheduling a work order that would have taken a good three weeks.
My talk came fluidly and easily. There were several questions and I was pleased to hit it right at 53 minutes or so, to give time for questions without leaving too much time. I’d given big pieces of it before, but this was new in its conceptual whole. And my next interviewer, their director of operations, asked me: “You’ve given that talk before right?” When I indicated that it had been specially tailored to this event, she seemed impressed. She has a background in operations research from her undergraduate days. So she knew enough about the field to know that I knew what I was talking about. It was a good a productive interview that felt like it had a lot of camaraderie built-in. She asked me when I could start.
Which of course, they’ll ask most people. But it felt good. It was probably not a question they’d ask of someone who was busy bombing their interviews and talks. She then escorted me to the CMO. I expected him to be a little intimidating. He wasn’t. He was friendly, and spent the first 10-15 minutes of our scheduled 30 talking about how he was really excited to meet me, and that while he hadn’t “dived in” to my CV, he’d been pleased with it at first glance. He asked me about my side-line work with ECU, and told me that that wouldn’t necessarily have to end.
He wanted to make sure that I knew how to use other tools than just simulation to approach problems. He had an undergraduate engineering background as well. He seemed pleased when I told him that simulation is a good hammer, but not everything is a nail. There are other tools that I’m well versed in that can be used for other types of problems not necessarily amenable to simulation. He asked me if I had any questions, and I said that all of my questions had really ben answered already, but that I knew that new ones would come up as time went by. He gave me his card and told me to contact him personally if they did, including questions about living in ECC. I also mentioned obliquely that ECU is trying to recruit me as well.
Finally, I met again for wrap-up with my initial contact there. We sat down for about twenty minutes and had a casual conversation about what it would be like and when I might be able to start. I asked about vacation and she said: “It’s complicated but works out to about 5 weeks.” I said: “Oh! We’re done then, I’m happy. No need to negotiate over that.” Then I asked about salary and she said a big number. I said that if that offer was on the table, I’d take it today. She told me that she’d need to talk to several people and that it would take 2-3 weeks.
I hate waiting. But I feel reasonably confident. I think there’s a better than 50/50 chance that I’m offered this job. And if I am offered it, and the offer is basically what I’ve been led to believe it will be, I will take it in a heartbeat. A rapid, flushed, excited, grateful heartbeat. I am sober, sane, healthy and in the prime of my life. This is a good place to be. I know that I impressed the people I presented to and interviewed with. Now I wait. And hope. And recognize that whatever happens, I’ll be ok.
Triumph!
I’ll write much more tomorrow. But all the interviews went really well. The final bigwig, who’d watched my talk, spent about 15 of the 30 minutes scheduled for our interview telling me how awesome I am and what a great talk I gave before asking me a single question.
I was told it’ll be about 2-3 weeks before they make a formal decision. But more than one person asked when I could start (mid to late February, I told them.), and the final wrap up interview included a discussion of money which would represent a substantial raise. Though all of that, I’m sure, would be eaten up in higher living costs.
All in all, I feel like everything went absurdly well, and I will be both surprised and disappointed if I don’t get an offer. PECMC is beyond gorgeous. The people were bright and engaged. They care about what I do and have a backlog of work that I could begin on immediately.
I want this really badly. And I think, hope, I’m going to get it.
Enroute!
I am airborne. On my way to ECC (East Coast City) to interview at PECMC (Prestigious East Coast Medical Center) for a position which remains somewhat vaguely defined. But it’s being called “Improvement Specialist, Discrete Event Simulation Developer”.
I am nervous. I am giddy. I know how to do these things. I lecture well, and I practiced this one. The level of support I’ve gotten from the scientific community over on twitter has been wonderful. Thank you to all of you.
I’ll sleep tonight. I always do. I don’t have trouble sleeping before big events. The trip, once again, has been harrying. The plane was delayed 2.5 hours by inclemency in ECC. Do I’m missing the dinner I had planned with friends. Which makes me sad. But I will probably get to meet them tomorrow after my interview.
Life is exciting, people. I really, really want this job. I’ll invest my whole self in my interview. Focus outward. Competence. Nuance. Passion. I’ve got this. I can do this.
All the Things?
I have a lot on my plate right now. First, looming up like a big thing that looms is my job interview at PECMC. I am nervous as hell. In fact, I don’t recall ever being so nervous about an interview. Now, I’m not worried about being nervous. My nerves for things like this tend to spike immediately before showtime (so, like 10:58 am Wednesday), and then utterly vanish as the time for the event comes. Once I am in the situation, giving a talk or being interviewed, my nerves turn off and I am able to focus on what I’m doing with a clear, lucid intensity. I do my best work under intense pressure. Of course, I can’t sustain that for any period of time, but for a few hours on the day of, even a few days, I can do things which looked impossible to me only moments before.
So I’m nervous about having four hours of interviews and giving an hour talk. Really nervous. But I’ve done it before (My original exploratory visit with ECU back in 2009 – which led to open-ended paid work and an academic appointment of which I’m very proud – was eight hours and included giving the same talk to different groups of people about 6 times.). But nervousness fades, and then I go collapse. Sadly, I will not be able to just collapse when this interview is over, I’ll have to fly home in the evening. But I’ll be ok. I will need to sit on the floor and rock back and forth and cry. Especially if it goes really well. If it’s a disaster, the grapes will sour fast.
Also on my plate right now is finishing up my R01eq. It’s not as good as it would have been if I were not in fear for my position and fervidly looking elsewhere. That’s not how I work, usually. I do my best work under pressure, yes, but not under existential pressure. “Do this fast and well or you’ll be fired” does not motivate me. It makes me want to work elsewhere. And it fills me with bitterness and anger at the administration, which makes me want to start bridge-fires. And I have ideas about glorious conflagrations as I fiddle my way to a new place*.
*This should all be read metaphorically. I will not be starting any actual fires.
Because the chances of getting funded on a first try is so minimal, and because I’ve been so distracted about looking for other jobs, this grant is not, frankly, my best work. It’s not terrible. It’s a reasonable effort, but there are definitely holes in it. However, I feel that there is almost no chance it will be triaged (haven’t had a grant triaged in years). So hopefully, I’ll get a constructive review and then if I need to resubmit – if I don’t have another position – I’ll be guided by reviewer comments. It’s not the best plan for getting funded. But it’s not the worst either. My nightmare scenario, of course, is that I leave with the grant under review, and then it hits, which would eliminate my need to have looked for a new job in the first place. But the fact is, as much as I like the research I’m doing here, I hate the support environment. A new job is very, very appealing. And, frankly, it would be absolutely wonderful to have these people not be able to accept a grant because they wouldn’t support their only productive researchers. Bye bye, three-quarters of a million dollars!
I also have a poster to make. And a grant final report to submit. I was going to write about those too, but UGH.
I have tomorrow and Wednesday off work. My interviews start at 11am EST Wednesday. They’ll be over around 4pm EST. I’ll try to put up tweets during bathroom breaks about how things are going. If you have my phone number, please don’t call or text during that time period, in case I stupidly forget to turn off my ringer. I have a lot to write about, and no energy to do it right now. I have the nerves of all the things. But I will do all the things. Right after I drink all the coffee.
Prisons, Institutions, and Graveyards.
A friend still new to the program shared with me today that she spoke at a rehab. I know next to nothing about it, of course, except that it wasn’t a fuzzy-slipper sort of a rehab. It was a paper-trousers sort of a rehab. I’ve been to a meeting at one of those. There’s a half-way house and rehab here in St. Louis run by a man who was instrumental in helping me get sober. Helped me see that there was a light somewhere on the other side of the dark place I was in. That I had some kind of hope. That people who drank like I did could recover.
The title of this post is slightly modified from a phrase commonly used in AA: “jails, institutions, or death.” These are our options, usually, when we start to seriously look at recovery. AA had done a miraculous job of raising the bottom, or as my friend likes to put it, giving us a soft landing. But still, we are inevitably in dire circumstances when we finally reach out to honestly seek recovery. When we are willing to do whatever must be done to change the way we’re living our lives.
I’ve been to jail. I was arrested for driving intoxicated. I’ve been to an institution. It was a glorious, expensive, and luxurious institution. But make no mistake. It was a place for people who have lost the ability to act as responsible members of society. A place for persons who have abandoned themselves to addiction, but remained in possession of some kind of monetary privilege. I am convinced that the last place for me, the place I will go to next, as an active alcoholic, is the grave.
I am healthy, today. I am fit. I do not smoke or drink. But I am four inches from the grave. Yesterday, as I drove around running errands for my upcoming job interview, I passed a store called the “Wine and Cheese Place.” I used to go there a lot. I bought expensive wine, and expensive cheese. I imagined myself a gourmand. A connoisseur. I was a drunk. Later, I would buy 1.75 liter plastic bottles of vodka and hide them in the linen closets.
As I drove past, my foot twitched for the brake. “Why not go in and buy some cheese or sausage?” I allowed myself to think. I would have been there to look at the wines and the new artisanal beers and the elegantly bottled spirits I like to imagine I would drink if I were normal and sophisticated. It wouldn’t even take a whole afternoon before I’d be back where I was, dying in a rocks glass.
Four inches. Four inches is the distance from my accelerator to my brake. The time it takes my foot to release, shift, and engage. A split second. That’s the time, the distance, that separates me from a miserable, alcoholic death. From prison or institutions or a graveyard. Those four inches are the whole battlefield.
But I don’t fight these battles anymore. A split second is plenty of time for me. Plenty of time to arrest my involuntary response and engage my mind. Four inches is a far enough excursion to halt, and retreat. I know that journey. I’ve seen the end of the road, the road that goes that way. Worms and granite.
My road? I don’t know where that leads. But I am not wearing footpaths to the undertaker. I am lifted.
Talk Written.
I have completed my Job Talk. The fundamental thing I keep hearing about writing them is: tell a story. Given that the position I’m interviewing for is not a strictly academic position, the standard rules for an academic job talks don’t exactly apply. They are not interested in what I plan to write my next grant for, or my ideas for pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge. What they’ll want to know is: what have you done in the past that resulted in real world improvement, and how can you apply that to PECMC? So I’ve written a talk along those lines, but with a bit of academic theory and a short nod at a literature review in the beginning. Then I describe my past and ongoing efforts, and highlight what I think of as my biggest career accomplishment: the use of simulation to accurately predict the consequences of a proposed change and dramatically improve service in my institution’s emergency department.
Hopefully, they will see that my skills are relevant and useful, and potentially lucrative. And of course, I’m willing to write grants to supplement part of my salary as well. In fact, I’d prefer it. But maybe not right away. I’d like to take a year off from putting grants together. I’m nearing the end of the big one I’m writing now. I have about 2 weeks left to get it in. It’ll get done. But it’s not going to be nearly as good as it could have been, because I’ve put so much effort into my job search. A job search which is, I hope, paying off. Though I’ve not heard anything positive from any of the two dozen or so universities I applied to. Two rejections and a whole lot of silence.
I have found that as long as anything is going well, as long as I have one good thing on the horizon to look forward to, I can tolerate a lot of rejection. Right now, I’m ok about being rejected for those other jobs because there’s a job I’m very excited about that I feel like I have a very good chance at. I know what to expect, mostly, when I go out there. I know how to give a good talk. I am confident, and I will be present and engaged. I feel like I have a strong talk for the sort of position they’re looking to fill. I’m good at this, and I’m ready for a new challenge.
It is really hard not to count these chickens. I feel very good about this opportunity. But until I actually receive an offer, I’m still a researcher where I am, in need of a grant-hit. So I’m back to writing. Hoping. Doing what we have decided researchers in the western world should spend their time doing: begging for money, rather than researching.
Progress in Sobriety, Progress in Life.
Progress is the fundamental goal of any sober person. Progress, not perfection. I know that I have no hope of ever being perfect. My goal is to make slow, steady progress, improving myself most days. The days when I slide backwards, I hope to curtail my descent. I’d like to feel like there is forward motion in my life. And these days there is. But as with any life, for every step forward, there are other steps back.
For example: I’ve been contacted now by HR at PECMC. They’re flying me out and putting me up in a hotel. My interviews are from 11-4 on November 28th, including an hour long lecture by me. This is excellent forward progress. My first contact with PECMC was on October 15th. So six weeks after making contact, I’ll be interviewing for what will hopefully be a serious offer of a position. I have found myself ready to leave St. Louis. Ready to move on and take on new challenges in my life. I’m very hopeful. I’ll give the best talk I can, and I have always interviewed well. This is forward progress. But this week has also seen steps back: I was rejected for interviews at West Virginia University, and the University of Waterloo. I had a paper rejected last night.
Progress in sobriety is often hard to measure for me right now. I go to two meetings a week, the great majority of the time. I am comfortable being a sober person. I don’t wish I could drink. I went through all the steps, one after another. In order, how they are in the book. That has relieved so much of my anxiety and misgiving about the world and how to live in it. These days, my progress in my own sobriety has been bolstered by my working with people new to the program, or people who are considering giving up their drugs and alcohol.
I have a new sponsee, for about a month now, who is doing pretty well. He just got a job. He needed a job. He’s been being supported by fiancée and parents for too long while he drinks and doesn’t contribute. But now, four months sober and beginning to actually work a program, he’s accepted a seasonal position doing low-wage work in retail. Part time, of course. But this is a step on the way. I’ve found that newly sober people who show up and don’t get drunk again tend to be promoted rapidly. Just being on time puts yourself a step ahead of the crowd.
Watching, and helping, people now to the program assists me in working my program. If I do end up moving, I’ll need to establish new meetings, maybe find a new sponsor of my own. I’ll go to lots of meetings for the first few months I’m there, until I find meetings that work for me. A men’s meeting. A mixed meeting. Wednesday. Sunday. Probably. Those work for me here.
Standing still in life isn’t really an option for the alcoholic. If we fail to make progress, we almost certainly regress. But I’m pleased with how my life is going at the moment. I’m sad I didn’t get offered interviews at WVU or UW. But I’m moving forward. In life. In sobriety.
Infactorium 