Processing Disappointment.
So, it looks like there are some possibilities on the Canadian-entry front. I spoke to an attorney, who has told me to get background checks done of myself in Illinois, Missouri, and using the FBI system. If my DUI appears, then there are ways to move forward. But none of them seem to work for me. The waiver process, which would likely allow me to enter Canada, will require several months to complete. That’s not likely to work for me, considering the amount of time between being offered an interview and actually having the interview is likelier to be closer to four days than four months.
A good friend did some amazing googling and discovered that there are other options, including one which is apparently just showing up at the border. According to Canadian law (I am not an expert!), the final decision on who gets in in marginal cases apparently rests with the border guards themselves. They can decide to allow me provisional entry if I fall into a category that allows for a temporary visitor pass of some kind, that also involves a $200 fee (Canadian dollars, of course). And, of course, there’s the most likely option, which is that my background check will not be run at all, and no one will even blink an eye when I enter Canada.
So I’m in the process of sorting things out. I’m going to go get my fingerprints done here soon, that’ll cover Missouri. Then I’ll need to handle it for the FBI and Illinois. I requested the forms for the fingerprint based background check from Illinois. I need to have two copies and send them with money orders to sundry places. It’ll take several days to get them back. Then I’ll have an idea how to proceed. As I said, the offense was supposed to have been expunged, or so I was told when it happened, and I hope that it has been. But I don’t know. I’ll probably talk to a US attorney to find out.
But this whole process it daunting and frustrating. I am not good at bureaucracy. Some people seem to inherently understand it. I don’t. Each “Form 345-1 JL” submitted to the “Office of Leftover Irrelevancy” to process the “Allocution to Eternal Shame” feels like slashing my eyeball with a razor and dunking my head in salted lime juice. This is why I have an accountant. And a grants manager. I don’t know how to handle these things. The instructions aren’t clear to me. No matter how clear the instructions seem to other people, I can always seem to find some nebulous wiggle-room in them that obfuscates my path.
I always have to settle back, calm down, and realize that it’s not personal. It’s just the system doing its job. It may not be good at it. It may not be fast. But it does what it was tasked to do. And I need to remember to: this is my fault. This is not the Big Bad Canadian Bureaucracy landing on me. This is: a reasonable country has a reasonable restriction against potentially dangerous visitors. There is no particular reason, a priori, for them to know that I am no longer a risk for additional drunk driving. I drove drunk hundreds of times before my arrest, and dozens of times after (It would be nearly two years until I got sober; I was a bit more careful after I received my DUI, but like the alcoholic I am, when I drank, I continued to make bad decisions.).
Every alcoholic I know who also drives has driven drunk. Generally hundreds of times. The rate of getting caught driving drunk is incredibly small. So, for all Canada knows, I’m still driving drunk daily and just haven’t been caught again. I guarantee you there are plenty of people in that category. This is my fault. I brought this on myself, and I have no one but myself to blame. And it may well result in me not being able to interview for a job that seems very well suited to me at a truly fine university. And that’s the deal. My actions have consequences.
But here’s the part that perhaps some of my non-recovering readers might not get: there’s no point in blaming myself either. I do. In fact, I had myself a little tantrum this weekend where I fantasized about not eating and sitting alone in the bathtub and cutting myself. I can get overwhelmed with frustration and despair and that seems to block out the rest of life. But that’s all very juvenile. The truth is simply that I behaved badly as an alcoholic, it has consequences. And I can’t expect the rest of the world to just get on board and forgive and forget just because I have a four-year coin in my pocket. It doesn’t work that way.
But blaming myself is just another way of remaining rooted to a past where I was a malfeasant. I don’t know what it is that compels me to linger there. But I do have a desire to wallow in my degrading past, to look at my accomplishments and label them not-good-enough. There is a part of me that perversely enjoys feeling awful. This is the part that drives my alcoholism. The part that so many of us anthropomorphize as “my disease”. This is the core part of me which will kill me if I let it. Because this part of me doesn’t love life. Doesn’t care for pleasure. This part of me wants despair and shame and alcohol.
I am reprieved from that. Even in the very dark moments, and Saturday was as dark as it’s been in a very long time for me, alcohol is not a solution to my problems. Alcohol is how I can let my problems ruin me. And that part of me that wants to burn down the world recognizes its liberation in the liquor aisle. But I don’t battle that side of me. I see it. I know it. I respect its power and I fear its nihilism. But I am not struggling with it. It simply is. Were I to fight it, I would lose. Instead I have detached from it. I know I can never leave it truly behind. But it is the dinghy trailing the frigate now. It cannot guide me.
Expectations.
I’ve always thought that it’s better to be a pessimist than an optimist, for the sole reason that optimists are often disappointed, whereas pessimists are constantly pleasantly surprised. It’s all about framing expectations. Right now I am in the midst of waiting on the results of two major science efforts. A grant I submitted last June has been scored, and I am waiting for the results. And the first paper from my own funded study is back from review but still waiting on an editorial decision. Both results could come down at any moment. It’s incredibly stressful.
Here are my expectations, as honestly as I can make myself examine them. The grant will likely not be funded. It’s a revision from a grant that was scored fairly poorly. The funding agency doesn’t use percentiles, but if they did, I think it would be about the 75th (lower is better). That means we’re ahead of all the people that got triaged, which is half to two-thirds of all grants, but worse than three-quarters of the people that got scored. We completely revised the entire grant. It’s essentially a new submission. We even changed the name. I think the best we can hope for is to get to the 30th percentile or so, and a second resubmission, which is the last. But I could be pleasantly surprised.
The paper, I believe, will be given a revise and resubmit. I submitted it to a very good but not incredible journal. It’s an interesting paper, but it’s methodological, not results based (though I stuffed some results into it). I believe that it will have a tough review asking for significant revisions, because that’s what always seems to happen to my papers. And then I’ll do that. And hopefully it will be published. There is a chance it will be accepted with minor revision, if the editor is interested in simulation as a concept, and the reviewers they found were appropriate for what it is. It is also perfectly possible that the reviewers will focus on any one of several potential limitations, and recommend rejection.
I really want both things to go well, of course. The grant would feed me for four years. The paper will set up my next grant submission. I am nothing but hopeful for these things. I am trying to be guarded. But I am hopeful. And hope was the worst malady of them all in Pandora’s Box.
Cleaning Up Old Messes.
Once upon a time, the nation of Canada made an official apology to my parents. Or so the story goes. Several things about the story don’t quite add up to me, and as I wrote in the marshmallow tale, slight lapses of memory may result in mistruths being carried forward. But like that story, I believe the core of this to be true. What doesn’t quite add up for me in this story is the time. My parents tell this story as if it takes place before they had children, which would require it to have been occurred prior to 1972. But they also say it takes place in Montréal, in the summer of 1976, during the Olympics, when my mother would have been at seven months pregnant with my little sister, and I’d have been about to turn two. Whenever it occurred, the story is this:
Once upon a time, a young man and his young bride went to Montréal during the Olympic Games on something of a late honeymoon. They rented a basement apartment in a suburb of the city for a week or so. They drove around in their tiny car they’d driven to Canada from New York. One day, they awoke to discover their car was missing. They called the police, and discovered that it had been towed. To this day, my father swears it was legally parked, and that it was towed because the Montréal police towed essentially every car in Quebec that summer, to collect impound fees.
So they gathered themselves up and went down to the police station to collect their car. The Québécois police refused to speak English. They were told, with much gesticulation, that they could pay a fine and collect their car if they signed a form. The form was entirely in French. What these police didn’t know, of course, is that my mother speaks (or did at that time) pretty decent French. But she didn’t want to let them know that. So while my father bickered with the policemen, my mother read the form. It stated that they had seen the car and agreed there was no damage. My mother reported this back to my father, who refused to sign. The police refused to allow them to see the car until the form had been signed.
There was an impasse. My mother excused herself. She found a payphone (remember those?) and called her sister. Who has a husband (Hi, Uncle Paul!), who has a relative of some kind, who was fairly highly placed in the US State Department. How all this happened so fast in the age before cell phones, I’ll never know. However, the story goes, that Mom called Aunt Jane who called Uncle Paul who called his (brother? cousin?) in the State Department who called his correspondent in the corresponding Canadian department who called the police station and spoke to the francophone Mountie who said, and I’m quoting my father here, “What?! Aww FUCK.”
They were chauffeured to the car, and politely encouraged to inspect the car inside and out. All impound fees were waived. My parents were thanked for their forbearance, and sent on their way. A few weeks later, back at home, they received a lovely letter, on the queen’s letterhead, signed by the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, apologising for the boorish attitude of an uniformed member of the Canadian police forces, and assuring them that that wasn’t representative behaviour of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Les Québécois, or the citizenry or official representation of Her Majesty’s Provinces and Territories of Canada (or however the hell they say that in fancy Canadianese).
I tell this story because I too may now have car trouble with the Canadians. In my search for a tenure-track position, I have applied to a school of public health in the Great White North, and so I am hoping, come January or so, to visit the school to give a job talk and a chalk talk, as one does. But I may not be allowed in Canada at all.
As I’ve admitted here before, when I was an active alcoholic, I drank and drove, many times. As I’m not sure I’ve written since inhabiting my old blog, I was once caught at it. I was driving from St. Louis to Edwardsville, Il, in the evening, to visit my fiancée. I drove over there drunk a bunch of times. This time, I hadn’t been planning on driving. I knew I shouldn’t have gone, even by my own standards, I was far too drunk to attempt such an ambitious journey. But I did. And just short of reaching her house, I was pulled over for weaving and generally being a vehicular menace.
The officer approached me, and asked me to stand on one foot. Just stand on one foot. I couldn’t do it. The officer said: “I’m going to arrest you today for driving under the influence.” I said: “That sounds about right.” He was really cool about it actually. He let me sit up front. He cuffed my hands in front, rather than in the back. And he drove through an ATM so that I’d have the cash I needed to bail myself out. He didn’t have to do any of those things. I think he did them because I was amiable and cooperative. It was that night that I realized just how terrified police officers are when they pull people over. They never know when someone is going to want to fight or flee. When someone is desperate enough to try to kill a police officer.
This happened in 2006. I was given court supervision, and sentenced to pay a fine of about $2,000 plus court costs, not drive in Illinois for 90 days, attend alcohol counseling (which cost another $1,000, about), and attend a victim’s impact panel. I did all of these things. Though it would be twenty more months before I quit drinking. I was told that if I did all of that, and had no more trouble with the law for three years, that the matter would be expunged from my record. I believe that it has been. But I don’t know. And I don’t know how to find out.
Canada does not allow visitors who have been convicted of drunk driving offences in the past ten years. I can think of no more sure way not to get a job than to tell the university that I can’t give a job talk just now because I was turned back at the border. They do have a “rehabilitation” process by which one can regain the right to visit Canada. But I don’t know if I need to go through it or not. I have not technically been convicted of driving intoxicated, though I was certainly guilty of it. I called the Canadian Immigration and Customs and asked them about my situation. They said that I needed to either go through the rehabilitation process or take my chances being turned back at the border. So I have retained an attorney who specializes in Canadian Immigration Law, whom I’m going to speak to tomorrow.
This is sobriety at work. I don’t know if I’m going to be offered an interview. But I know that it is very likely that if I am offered an interview, and I do need to go through the legal rehabilitation process, that I will likely not have time to do so in the short time between being offered the interview and needing to arrive in Canada. Being sober now allows me to handle this how normal people would likely handle something similar: I can plan ahead. If I were still drinking, and planning to visit Canada, I’d likely not even know this was an issue. I’d show up. If I were flying, I’d likely show up drunk. Then, maybe, I’d be sent back home.
We say in sobriety that we live one day at a time. But that means that today, I can do the things I need to do to plan for my future. Whether or not I get a job offer at this Canadian University, or even just the opportunity to talk for one, I would like to visit Canada again soon. It’s close. I have friends there. There’s an awesome string quartet competition in Banff. I would love to see that. Being sober allows me to do the things I need to do to participate in life the way I would like to. Freely. Right now, the Canadian border is a boundary of uncertain permeability. Sobriety allows me take the steps I need, one step after one step after one step, to transcend all of these limiting boundaries in life.
Freedom. In the great open spaces of the world.
Exhaustion and Resilience.
I have been working really hard lately. I feel fortunate that I essentially finished off the work for my funded study a month and a half early, so I am able to do other things while I wait for my papers to be reviewed. I am on tenterhooks in a bunch of ways right now. I have the first paper from my first funded study about to have a decision rendered (reviews are back, editor is processing). My grant, on which I’m co-PI, is being scored today, right now, as I write this. I assume I’ll hear about the scores in a few days or a week. I don’t know about my job situation, and I’m looking for a bunch of different ways to move forward.
I put together a huge package, including references, teaching and research statements, revised CV, writing samples, etc., for a couple of tenure track posts. I’m doing the tenure track job search without even really knowing if that’s what I want. I mean, of course, I want to be an academic. I want to do interesting and valuable research. But I am not necessarily jazzed about taking on teaching requirements in addition to research requirements. I like mentoring, but I really fear being able to provide enough work for post-docs and grad students to do, or biostatisticians. I’m totally unschooled in running a research program. I like to do everything myself. I’m not sure how to delegate. I’m afraid of hiring people, and ending up with nothing for them to do, and leaving them out in the cold.
Once again, I have to praise the academic community on twitter. People there have been unbelievably supportive in giving advice, reading my teaching and research statements, and providing feedback. They have done this despite starting new jobs and new semesters themselves, having huge amounts of work to do, and precious little time to do it. Despite facing challenges that always feel like they’ll break me. I have been shown the kind of enormous magnanimity that people have to offer, even to strangers, in this incredible community, once again. I am humbled, and I am challenged to do the same.
This work is exhausting, yes. It’s difficult and confusing to apply to these positions. And I don’t even know how serious I am. I have put in about 8 applications so far. Only one or two of which are legitimately reasonable applications, I now realize, after getting serious about accomplishing these tasks well. But I have found a couple of opportunities that feel very real, including one in Canada that looks perfect. Sometimes it is daunting to look at the world of science and realize that I have to be a nomad to fit in, willing to go anywhere for a position. But that is the competitiveness that this industry demands.
Often, when I work at something long hours and with great mental and emotional investment, I feel drained and exsanguinated at the end of it. Before the end of it. But I feel ok today. Tomorrow, I don’t know. But today, I feel like I can step forward and do the task. It is in no small way because of the support and example I have found in the community. It is inexpressibly powerful. So very like AA, where we stand beneath each other to reach the great heights. And then those who have summited reach back, to lift up those below.
Securing Endorsements.
Today I heard back from a major agency which is dedicated to researching diabetes and delivery of care therefore. I had approached one of their investigators who has done work on retinopathy in order to ask her to read my aims and consider supporting my grant. She, on her own initiative but with my permission, shared it with the governing committee of the entire research organization. And today I was told that they would be writing a letter of support, from the organization. This is a huge deal. A letter of support from an organization like this can be a crucial difference between funding and no funding in the agency I’m applying to.
One of the major requirements for funding in the organization I’m working in is collaboration. They simply won’t consider an application which doesn’t have a strong set of endorsements. The reason for this is that there is a huge focus on dissemination in my system. They are determined to fund “the best science”; their definition of that includes the best plan for encouraging adoption of results, and the spread of ideas. It is explicitly stated that peer-reviewed publications are necessary but insufficient for a dissemination plan.
Therefore, having the endorsement of a major diabetes research organization (basically equivalent to an NIH center of excellence), one dedicated to implementation and adoption of research, with a statement that my project is aligned with their goals, will be of critical value in the eyes of reviewers who are specifically told to look for such evidence. There is another organization whose endorsement I want to secure, which is a health care engineering institution. If I get that (and I believe I will without much difficulty), I will have demonstrated that I have strong partners dedicated to the dissemination of my findings.
Additionally, the researcher I initially approached has agreed to serve as a consultant for my grant. This means that not only will I have the organizational endorsement, but I will have a collaborator sitting in their midst. There can be no stronger statement of support than that. This is the beginning of something good. I can tell. I am going to be putting together a major project, and it’s going to be good. Or my name isn’t whatever my name is.
Embracing Difficulty.
Very short post tonight. This relates to my current job search, but it also applies to writing grants, and probably other things, like raising children and landing robots on Mars.
Here’s how to do something hard that you’ve never done before:
1) Understand it won’t get done in a day.
2) Ask those who’ve done it.
3) Don’t wait to feel ready, just start.
4) Accept that early efforts will be insufficient.
5) Every day, do something to move forward.
6) Panic is just disguised motivation.
7) Nothing will be as good as you think it should be.
8) Perfection is a distraction.
9) Listen to the people you ask for advice.
10) Trust your own instincts.
11) Push your birds out of the nest.
12) Cry, don’t cut.
I guess I do everything in 12 steps now.
Making Liquor Recommendations.
Over on the twits, there was just a brief discussion about bourbon. One friend who is christening her office has procured a bottle of bourbon with which to do so. Discussion of brands followed. I made a recommendation that they try Baker’s barrel proof bourbon. They said they’d try it out. Then, GertyZ said: “[I]t always seems weird to me when you give out [alcohol] suggestions.” I totally respect that. It’s a little weird to be giving out alcohol suggestions. But I think there’s some important stuff going on in me about it.
I want to have a normal life. I want to be able to participate in the whole realm of human experience. Most especially, I want to have a social life that is fluid and florid. I want to be able to engage with friends, and hopefully one day soon a lover, across the entire spectrum of relationship. I’m in my 30s. I interact with a lot of grown ups. Most grown ups drink, normally and successfully. The vast majority of my friends, online and otherwise, fall into this category. And most grown ups also drink regularly, and enjoy it and talk about it. If I want to have a normal social life, I have to be able to be in groups where that happens.
I refuse to cower from alcohol. Don’t get me wrong. I am afraid of what drinking does and would do to me. I respect my disease and my addiction. I will not put myself in situations which risk my sobriety. While I haven’t encountered such a situation in quite some time, I am not so arrogant as to presume they could not or do not exist. I have tools, which I keep finely honed, that provide me with strategies to avoid, evade, confront, or retreat from any situation which might present me with danger.
People new to sobriety should avoid situations with alcohol. They should avoid friends who drink. They should change the people, places, and things associated with their drinking. It was months before I went to a restaurant that served alcohol. The first business trip I took, more than a year sober, I called the bellhop and had them remove all the alcohol from the hotel mini-bar. When new to sobriety, alcoholics need to recoil from the presence of alcohol.
Some people need to stay that way their whole lives. There is no shame in that. There is great strength in that.
But for most of us who have done the work, and continue to do the work to maintain our sobriety, seeing, smelling, thinking about or talking about alcohol doesn’t represent a temptation. Even our euphoric recall is properly sorted into “memory” rather than “desire”. My sponsor has a wet bar in his basement. I know another alcoholic, sober 14 years, who does as well. I don’t keep alcohol in my house, because I have no need to. And I would feel uncomfortable with it there, I know. But if I one day live with a wife who drinks, I’d imagine I could keep some in the house and not worry about it.
I don’t want to be excluded. And I have comprehensive knowledge about liquor. I had some money, and I drank a lot, and I’m a fancy, eclectic, self-aggrandizing ass. Therefore, I spent a lot of money on drinking a lot of really good booze. And I liked it. Up until I was married and had to hide it, I wasn’t drinking diet sprite and vodka from a 20 oz plastic bottle. I was drinking single barrel bourbons, single malt scotches, and some of the finest wines in the world. Truly great micro brew beers. I brewed my own beer and mead.
So, in friendly discussions about alcohol, I have something to contribute. And doing so doesn’t impact me negatively. As I’ve written here before, people have apologized to me for talking about alcohol, or asked me if it’s ok. Of course it’s ok. It’s not my business! People have no responsibility, obligation, whatever, to refrain from any subjects around me. Not only because I have no right or desire to control their subjects of discourse, but also because I am truly not bothered by discussions of alcohol, and I sometimes enjoy participating in them. If I am bothered by a situation involving alcohol, or the discussion thereof, I know how to remove myself. It’s my responsibility.
My life used to be totally controlled by alcohol. Now, I am totally free from it. Being totally free from alcohol’s control means that I am capable of discussing my history and experience with alcohol fearlessly. And because I have such experience, and I know the pleasure that good alcohol can bring people who can enjoy it responsibly, I feel unencumbered by any proscription against sharing that experience.
Baker’s barrel proof bourbon is good. Dead Arm Shiraz is good. Chateau Latour Pauillac is $400 and worth every penny. Just because I don’t drink them anymore doesn’t mean that normal people shouldn’t. I get pleasure from sharing good things with others. We in AA are not abolitionists. We recognize that alcohol is a source of pleasure and happiness for people who can safely imbibe. We just aren’t those people. And I don’t regret that now. I drank a whole life’s worth, and now I’m done.
Beginning to Outline the R01eq.
So the first thing I did was write an aims page and then gather together a few people who are interested in working with me. Given that I am going to be writing a grant relating to diabetic eye care, I have collected a diabetes researcher (not a formal commitment yet, but it’s promising), an ophthalmic epidemiologist, an ophthalmologist (hopefully two), and of course, me. I will need a biostatistician, and it would be nice if I can get a national health policy dude to look at it as well. However, I have a problem.
The thing I was originally going to investigate was recently adopted. So I don’t have an Aim 3. Well, I have one, I just need to sort out how to make it awesome, and not redundant. And still relevant. If the powers that be decide that this issue is resolved, then they’re probably not going to fund a careful examination of it. So I came up with a slightly different approach to the framing. The diabetes researcher, who is highly placed in a diabetes research center of excellence, tells me that my approach “should have traction”. It essentially involves individualized care, tested and optimized in simulation.
So today, I’m going to put the outline together. Just outlining a grant of this size is very complex. It needs to have several basic sections: Background, Significance, Design and Methods, Implementation and Dissemination, and Project Management. These are the subsections recommended by the funding agency. Right now, I think my biggest problem is significance. Which is not a good problem to have. No one wants to fund insignificant research. However, I think I can peg this by discussing how common diabetes is, how serious and expensive loss of vision is, and how preventable vision loss is with good diabetic eye care.
I’m a bit at a loss as to where in this framework my preliminary data and results go. I have awesome preliminary data and results. Like, fabulous. I spent a year developing it, and it all worked great. I’m in the process of publishing it, which by itself will be a pretty massive coup. Pilot grants often don’t result in usable conclusions, much less in publishable results. Of course, I don’t know for certain that my results are publishable yet. They’re just under review. And I really want them to be in press by the time this grant goes out.
I divided the results from my pilot study into two papers. The first is a methods paper describing how I did what I did, and that’s under review now. The second is a results paper, which is written, but really needs to cite the first. So I’m hoping to get that first paper accepted, and then I’ll be able to submit the second (which is locked and loaded in the submission system in manuscript central, almost, but not quite, ready to press “submit”.). But the first is being reviewed in a European journal, and those grind to a halt over the summer.
Of course, in discussions with my epidemiologist, I’m learning that my disease may progress too slowly to look at what I want to look at, given the quality of the longitudinal data that I have access to. So maybe I should just go be a furniture salesman.
Professional Rejection.
Well, the vague, wild dream of taking a tenure track position in Singapore is over. I received a short note from the headhunter yesterday night, which stated that the department head chose to go with a more experienced candidate. I was specifically told that the rejection did not reflect any sense that I was not qualified for the position, just that someone else was more qualified. The headhunter also offered to speak with me directly if I am interested in further discussion regarding the decision. I sent back a note thanking him for all his effort, and simply saying: “If you have any more detailed feedback that might help make me more competitive for similar positions in the future, I’d be pleased to hear it.” I don’t expect a response.
All that’s fine of course. As I’ve said here a bunch of times, I like my job here, and I prefer most of all to keep it. I just hope that’s an option. I’m working at several opportunities to make that a more viable option. One of these days, LRU is going to nail down the contract they’re working on that has the funding for my position in it, and I’ll sign a contract there that will cover 25% of my time, possibly more, and make me an honest-to-god assistant professor (though non-tenure track). And I’ve been applying to various positions around the country. All of this I’ve detailed before.
But I’d be remiss not to spend a moment grieving the opportunity in Singapore. Even though I wasn’t particularly keen on traveling halfway around the world to take a job where I didn’t know anyone, it was exciting. And I was flattered that they found me, contacted me out of the blue, and asked me to apply. I don’t know if I was ever truly competitive. The headhunter thought so, obviously, as he forwarded my CV along to the selection committee. For all I know, I was laughed out of committee. But I’m impressed with the professionalism with which it was handled. Many American universities don’t even bother acknowledging you’ve applied, or sending rejection notes.
I had come to see the potential of moving to Singapore to do exciting research in health systems as a kind of grand adventure. Possibly with a lot of money too. I had fantasies of my piano being put on a ship and sent across the sea. Of living in a glass tower, with a gym on the second floor. Of a clean, white computer laboratory with an interactive model of the city I designed, where I could develop health systems models that would revolutionize care, in a test-bed of the island city. Where my ideas could be put into practice.
So I’ll be a bit sad today. I would have liked at least to get to fly to Singapore to give a job talk and a chalk talk. Other than the bizarre fiasco in June at East Coasty University, I’ve never done either of those things. And I feel a little stupid. I talked about it nonstop on twitter and here, and in my personal life. And I didn’t even make the final cut, the group who got to go give an interview. And they’re right. I have very little experience. I’ve only had this academic post for less than three years. I’ve published seven or eight papers, only four of which are in journals not best used for toilet paper. I’ve won less than $300K in funding awards. I am not, objectively, an established researcher.
I hope I get the chance to be one. As my friend said last night, when I texted her about not getting the position, every job is a longshot. And this job was for a high-profile post at a prestigious university, for which a global candidate search was conducted. It is not surprising at all that I was not the best candidate on Earth. Most of the time, I feel like I’m not the best candidate in my own cubicle.
Now I have to guard against the ricochet sensation. Going from feeling proud and honored to be considered, to feeling like worthless shit for being rejected. Perspective is trying for me. Here’s the truth, probably, and my best ability to be objective about it: I am a decent candidate, and I clearly have special and relevant skills for a position like this. However, my CV is spotty. I don’t have the traditional trappings of a professor. I had no post-doc, no K award. I have a year gap on my CV immediately after graduating, when I was unemployed. I have a four year gap in publications, from 2006-2010, because I only published one paper in grad school, and then it took a while, of course, to get my first publication out from my current job.
I definitely need time, and more publications in decent journals, and grants to be truly competitive. Time, I think, will be the most critical. If I win a grant or two, that’s lovely. If I don’t there’s hard money potential (perhaps remote) that will allow me to keep publishing. But what I need, truly, is enough time that my gaps fade into the past, and I build a long, current record of uninterrupted work. Which I don’t know if I will continue to have the opportunity to do. There’s a strong chance I will be losing my current position not too long after my boss leaves, set for October first.
And there’s a strong chance that I won’t. I have things in the hopper. Including a big grant. Which I am not hopeful about. I feel like it’s too cludgy, blocks rammed together. We were badly scored the first time through. I feel like triage is a possibility this time. We’ll see. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’ll love it. Then, all my woes vanish. For four years.
The academic life is stressful and difficult and uncertain. And, based on conversations with established, successful, tenured professors, it never gets any better. And academia itself is a bubble that’s going to pop. Tuitions rise unaccountably, universities have become administrative labyrinths, corporate money and federal granting has turned every university into a for-profit institution, in deed if not in name.
I am going to try to drum up some consulting work.
Right for the Wrong Reasons.
Sunday I went to the driving range with Jimmy Legs. I haven’t been actually golfing since I was in rehab. This was the second time I’ve been to the driving range in sobriety. The first time was with my ex-wife and then-stepson. I had told them that I was not a terrible golfer, and as usual, they didn’t believe me. And that’s all I am, not terrible. With clubs numbered five or higher I can hit the ball straight, with a maximum distance of about 150 yards, about 7 times out of ten. This is enough that when I used to actually go out and golf, I would generally get one or two pars in eighteen holes, and score about 100.
So, I’m not terrible. But I’m certainly not good. Jimmy Legs is going on a golfing vacation in the fall with his father and brothers, and so he wants to get out and refamiliarize himself with the motions and equipment. Golfing is really amazingly difficult to do well. And unlike many other sports, it’s even pretty difficult to do badly. However, despite this lengthy introduction, I’m not going to go all Bagger Vance on you and start making golf into some sobriety metaphor. Golf is a game where you hit a ball with a stick. I don’t need to build a larger narrative around it.
No, instead, I’m going to talk a bit about dating again. I was talking with Jimmy Legs about a women I dated last fall, who is (was?) an oncology fellow an a local medical school. We only went out three times, and by her own description, she really liked me. But she’s the one who rejected me because I’m in recovery. I liked her. She was bright and pretty. And I was really impressed by her job. But she had some issues of her own that might’ve interfered with a relationship. She was very OCD (like, diagnosed by a psychiatrist), and was uninterested in addressing it. She was also a Conservative Jew, and while I have a Jewish bloodline (on my mother’s side), I was not raised in the faith or the traditions, and am not interested in adopting them.
She guessed I was an alcoholic on our second date, when I didn’t order a drink at dinner, and asked me straight out about it. I told the truth immediately, of course. I asked if it was a problem. She said she didn’t know but that she’d “want to be certain I could stay sober.” Of course, certainty isn’t what I do with regard to sobriety. I won’t make promises. I said that I hadn’t had a drink in (at that time) more than 3 and a half years, and that I couldn’t imagine having one. Then we went to the Muppet Movie and held hands and I kissed her goodnight. I thought it would be ok.
We went out once more, and it was a bit awkward. We set up a fourth date, but she canceled, saying that the alcoholism was a problem, and she felt bad, because she really liked me and didn’t want it to be. She said she didn’t want to see me again. I was very upset. I still think about her from time to time. But, as I’ve written before, she has that right. I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to respect it. But I have to accept it.
Today on twitter, a friend mentioned that her family is coming to visit the city she lives in while she’ll be away. I don’t know the circumstances of her interactions with her family. I made a joke that “this way [she] won’t have to see them.”. This kind of thing is painful though. Family is always troublesome, even in the best families there are frictions and frustrations and irritations. Her circumstance reminded me of what Jimmy Legs said on the car ride home from the driving range.
“Well, she was right for the wrong reasons.” That’s exactly right. That oncology fellow had every right to make her decision not to see me again, even though she liked me (assuming it wasn’t just a convenient excuse to sever ties; after all, that’s a thing I can’t change.). But if my recovery is the real reason she didn’t want to see me again, then she’s right. We shouldn’t see each other. But she’s wrong about the reasons.
My recovery is not precarious. I will not promise never to drink again. Not because I expect to, but because I think it is hubris. I don’t want to tempt my disease. Yes, I know that’s not strictly rational, but maintaining this kind of perspective is important to keeping myself sober. It is daily work, regular treatment, to stay in recovery. If I start making lifelong promises, it becomes too easy to ignore the daily maintenance. Recovery is like a physical condition. If I don’t do regular work to keep it up, I will become soft, winded, and exhausted.
The real reason for me not to see her again is that I don’t want to be with someone who needs certainty and assurances in life. It suggests she’s looking for control over things she can’t control. I don’t want to be with someone whose world is balanced on a spindle like that. I don’t want to be with someone who is constantly doubting my recovery. My worldview. The thing about me that I am proudest of. The core that shapes me. If that central self of mine is a seed of doubt for her, then we would never be compatible.
I think a lot of times, things are right for the wrong reasons. We, I, react against that. Because I want a person to change their reasons. Then, maybe something could be right for the right reasons. Right the way I wanted it to be right. I can’t help but wonder if something similar, though painful, might be happening with my friend. I don’t know of course. It’s wild speculation, bordering on the irresponsible.
Most of the time, in life, I end up with what I need. Too often, what I need and what I want are strikingly dissimilar. I am still sad, about things I wish I’d kept, but which I lost. About things I never had, but that I wanted. But I have the crucial things. I am of sound mind, these days. I have a healthy body to carry it around in. And I have hope. When I look back, I am reminded how much better my future is than my past.
Infactorium 