February 19, 2011

Weekend

My advisor doesn't answer work e-mails over weekends, and sometimes the weekend means Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I respect this completely. In fact, I admire his ability to set boundaries between work and life, and I hope that one day I can be awesome like that. So I don't mind at all. Truly.

Except that sometimes we start corresponding about something important on Wednesday or Thursday, and I send an e-mail on Thursday afternoon that I'm anxious about . . . and then I'm worried about his response for four days, which is an eternity when you're nervous.

I pounce on every e-mail alert even though it's Saturday, and I know it's just another e-mail in the chain of ride coordination for the party tonight. I consider sending follow up e-mails like "What I meant was..." and "I completely understand if..." and "I'll do whatever you think is best..." but manage to stop myself every time. Just need to wait, just a couple more days, then I can figure all of this out.

***

This morning, when I woke up all groggy and sat down at my desk, I found a scribbled index card sitting on top of my laptop. And then I remembered getting up in the middle of the night with an idea about how to solve a problem with my data. Instead of letting myself turn on the computer and try it out, I wrote myself a little note and then went back to bed.

This is a good way to deal with data-related revelations when I'm supposed to be sleeping. Unfortunately it doesn't work for writing. I know because I have tried before -- just write down the idea -- and then my brain gets even more excited about writing the rest of the paper. But when the idea is about numbers, my brain is happy to go back to sleep.

***

I almost never donate to charity, because I'm poor, which I think is a very legitimate reason to not give money. But I do support this one local organization that provides free testing and treatment to people with HIV. Today, they e-mailed everyone to say that their database was hacked by homophobes or something, and our information was compromised, donors are getting nasty e-mails. Awesome. At least I never gave Gawker my damn credit card information. This will teach me to try to be helpful.

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