April 16, 2010
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It's been a while and there is a lot to say. I'm not sure I'll be able to get through it all in the 30 minutes I have, but I'll do my best.
I've been worrying a lot about death lately, my own death, the death of loved ones, just death in general. The most unsettling part is the dreams. Car crashes, murders, horrible gory accidents involving all sorts of machinery, I have one almost every night. I don't sleep well and have taken to sleeping on the futon rather than keeping my husband up with my tossing and turning. I've tried a lot of things to stop the dreams, calling my parents before I go to sleep to verify that they are living, holding my husband extra long before drifting to sleep, even making sure that all my close friends posted on facebook in that last few hours before sleep, but nothing seems to work. Sometimes I have dreams where I don't even know the people who are dying, but I always have the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I jolt awake that I'm somehow responsible for their deaths. I assume it may be just stress and this is how I deal with it, but my mother always told me that clairvoyancy and psychic tendencies ran in our family. I always assumed she was just making it up to make us sound special, and I hope I was right. I hope these dreams aren't some kind of warning, a warning about my life, a warning about my research, a warning about consequences...
Physically, I'm fine. I've been working out more than previously, DDR on Monday, Aikido practice on Wednesday, Tricking on Friday, and more DDR on Saturday. My muscles ache and I messed up my knee last Wednesday, but the result is an increase in energy and, of course, self confidence. I did my first "real" handstand last week Friday and I'm getting close to doing my first cartwheel ever. It feels...pleasant, for lack of a better word. I've been trying to eat right, but stress isn't very useful in this endeavor and I find myself slipping often. A little too much steak here, an uncomfortable evening of feeling overstuffed there, and they add up. Thankfully, the working out has kind of balanced the overeating, so I haven't gained any weight really...but I haven't lost any either. I'm still hovering around 118-120 even though I decided months ago that I wanted to get down to 110-115. I'm not too worried about it as long as I don't gain any weight, and it's not like I look like a huge fatty or anything. I look fine and my husband says I'm beautiful and that's good enough for me right now. I'll work on the weight thing later when I'm feeling less overwhelmed by everything.
I almost switched out of my research group in the hopes of getting out of a chemical laboratory. I've noticed, far more than I did in undergrad, that being in a lab every single day scares the shit out of me. I'm constantly wondering who touched what where and with what horrible chemical on their gloves. I think I might have a phobia of dangerous chemicals...google says it's called "chemophobia" which I suppose should have been obvious. Heck of a thing to discover after getting into graduate school. Regardless, I ended up deciding against switching out of the lab not because I think I will become less afraid of chemicals over time, but because the people in this group are amazing and I don't want to leave them. As long as I keep that in mind, I think I can make it through the next four or five years. Additionally, I did some research about different types of chemical laboratories, and biological labs are actually the "safest" of the lot, so that makes me feel a fair amount better. If it wasn't for all the amazing people around me every day, I don't know what I would do, though...probably switch out of chemical engineering to something less dangerous, like electrical and computer engineering. I don't know.
There is a lot more to say, but I have to get back to my experiments. I'll continue later this weekend.
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