Day 3 observations

 fun fact: I actually really struggle with numbers on the edge of things. Is this day 3? day 4? this is why I could never figure out probability in high school or undergrad, I was always forgetting something, leaving something out. I never know whether or not to count things at the edge. I'm going to call this day 3 and we'll leave it at that. this is completely irrelevant to the rest of the post, by the way.

so. It's day 3. day 3 has blessed me with an aching right arm (thanks to approximately 30 hours of grading finished tuesday at 3 AM, along with several hours of pipetting this week AND cleaning for 3 hours last night, but at least two of those were something I get paid to do) in conjunction with finally catching my husband's cold and the arrival of period cramps (whether this is the worst day remains to be seen). tgif, am I right? well, sure, except for the fact that I have to be in lab for an annoyingly short amount of time spread apart over 4 hours both days this weekend and though I can in theory take random weekdays off, in practice it never seems to work that way. It's sort of like I have a standard workweek expected availability but if I miss a weekend, well, that's my problem. It's maddening. Shit like this makes me want to leave research.

Shit like today also apparently reeeeeeeally makes me want to cave, admit this entire project was a stupid idea, and download instagram again. or snapchat. i have had friends and family actually get frustrated with me for not being on snapchat, if you can believe that. just text me the photo, or better yet, just text me. this is also advice for myself, by the way, but I did actually send my sister a photo of some horrible looking country sitcom via text last night with the caption "why do I want to watch this" and honestly the experience of it was fine. It also didn't suffer from the classic snapchat problem of someone responding to your snap days after you sent it so that you honestly have no idea what you sent anymore and have to ask them what it was. but anyway, i'm feeling gross, i'm in the lab, and i really just want to scroll useless little videos. instead i reluctantly open the kindle app to read a book. 

The thing is that despite the fact that i can literally do whatever i want here, i want to see what it is like to genuinely go 30 days without using social media to see what it's like and how i feel. today that has me reflecting on the fact that i only ever had a twitter account for approximately 6 months, and after using it primarily to yell at air canada for giving my sister a $25 food voucher (that could only be used in the airport, only in its full amount, and within a select amount of time) after her flight crashed and she developed flight anxiety that she still has to this day, which is the same thing they once gave me for a flight delay, I determined I absolutely could not use twitter productively and promptly deleted my account. The funny thing is, outside of a few situations that are discussed and updated primarily on twitter which i can't view in their full context without an account, i have never once been tempted to sign up again. it just seems like a time-sucking little void of horror. I also only had about 10 tweets at the time, one of which was about eating too many oreos and feeling ill. clearly not adding that much to my life.

I think that last bit is actually pretty relevant, the fact that i only had 10 tweets. i've been tempted on numerous occasions to delete other accounts that I have, but I worry I'd somehow be deleting things that are important to me. little memories and interactions. a record of who i was and what I thought. Of course, as mentioned in the last (actual) post, I still have my journals, but on a site like tumblr in particular, there's a lot of posts there that chronicle how i was feeling at that time. i've even looked back on them once or twice. deleting them feels like deleting that experience. sure, i could have been chronicling those thoughts somewhere like a journal the whole time, but i wasn't, and deleting things feels a bit like burning a journal as a result. 

at the same time thought... i don't own those servers. i doubt anyone will preserve my particular blog, in its entirety, on something like the wayback machine. and ironically enough, i do not want to archive things myself and keep some kind of hard copy of the blog for myself. but the reality is that the site could fold. any site, including the one i put this post on. the internet is forever, but also ephemeral. the internet is forever is still good advice to follow when posting online, but 

oh my god. i literally just opened up my phone and went to open instagram. jesus effing christ what a habit.

anyway. it is good advice, but i think in reality the vast majority of content anyone posts is just lost in the sauce or gone forever. the risk that it maybe might not be just has massive consequences. i think it also encourages people to remember their words have meaning and impact others, even when they're through a screen. screens just facilitate real life. 

that makes me think though of this description of tiktok that i heard on a podcast recently (I think it was Binchtopia, but I'm not sure) about how tiktok and instagram and the like create a little world that feels separate to the real world, a different little screen world that you can inhabit. how powerful a drug when the real world often feels like too much for so many. it's incredible escapism to just look endlessly at other people's content, other people's lives, and so much information that it's impossible to comprehend it all. being off of that i think really grounds me in my reality. which today is that my body feels awful and i don't want to do that much, despite having to be on campus for half of the day. this is normally a day i'd try and press fast-forward through by escaping into that little world where i am always entertained and time flies by. but how depressing is that, right? to fast forward through my life? like perhaps in little doses, that makes sense, but on the scale it was, i think i was spending more time than i wanted to be skipping ahead.

i mean, after all, how much can i really know about what i like about where i am right now- or about what i dislike- if i'm not paying attention to it? Isn't the fact that i want to escape into this little hedonism-world a sign that my real life must not be very fulfilling to me? or is it just that that screen world offers something that my real life could NEVER compete with? I don't think the latter is true- there have definitely been times where I wanted nothing less than to be on my phone. most of those have been spent with the people i love, or in nature, or doing some other hobby (sometimes one that involves a screen, but not always). but what about my real, day-to-day life? what about right now?

well, right now I'm sitting in a room that facilities has decided to leave at 23 degrees (though it doesn't really feel like it's actually always at 23 degrees, for which I am grateful, because 23 degrees is not fucking room temperature and i will die on that hill. it should be 21). i'm by myself, the second desk from the door against the wall and unfortunately not against the windows. I'm not here with enough regularity to snap up a desk in front of a window, nor do i benefit from the sort of nepotism that got someone else a window desk. it's 11:34 AM. I finished my work at 10:40AM and at my breakfast (overnight oats and a juice box) and then started writing this. I have more work to do at 2PM with more pipetting. I would not be here if I didn't have to do that. and isn't that just the kicker? I really don't like being at school. I thought for years all I needed was a desk of my own with an outlet, but it turns out that what I really want is to be left alone to do my work in peace. while here, i'm constantly listening for footsteps outside the door, because i don't really want anyone else to look over my shoulder and see this. i am also uniquely exhausted after this week, probably also partly thanks to the now-brewing cold and impending menstrual shedding, helped along by early-week sleep deprivation. i can't control the temperature and sometimes other people in here are noisy and smelly. even if i wanted to get a little chai latte to brighten my day, i'd have to walk 10 minutes outside because the only restaurant in this building serves black coffee and overpriced sandwiches. no wonder i want to fast forward through this. 

at this point, i'm too tired to continue, and i think i've made my point. i'm going to purchase that book i was reading a kindle sample of, and maybe try and do some data analysis while listening to a murder podcast. happy friday, my friends.