Loose thoughts about the way things are now vs the way they used to be

This is mostly about the internet. I was going to say it's all ads without being ads and then trailed off reveling in how messy it used to be. And then realized my point was this: it feels like the whole experience of most popular websites purports to be about the user but is really about the advertisers. This isn't just me being bitter about ads, but it is a little bit.

I remember the early days of most of the social media we use now. I remember leaving long comment threads on friends' posts on facebook in high school, laughing until I cried and then referencing the jokes the next day. I remember facebook being a tool to share photos and updates and thoughts with friends. I remember watching my sister use instagram in its early days when it was just people taking photos of their latest craft project, their outfit that day, a picture of the sky, of their coffee, of their food, of them with friends- the stupid kind of stuff you capture when you're young. I also remember when snapchat was just about sending photos with one line of text and no knowledge of whether they'd been screenshotted. I remember the early days of youtube, and how the videos would look and the kind of content that would be put up.

All of the early days of this was very odd, ugly, clunky, and not always user friendly. Things were slow and buggy much of the time, not that long ago. Images and videos were low in quality and limited in quantity. It felt like things had limits, like the real world was still more interesting.

And then COMPANIES got a hold of these things. So many facebook pages and accounts and instagram pages are just companies trying to advertise. Sometimes this is your favourite local restaurant but more often than not it's a major fast-fashion or subscription box company. Sometimes it feels like nobody has a website anymore. Things got easier to use, and faster, and higher in quality, so more and more content was put up. Content wasn't always guaranteed to be there forever (stories) so now you had to check things to see what your friends were up to, and people were more likely to put content up knowing it would go away shortly (myself absolutely included). Out of nowhere you were supposed to use your real fucking name and image on everything, everywhere, all the time... to make ads more targeted for you. And now that your real self is up there, things you do online have real-world effects. Sometimes for good. So make sure you define, curate, market, and sell yourself. For your benefit.

The side product of all that is that if you are going to spend all this time, money, and energy doing that, you want it to be picture perfect. I feel like things aren't as messy. In the early days of youtube there was nothing but people using shitty cameras to film at their local park with costumes they made themselves with no skill, and now it feels like anyone making content must have perfection. High quality cameras and microphones, stylized outfits and aesthetics. No mess or ugliness anywhere. It feels different getting a beauty standard from millions of young people hyper-paranoid about their own image than it does getting it from movies and paparazzi magazines of famous people who you know have oodles of time and money. Doesn't it? It must. 

Nothing is actually for the user anymore, it's all about money, content, information to sell to advertisers. I'm so tired of it. I miss when the internet was ugly and new. Maybe we should all log off and do a bad craft and take unfiltered pictures with a disposable camera to show to no one. 

Should I start a blog

 I understand the irony of this, but bear with me for a second.

Two weeks ago I cried in therapy finally admitting that I do, in fact, have a lifelong dream I want to pursue. Guess what it is? Anyone who has known me for a while will probably be unsurprised to hear- I want to be a writer. I want to be the person who gets to just sit at home in sweatpants and work on their book all day. I miss the creative process. I am so, so afraid of this, but it's been big to admit that it's what I want.

So, y'know. Being in a PhD program for cancer research seems like an odd place to have ended up. It's okay, because I'm also good at this and there is some genuine interest on my part, but it feels like the reason I got here was a combination of "smart kids do science" + "this is at least somewhat interesting" + "knowing this makes me feel smart, which feels good" + "I'm not terrible at this; in fact, I may actually have a bit of a knack for it." But none of those is "I feel a genuine passion for this" or "I like the style of work I have and the hours I'm able to keep" (well, maybe a little, but I do still wish I didn't have to go in at 6:30 AM due to booking issues- a classic catch-22 of people who are there at normal hours get first dibs on subsequent days of normal hours) or "I can see myself doing this for a long time" (the thought of that gives me a fair amount of anxiety). I think those are maybe important factors. Not to mention the more personal and subjective "I'd like to have a little more flexibility on where I can live" and "I like working at home infinitely more than I like having to be around people all the time."

So... what does this have to do with the blog? Maybe that's not necessary, since it's pretty obvious that a blog is about writing. But writing about what?

Well, since I've scaled back on my social media usage, I've found that there's actually a lot of creative energy in my brain. I've even opened a couple of documents on my computer solely for just writing out ideas and thoughts, including an entire course I outlined in my head (it's about teaching scientific writing and basic research, which I feel deserves its own course at this point). I started planning my story again. Turns out when you stop consuming endless fields of images and videos and other people's lives, you have more time and energy to create instead.

Here's the thing though: I'm scared.

Scared that if I pursue this, it will be a big failure.

Scared that I'll have a good idea, fail to protect it, and someone else will steal it and profit from it.

Scared of putting myself out there and being criticized, fairly or not (part of scaling back from social media included scaling back from comment arguments, which made me feel horrible and angry and on edge).

Scared I'll run out of ideas after like, two ideas.

Scared that I will have big dreams and expectations that will amount to nothing.

Scared that I won't like it after I try.

Scared of putting myself out there as a woman.

I know that all of these are just... not good enough reasons to not do it. I can think of counter arguments very quickly.

Scared of it being a big failure:
Then you will have accomplished just as much as you have now. Anything can fail, but that didn't stop you from going to school for your undergrad or graduate degree. It didn't stop you from doing a complicated extended essay topic in high school. It didn't stop you from auditioning for a performance swing dance team (which actually was something I failed at, incidentally). You'll never experience any success if you don't do anything.

Scared of idea-theft:
This seems unlikely, but you can protect yourself from this. Other people put themselves out there, why can't you? You are also likely to learn about this one way or the other in science at some point.

Scared of criticism:
That's life. You will have to learn to deal with it. It will be unfair sometimes. All you can do is try, there is literally no way to avoid this one, but not just with a blog.

Scared of running out of ideas:
I think every creative has this fear, but if your well of creativity is really that shallow, wouldn't you rather know? Then at least you can work on digging it deeper.

Scared of big expectations and dreams:
So keep your expectations managed. And let yourself feel what you feel. It's okay to be disappointed, frustrated, and upset. It's also okay if you don't feel those things. You've been going to therapy for too long now to let this hold you back.

Scared I won't like it:
Okay again, better to know this than to always wonder what if. Also- you can literally just quit whenever, this is just a side thing with no bearing on your wellbeing or current position.

Scared of the misogyny:
This one is, again, unavoidable at the moment. But you can be anonymous and have only people in your real life know who you are.

And yet... unsurprisingly, the fear is still there. That feeling is still real, even if all the reasons for feeling it don't stack up (it feels a little like those little grid visual illusions, where every time I look at a fear it disappears, but it feels like the others are still there until I turn my focus on them, and they disappear. The fear feels real even though I can't really "look" straight at it in my mind). That's something I am no longer surprised by- something I've been fortunate to learn in therapy and through exploring self help. Sometimes the feeling is just there anyway, demanding to be felt. 

Well, you know what they say about courage!

What if... we lived in a feminist utopia tho...

Something I've been thinking about recently is this interaction I had on a message board a little over a year ago (before I stopped using it because, like nearly every other site on the internet, it made me too angry). I was increasingly uncomfortable with just how much easier my life was when skipping my periods on birth control- I still am. I had gone on this message board to clumsily make the argument that it was sexist to say that women would be considered worse workers if we were actually given accommodations for something we can't control- in my experience, most women have one or two days every period where they are in a lot of pain, are bleeding heavily, and in general could probably stand to benefit from like, an extra week or two of vacation time every year just as a general rule. It was roundly pointed out to me that this was not the case, which of course made me angry, and I have been sitting with that anger and discomfort for a long time, and today my brain gave me some thoughts on how to work it out.

The thing is that it remains objectively easier for me to skip periods. I don't have to wonder when it's coming every month, deal with the side effects of it (i.e. anything that happens beyond the shedding of the lining itself)- for me, pain, energy loss, insane levels of bloating (I actually look a few months pregnant- this is not an exaggeration for dramatic or comedic effect, it is a LOT), and reduced patience/short temper due to being in pain and not having the energy necessary to deal with all those annoying little things that happen in a day. I'm not wrong that giving women time off of work to deal with this would be helpful, an equalizer, a reasonable accommodation- my issue is that under our current view of the "ideal worker" it would still make women "worse." No company wants to hire an employee who is going to be working less but getting paid the same because it's not in line with every company's main motive- profit. A worker who can work all the time and not need much in return is the ideal- this is why we have to have a minimum wage. However.

HOWEVER. Who is the best kind of person in this scenario? Yes, there are other intersections here- this person probably doesn't have any physical disabilities that need accommodations. They don't have any mental illnesses. All of their family members are either dead, and they've completed the grieving process, or healthy and well (same for their friends). These people are probably more often thin- the company wants a desirable image to make more profit. They probably speak, as a first language, the language of the country they're in, and maybe in other parts of the world, English (this is a guess on my part- I'm in the English-speaking parts of the world where I wouldn't know about this as an issue). These people do not get sick or have any other ailments that require them to take time off or not work as fast or efficiently. They do not have family obligations. Who is this sounding like, in your estimation? Yes, that's right- healthy adult white men. 

Of course, I'm not new to this. We all know that healthy white men have it pretty good. Where I live, the average healthy white man is more likely to be employed. He is likely to have someone at home to take care of the house and kids, if family life is his jam. He can also opt out with little to no societal repercussions. He will not have to worry about getting pregnant and seeking an abortion or assistance with the child, let alone what that will do to his body. He does not need to ask about maternity leave. He does not have 1-2 days a month where he is in pain, tired, irritable, and bleeding that take away his ability to work. He does not have to worry about walking back to his car in the dark. He also doesn't need any physical accommodations at work. He can use all the standard size everything, drive safely in his car to work in the morning or take the bus without someone implying they'd love to fuck him in a painful way that wouldn't be enjoyable for him and isn't something he particularly wants to think about on the bus on the way to or from work, he can take the stairs, curbs and poorly built ramps are not an issue for him, nor are standard size doors without any electronic assistance. Also relevant here- his clothing options and choices are, for the most part, simple and comfortable. He is not required to style his face or hair. The office or workplace temperature will be comfortable for him. And so on and so forth.

This is because the world is built for men. Almost every last little thing about daily life has been designed with men in mind... including like, all of capitalism. In particular, in North America, things are built for healthy white men. But zeroing in- specifically they are built for men, and a white man will benefit from some things in the same way a black or indigenous man will. And I was trying to imagine an exception being made for women, because that's how everything works. You start with your standard, and then as all those pesky laws and regulations force you to, you make accommodations to let others have access. 

What I'm thinking of here is: what if we used our imagination and knowledge of feminist analyses of history and present-day to think of a world where women were the default? Where the world was designed first with women's unique needs and bodies and lived experiences in mind? What would that kind of a world look like in the first place? What if we went back thousands of years and imagined that all of human history had revolved around a central idea of, say, women being revered as "closer to god" for their ability to "create life" (gestation, birth) which made people believe- oh, they are inherently wiser, more moral, what we all should strive to be. What if instead of (to borrow from marxist feminist analysis in the most basic of ways) a situation where women were exploited for their child-producing abilities to give a man the power to produce as many little "helpers" and "workers" as possible, to give the world in general the ability to make lots and lots more people to force into poorly paid work that made a few people rich... what if instead of that we had some kind of situation where women exploited men for their ability to... I don't know, give their offspring genetic diversity and have the free time to do household chores WITHOUT needing time off for, say, gestation or recovering from birth? What if it became custom for women to keep several men around the house, and sons grew up knowing they would effectively be "sold" into a household with a head woman where they would be expected to perform some kind of menial household labor- cleaning, repairs, cooking, farming, childcare, etc- for the rest of their lives, and all society thought of them was that they were stupid because "how could you possibly know anything, you are nothing but a brute good for sperm and hard labor." How would that translate into the modern day? Maybe a woman would keep one or two men by her side as companions, and there would be markers of that- these men wouldn't age as quickly, they would be dressed fashionably, they would look down their noses and sneer at those poor, working-class men who weren't pretty or lucky enough to be in their station... even though they were still wholly disempowered and had few choices in life.

I'm more than willing to bet someone can poke a million holes in that scenario I just described- and that's fine. I'm primarily interested, though, in holes being poked by women who can think of ways to imagine around it. You'll also notice this scenario is pretty basic- there is still class oppression, for example (something that can't just be "flipped" like sex-based oppression can), and my example is very Euro-centric (in that it loosely describes a simple sex-flipped version of a basic idea of "the way of life in the olden days" in a place like Britain or its North American colonies). I'm not going to deny that, or say that this imagining is a good idea, a better idea, how things "should have been", none of that. I'm simply inviting you to consider: what if women had been centered all along, and men cast as the "other"? What if women's gifts were seen as things we should all strive for, and men were told they should "act like a woman" to succeed in the world? What if many things traditionally associated with men were associated with women?

Why am I asking this? I think it's a good exercise to get people to consider just how made up so many of our social and societal norms are, how they can damage thinking and have people writing think pieces about absurdly anti-science concepts like "brain sex" to justify their oppression, and so on. I think it's healthy for women and girls in particular to think about the ways that the world has failed them and how they would like it to change. I think it can help people reimagine what they ask for when it comes to change. What parts of the system should we change? Is it even possible to change this system to that ideal, or do we have to do a major overhaul? Importantly: I want to get people fired up about the things they want to see so they think about how to make those changes. This involves thinking about why things are the way they are- where did the problem start? How have we let it go unchecked? How can we check it now? I also think it might help some people play out those alternate realities and realize some of the things they thought were incredibly meaningful changes are actually pointless, useless, and helping no one (men wearing makeup and dresses can still participate in your oppression...) and refocus their efforts where they will actually make a difference.

So... tell me truly. How do you think the world could be different if one aspect of women's oppression was gone, never happened, or flipped around?

A little update

 All those things I wrote about struggling with last semester? Including my mental health, my paper, my experiments? I figured them out. They aren't even complete, I just actually figured out how to do them.

Thought I'd just put this here for my future back-reading. Everything turned out okay. Even your hyper-critical lab meeting turned out okay. It's fine. You're smart enough.

You'll figure it out. Just keep trying.

On perfectionism

 What inspired me to write this post was also almost the reason I took down my "how to get into a science-based master's thesis in Canada" post. It was pointed out to me through a surprising format this morning (tiktok, of all places) that sometimes perfectionism can look like setting absurdly high standards for yourself to prevent yourself from moving forward. Standards like, oh, I don't know, not knowing exactly how something is going to pan out before doing it? Like, say, not knowing how to get into grad school or what to say in an email, so not saying anything at all or even bothering to really try? Having the few half-assed attempts I made be met with crushing defeat? Like.... never even bothering to really pour myself into novel writing, or experiment planning, or reading, or anything because I might not be good at it?

I've managed to make an annual habit of making goals for the year this time of year. I used to do this at the start and end of every school year, but since life doesn't really revolve that way anymore, now I do it in January. It's always interesting to look back and see what actually ended up being a priority for me. One of my goals a few years ago was to learn how to actually french braid my hair. Another one was to do a hike solo. Neither of those were accomplished, but it doesn't really bother me. It feels like part of the process of learning how to set good goals- what actually matters to you? Having nicely braided hair doesn't. What are you actually ready to do? Not hike solo. That's okay. I was ready to do other things, and I did them. This past year in particular, many goals were set that the pandemic disrupted. That sucks- they were things I actually wanted to try and manage doing, like going to conferences, and getting a picture of my fiancee and his parents and I all together. But I won't let myself be mad that I didn't magically find a way around them. I accepted my new reality and worked with it.

So this makes me think that this year a goal of mine is to make some number of mistakes. I've long thought about doing this, actually, trying to intentionally make more mistakes- not by going out of my way to do a bad job, but by making mistakes into something I want to happen to meet a goal, I give myself more freedom to try something I'd be bad at where I would make mistakes. I can very much see it being the case that someone suggests an activity or a hobby or literally anything, and I say "hell yeah- it might be a mistake! Then I can add it to the list." Assuming that makes sense. Even something like, say, doing a bolder experiment in the lab, or even just emailing someone to ask for help. If they're mad at me... then it was a mistake. Score! Another one to add to the list.

Maybe that will work and maybe it won't, but I feel like my life would be so much richer if I would just allow myself to fail or fuck up. If I was counting them, trying to accrue as many as possible. If that was my goal, instead of doing all these things perfectly or well... how much bigger could I be?

Something to think about, in any case. If you know me in real life, tell me... how does 52 sound? 120? I like to use nice round numbers so that I can figure out how many mistakes I should be making, but I also want to ease myself into it (or perhaps setting the wrong number will be another mistake I can cross off the list!)

-swegan

I have been Humbled.

 I'm going to open this by unceremoniously and immaturely letting you know I am writing this from within my office at school. One other grad student is here- one I have a complicated relationship with, whose life, as far as I can tell, consists ONLY of coming to school- and since I don't think she is leaving any time soon despite it being 9:15 PM, I'm going to hope she thinks I'm doing something useful, since I don't want her to like, Know Things about me.

I am in the process of going through my old lab books. When I started grad school, I had the benefit of having old lab books left here from previous years I'd been in the lab. I thought they'd be a gold mine! So many protocols I'd done already! What I failed to account for is that I'm an idiot. I NEVER included pertinent details and the books are a mess. Sometimes I could find some info, but it seems that past me just sort of used these as a log. Which, to be fair, is how I was taught to keep a lab book, excepting that stint in GENET 375 which clearly left my brain as quickly as it entered. How ridiculous! I thought at the time, as I'd spend HOURS in the library working on making sure my lab notebooks for this lab course contained everything required for the grade. This is an absurd amount of work! Well...

Look. This lab is like, 80% ukrainains. The thing about people who are recently from Eastern Europe, as far as I can tell, is that they are very harsh and don't have time for soft sentimentality (which definitely makes me the weepy one, given how weepy I am in relation to much softer kinds of people). They're not quite German in their efficiency, but they are intimidating. Back in February I sought help from one of them for an unrelated issue, and he saw fit to tear into me about my lab book being kept badly. I said nothing at the time. I mentioned it offhand to my (yes, also Ukrainian) supervisor and she said "we'll take a look at it." With her, I've learned, this means that it will not ever be looked at again unless someone else brings it to her attention. So nobody said anything.

Upon using an internet forum (facebook group) to ask my fellow grad students this question, I was rewarded with a lot of answers that said the same thing: Yes, you have been keeping your lab book wrong. Well, sure, said I, growing more flustered. That's what they think. But this system is working for me! It's just a bit disorganized, but it flows better. I need to write these things down. I need to write them down in this order. I know I'm including all the right details now, not like past me who was an idiot who kept her lab books the same way but this time is somehow different, better.

In case you haven't figure out where this is going: it's not different or better. For the past two and a half years I have been keeping my lab books exactly as poorly as I did in undergrad- in HIGH SCHOOL. I thought that because I was older now and had one degree under my belt, I was somehow Smarter and Better- but I'm not. I'm just as stupid as I ever was.

Much as the comment to me in February about my lab book could have been better phrased (even a modicum of kindness and empathy would have done wonders), it was correct. I have been keeping my lab books entirely wrong and that man was right to call me on it.

Today I finally embarked upon a journey into my lab books, thinking SURELY I could organize them into a system that would make sense to some future user in this new format. And I couldn't use them. Listen to me: I did the work, within the past 5 years, I have presented it at conferences, I have presented it in lab meetings, I have presented it to my committee, and I can't figure out what I did. There are calculations with no context attached to them. Which MTT assay was that for? There are so many wasted lines of pure garbage updates I should have been able to phase out within the first 6 months- about when I last split something, changed media, when something got infected... Let me tell you, for the past 6 months I have NOT been recording this information and my cells have stayed just as alive as ever. I have also saved myself a lot of page space.

This is, of course, really fucking embarrassing. I've changed the format I keep my lab books in now, and it does make more sense, while still giving me room to make notes for myself, do calculations, etc. I suppose this is part of the process of being a student, and if anything this is just proof that getting a PhD doesn't make me smart (even if I didn't get a master's in between), that thinking very logically and systematically doesn't always translate to my behavior being logical or systematic. I've been keeping a fucking journal at the bench for the past few years. And while yes, I caught it early enough to be able to produce some sort of guide for whatever sad sack has to use this book after me, and to fix the latter half of my research work so that it IS somewhat comprehensible... it's not a good look for me. 

At the end of the day, the format I'm using now still isn't even what I was told to do back in February. That format assumes that I do each experiment in a one-shot, and I'm not sure where that lab manager got it from, or whether he explained it badly, or whether it works for the kind of work he does, but I've adapted it so it will work for me, and I'm sure it will change over time. I've been lazy with details, keeping things in my head and letting them go when I'm done with them. And now I earnestly have to try to change the entire way I work.

I'm also not sure how to end this except to say if you too were thinking of Icarus, you're not the only one.

Not to be dramatic but I get the news fatigue now

 I know we're all like, fatigued of hearing about news fatigue, but I'm honestly surprised it took me this long. THIS long to finally acknowledge that a big goddamn drain on my energy is the pandemic and the way it, as it has done for everyone else globally, has leached its greedy little fingers down to every last bit of my life. I don't think I realized how much I, as an introvert, needed all that social interaction I was getting. All that stopping by my friend's house for dinner and hanging out, all that camping, all those trips with friends, the occasional parties where I could sit next to people on the couch and drink 5 hard ciders, the dances I didn't go to because I was burnt out by them then. I don't regret that, but you know... what I would give to go dancing now.

Lately it's really been too much to think about. Redbeard and I want to get married in about a year and a half and it feels impossible to plan. How many people can we even have there? If we want to do it in the summer, will things be easier? Do I have to capitulate to an outdoor wedding? What if it rains on the day of? Do I just send 100 people home? Do my extended relatives understand that this means I can't invite them anymore? That it's more important to me to have there the people who are close to me now? How do we book a venue? How do we plan to do a n y t h i n g this way? Will people be vaccinated then? How many guests do we think will be in that category? Fuck, I can't even figure out if we can have an engagement party this summer. Where would we do it? Who would we invite? No one can travel very far and we have so few friends here, and of those who can travel, so many are not in a position to be staying in a hotel just for one party. 

I used to talk a lot about how I didn't really picture my own wedding. I still don't. But the one thing I had started to picture was the reception. A big room with string lights, a room with music that increases in volume as the night goes on, a dance floor full of people I love absolutely getting the fuck down and not giving a shit about what they look like, getting lightly trashed with friends, my hair coming loose and sticking to sweat on the back of my neck, Redbeard smiling and laughing at me, wondering how many good candids our photographer will get. A bachelorette party, I had pictured... a weekend of playing dumb drinking games with friends, making big group meals, playing loud music and being stupid all together, introducing some friends to other friends. What do I get now? What do any of us get? A quiet meal together? Socially distanced partner dancing? Individually wrapped cupcakes? Do we ever get to do it normally or is this virus just here now? Like, forever?

And it's hard to just be like okay, I'll compartmentalize this and think about other things but I can't. Every last thing is tainted. I can't focus on lab work because I worry all the time the lab will be shut down again. I can't watch TV and unwind because nobody socially distances on TV and that's enough to break my immersion these days. I can't play sims because I get jealous of them and how they can just have friends over on a whim. The one time I managed to get away was going camping, but even THAT had the spectre of my return to a mom-imposed quarantine looming over it. Sometimes reading is enough, I guess, until I remember that I can't go to the damn library anymore. I can't go fucking anywhere these days, and even when I do, it doesn't feel the same. Is it ever going to be the same again? Did it take this long for the grief to hit me because I can't keep living in survival mode anymore?

All of it makes me think of the people on social media who rail against masks, against closures, against restrictions and limits. Maybe they're scared too. Maybe they're looking for any last little thing to hold onto that means this won't be forever, things aren't forever changed and altered, that this isn't just the way things are from now on- indefinitely and forever. Some little way we were wrong, that we overlooked something, that what we're doing isn't actually necessary, and I wonder if their ignorance is just some kind of protective mechanism so they don't have to stare their anxiety in the face and feel it, full force. I can't even say I'm doing that with the amount of avoidance I'm doing, but it's not like I get to take two weeks off to just like, grieve. We're all grieving. 

In the beginning I think I thought this wouldn't happen in the way people think no one they know will ever get cancer. Except then I met someone who has cancer. I mean, I guess a tumor isn't quite the same, but I digress. And then I fell in love with him and got engaged and I cannot tell you how much I have changed, living with that. Eventually it's just background noise, and you just accept there is nothing you can do and enjoy what you can while you can. The anxiety is shelved somewhere in the recesses of my brain- only pulled out when something happens that might give me cause to worry again. A seizure, a bad headache, a new MRI. The rest of the time I can't function with that worry open in my mind. 

I guess that's enough to give me some hope. Someday I might be able to shelve this too, to accept that this is how things are, and all I can do is work with it. But right now I'm angry, so fuck it.

-swegan