My worthless ego

Ugh, so I spent the whole day today reading and thinking hard, and trying to meta-analyze a huge pile of confusing data. I made some progress, but my brain is tired so I'm giving up on getting anything else done today. I hate how I feel lazy if I'm not working all the time, and I can't just be satisfied that I made some progress. Progress is good! Guilt = bad.

Then I checked my email - I really shouldn't bother doing that at all, it never seems to put me in a better mood, only a worse one.

This time I had a message sent to all postdocs on campus, announcing, among other things, the 'creation' of a few services I had personally orchestrated setting up a couple years ago when we started the postdoc association. We didn't have the resources to extend it beyond voluntary participation, mostly because the administration wouldn't cooperate (privacy issues, etc). And we literally went door-to-door to set some of this stuff up. It was hard work, but we thought it was important, so we did all the legwork ourselves. Literally.

Anyway I was just annoyed because as usual there is absolutely no mention of the contributions of myself and others who set this stuff up in the first place, and instead it probably sounds to most postdocs like the administration finally got their act together (which is partially true, but still).

Anyway I'm just annoyed because it feels, as usual, like no good deed goes unpunished, and I should give up ever getting any credit for anything that I do, whether it be for postdoc policy or science or whatever. I don't know why, I just really want some kind of acknowledgment once in a while. I wish I didn't. It would be so much easier.