A mostly good day.

Oddly, I was in a good mood tonight when I logged in, despite having had two experiments today that basically failed (in the sense that I couldn't evaluate what I wanted to test).

Oh well. I can do them again. Hooray for non-apocalyptic failures.

Went to a talk, which was interesting, and gave a talk, which was fun.

That makes for a pretty decent day right there. I did some stuff, and most of it didn't suck.

Unfortunately the cold medicine I was on all day made me feel sort of anxious and hyped up. At one point I actually went in the womens' bathroom and jumped up and down for a few minutes in an effort to get rid of nervous energy. It only helped in the short term.

Spent a few minutes feeling sorry for myself for stupid bad luck things of the past, but then decided my new mantra is going to be to not waste any more time doing that. Am going to see if I can stick to it.

But, as often happens to me when I interact with more/different people than usual, or people I haven't seen in a while, my mirror neurons are still vibrating with things that were said.

One person asked "Did you get a job yet?"

Uh, no. I'm still here, aren't I?

That one is still sticking with me. On the one hand, I know she's asking because she thinks I deserve one. On the other hand, doesn't she think I would have told her if I had? Does she think asking is going to, what, guilt me into applying to more places?

Someone else was complaining about having too much pressure to perform. This person has so many resources, it literally makes me ill to hear any complaints from the likes of them at all.

Anyway... then I logged in to Blogger tonight and someone wrote in to say what bad luck s/he's had, and I thought yeah, I feel sorry for you, that's gotta suck.

Actually it kind of made me smile because the person sounded like someone I would get along with, or at least be amused by. Always good to know I am not the only one with crummy luck. This is why I like listening to depressed musicians. To know I am not alone.

But, evidently it's us against them. Some anonymous person, maybe the same one who has written this several times before, maybe someone else, wrote in to say that I sound so bitter and unpleasant and maybe that's why I haven't gotten a job. Isn't that sweet?

Sadly, this particular person sounds like they think they're offering a new suggestion, that I should give up on getting an academic job. I suspect they really think they're helping with this novel idea!

What amused me most about that particular comment, in response to I'm not sure which post, was that they were telling me I seemed unpleasant, while the author him/herself actually came off sounding unbelievably obnoxious.

Pot, meet kettle. Glass houses and stones?

Perhaps I shouldn't take these things so seriously.

I was listening to NPR this afternoon and they were reading excerpts from one of these blogs by a young woman in Iraq (sorry, I missed which one it was, is there more than one?). She was saying she literally dreads going to sleep, because every morning there's so much bad news.

[aside: Very sad that I write a blog but spend so little time reading other blogs that I have to hear about them on NPR. Must make more of an effort to keep up.]

I've never felt quite that much dread, which I assume is some measure of how awful it really must be to live in a war-torn country with limited electricity, stupid American soldiers everywhere and car bombs going off all the time. But I do know what it's like to dread opening your email in-box. I wouldn't want that to happen to moderating the comments for this blog, or it would defeat the whole purpose of blogging.

All of that said, and trying not to be negative, I wish I were better at blowing off other people's negativity. Even when I'm relatively up, it's hard not to let a couple of bad things get to me in my fragile bubble of mostly good stuff.