Sometimes the thrill of uncovering the true nature of the Universe doesn’t quite last all day. Today… well it’s really boring and slow. I tried to work – I really did. I stared at a paper I am writing for at least an hour but nothing came out of my head and into the document. Wait, I lied; there was a spelling correction I think.
So why am I telling you this? You came here for astronomy news, right? Well sometimes my PhD is really very slow and for some reason, I need you to know that. Currently my university projects are:
- Editing conference proceedings for .Astronomy
- Pestering speakers to hand in conference proceedings for .Astronomy
- Writing a paper dealing with emission from infalling protostars
- Organising the Star Formation Christmas Dinner (a Mexican for some reason)
- Waiting for the response from a telescope proposal (I’ve managed to do this one all day!)
- Creating the new Observatory website
- Writing a cool web app that simulates an aspect of star formation
As you can see, there is plenty to do. I just can’t do it today. I can’t focus, I can’t think and nor can I write a decent blog post either.
Is anyone else out there having a witless day? If you are – may I suggest going home? It’ll be more productive. I have a meeting at 4 so am obliged to sit and wait. Maybe I’ll get so bored, I’ll actually do some work.
Update: Maybe not.
let me tell you what i do in such situations:
watch a sci-fi movie: star wars, star trek, contact, starship troopers, even doom [it is a B movie, but hey, i heard astronauts in space read lots of junk too when they have spare time, they don't read physics or the like]
play a sci-fi game: starcraft, eve online, whatever.
read a sci-fi novel: from asimov to star wars fanfiction online.
after 8-10 hours of this stuff, i get enthusiastic again.
My problem is that there is often too much to focus on… I won’t even try to list, but let it be known I read/check out about 150-200 things in my RSS reader each day.
But yes, sometimes everything is so much less exciting than the latest Neal Stephenson novel, a revisiting of Diablo II, making a stick-of-butter costume for Halloween, etc.
I feel ya Rob