prime

This will be even less responsible than usual, more disjointed. There just are so many various things and I need venting. Twitter would work but getting now cross-linked with people reading that. Usually a good thing.

Intensive. Submitting two papers this week, two “as soon as possible”. 19 papers published since early 2018. Lots of grant funding (I cannot use it myself but I can use it to hire minions). Invited talks. May end up being selected as a representative towards funding bodies by my institute and by one of our consortia. As a junior PI, openly and non-passingly trans, with purple hair and witchy styles and not speaking the local language. I I pull all of this off it will be magical and I will gain strength from it.

Today is all meetings – first two, other people were no-shows. Now having coffee and breakfast before voice therapy appointment, thereafter another meeting, then another, and need at some point to drop by the office to collect my post. In my apartment is building dust and no hot water, but I met the builders and maybe they fix the latter. They know me well now as the crazy girl who still lives in the building as they repair. I hope they see me as a girl, at least. I should try to do laundry before flying off again tomorrow. Last few days spent in meetings in other locations. Tomorrow random teleconference, because perhaps I can help with yet another Cell revision and maybe earn an authorship that way.

Friday Copenhagen, meeting random frenemies and collaborators, then an old friend. Who suggested we spend a weekend there together. Whom I had a crush on once. I think. I don’t think he is making any moves on me. If he did, I would… probably respond. But mostly I think we will talk medicine and fractals and altruism and stuff like that. Which will be great.

Needing to edit the ischaemic heart disease MS this evening to make it saner, the other authors need my input. And sanity check of our own MS submitted today. My students make me so proud in this, because they really did deliver, better than I had expected. I feel warm pride and appreciation for them, want to make sure they all benefit also. And I need to get back on track with the first Cell revision (is it still Cell though? might be EHJ now?), and the revision about the mutant cyborg mice. All this-week urgent. Almost. And get on top of what I should do to help with the institute funding review. And make slides for Friday in Copenhagen. And not lose track of the creation of a data repository, need to somehow work out how to do that, if they give me an outwards-facing web server. Which I most definitely will name after a Sumerian deity.

And at some point, need to sleep. And start fasting again. I am growing heavier and I hate this overweight with all my heart. And get my boots cleaned somehow. And resole my other shoes, and look if the boot model I saw a while back actually exist in Big Foot Girl sizes somewhere. And get a second purse to put small change in so I can easily just give that to beggars instead of it accumulating.

Aside from all the people I long since should write back to, there is at least three. With one, there is clearly interest in me, and who knows how I will respond? I fear I will not be able to, and disappoint. But I also do want it. I think. With another, I am surprised to find myself so strongly drawn, in the absence of any good ways to followup. With one, just glad to be in touch, and perhaps now after all my crises lately I will be able to better just witness. There is another where I am not really sure what to do. I feel she might respond, but that I should not risk hurting her if I am the least bit unsure. Perhaps I should only move with people that I feel really strongly for, but there are also those people where whatever can be there is the right thing. And ultimately, despite all hopes and postures, and despite bonds I do have, there is still unfulfilled loneliness in me.

Three weekends ago, did chemicals with a maybe-crush in the toilet stalls of KitKat, it helped me ride out her relative non-interest at this point, I need to remember that feeling of radical acceptance so I can return to it whenever rejection makes me sad. Radical acceptance is also the name of the game of this Tolle philosopher two friends want me to read, alongside that of the anxiety self-help book I am reading. Two weekends ago, almost wept at the dancefloor until some strange man started grinding. I accepted. His pants were wet to the extent I think he already must have come once. His kisses were uncomfortably stubbly and crude, he ignored my breasts, we had no language in common. I followed him to the club bathroom stall, needed to use some force to have him understand I would not blow him (which I knew only when the chance was, literally, in my face). Gave him a very unsatisfying handjob, first time I do, mostly because I felt I needed to give him something he wanted or it would get awkward. Felt edifying and perhaps validating, but in the also mostly lonely.

Need to get apartment in order for a good reason too. One beloved person visits soon for the first time ever in Babylon. And another will visit soon thereafter, and I have hopes of being in a calmer state then and just sharing that time with them, seeing who I am when I am not haunted and when I am not lonely. I realize more and more strongly that if I could only be less stressed, and more rested, I could somehow once again do those things I could in the past – create, describe. Have ideas. I will claim it back, and share that time with my loved ones, and see what experiences we make. Whether I succeed or not, this I do much look forward to.

Oh and also, I am beginning to seriously worry if a job applicant is stalking me. I understand enthusiasm but there is something over it that somehow makes me more concerned than I otherwise would. Will see where it goes. Maybe it is all good.

So much at once. I feel so tired. I must get through this. I will. It will be good. One step at a time. Staying in the present. Remembering whenever I can to stay proud, and to act so I can stay proud.

Continuing forward.