Shaken

Feeling a bit shaken up right now. I am so nervous these days about my PhD. Its time for me to submit my papers asap. But I don’t have enough for my papers and don’t even have a lab right now. To have a chance at the fellowships that I plan to apply to around the end of this year, I will need publications. Which I don’t have.

It’s time to wrap my PhD, but what do I do after that? Will anyone give me a job? Will I be able to make any money at all? Will someone give me a postdoc? Do I want to do a postdoc?

Can I get high pay industry jobs? Or any industry jobs at all?

I can think of some scicomm roles but they won’t pay me so well and I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do. Even for that I have to first finish PhD for which I will need god damn papers.

Gosh I wish I could just do research out of curiosity without this god damn chase behind papers. If I didn’t need papers, there are other 3d experiments that I am eager to do. But I can't because I have to work on the bloody manuscript, which just doesn't have enough data. My guide is crazy she wants me to publish with so little who would even accept it? Or respect it if its published?

First the microscope was late by 1.5 years, then the live adaptor stopped working and now we don’t even have a lab for God’s sake. And then I keep getting injured and keep travelling. And I want to run and eat healthy and meditate and meet friends and meet family and be helpful to others at work…..How am I supposed to finish my manuscripts and my thesis amidst all this ruckus? It feels like in trying to do it all, I’m doing nothing at all and going nowhere at all.

I don’t have a life already I have grey hair already and I’m getting so fat and lazy and slow and have no friends. Is it age? Am I stressed? Is it hormones? Is it just a passing cloud?Or is this how life is supposed to be? Or is something wrong with me? Y’all this is making me go mad.

I can’t fit in. Can’t be like the others. I don’t like pizza and beer and parties and movies. I like books and quiet and sunshine and running. I don’t like to talk too much unless I feel heard which never happens. And I know I am silent and introverted and all that but I do want to be heard and understood. Even now, I am typing all these vulnerable thoughts into a blank screen that doesn’t understand anything at all. That sums it all up, I guess.