A buzzing sound in the winter

I would like to share something with you from my recent adventures in navel-gazing. I postulate that my temperament harbors a preoccupation with contrary hypotheses and inconvenient information. The more sacred or personal the object in question, the more fascinating its inquisition becomes. While in the right context such a pattern could render its practitioner useful to the world as a slaughterer of sacred cows, from some angles it seems analogous to a hobby of exploring one’s internal organs via steak knife. 

Sometimes I fear I mostly just harass the livestock (both sacred and profane) without substantially altering the headcount. Agitated cattle don’t do anybody much good.

Nevertheless, the habit does offer incentives. A little over a year ago I read a book by the name of I Told Me So. As stated on the cover, it discusses self-deception and the Christian life. A portion of the dividends delivered by self-critical interests (and readings) come by feeling myself farther along on my pilgrimage to the sagacity of self-knowledge. The other part comes by telling you about it. It feels nice to fancy that I understand my blind spots and recognize my community’s dark back doors. Naturally I planned a blog post reviewing the book to share the joy of exposing hidden things that we might not wish to see—or at least the erotic thrill of almost exposing them. I read an a hypothesis somewhere that the curious human pleasure in rollercoasters, cliff-jumping and spicy foods owes to experiencing stimuli associated with danger while knowing that there is none. Perhaps it’s a cheaply bought sense of victory, processed on the visceral level?

Soon after finishing the book, my focus turned to a new relationship, and the blog languished. Despite the relationship and other life developments worthy of gratitude, for a while I’ve felt a bit stagnant. Even before getting laid off I suspect I was feeling a need to accomplish something beautiful and substantial, or at least get entranced by a New Big Project. And then with the suspension of research at my company, I had my NBP: I needed a job. But unemployment decorated with the occasional failed interview is a deflating existence. Being new doesn’t necessarily help me with buoyancy either. No, dense things sink. A sense of ignorance and dependence doesn't feel very nice.

A New Big Project visited me a few weeks ago. The Principal Investigator of my lab sent out an email to see if anyone would like to help write a scientific review that he’d been invited to submit. The topic statement was infested with jargon; I wasn’t sure I knew what it meant. I volunteered. A few days later as I came into work, I overhead the boss mentioning my name to one of the postdocs. Said postdoc replied that they would talk to Tom soon. The boss gave me a glance on his way out. I had been placed on a team of 3 to write the review, headed by another newbie. 

That fellow, a different postdoc, sent me an article about how to write research articles. He also left on my desk a copy of On Writing by Stephen King and asked if I could either take notes for him or find him a summary online. I responded that I would probably read a few chapters and run out of steam somewhere in the middle.

  

I feel like the book did me good. It stoked my will to write. The advice seemed decidedly more useful than the last writing class I took. I’ll post some basic notes from it soon. Soon I will also be telling you more about that book on self-deception.