Physicists spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It’s an occupational hazard. To excel in physics is to embrace doubt while walking the winding road to clarity. The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.

But en route to explanation—during their search for new frameworks to address outstanding questions—theorists must tread with considered step through the jungle of bewilderment, guided mostly by hunches, inklings, clues, and calculations. And as the majority of researchers have a tendency to cover their tracks, discoveries often bear little evidence of the arduous terrain that’s been covered. But don’t lose sight of the fact that nothing comes easily. Nature does not give up her secrets lightly.

— Brian Greene in The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, first paragraph of Chapter 16. [Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004].

— Wikipedia article about the book

— Amazon link The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (affiliate link)

Overall, I’ve been really enjoying this book for how it keeps my head in the space I need it to be in for my thesis.  Sometimes I just open it randomly to read whatever I happen upon, and sometimes I scan for specific topics.  I have almost made it all the way through sequentially, though, or at least I think I have.  I might have to read it again, though, but that’s okay because I really have enjoyed all that I’ve read.

I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about spacetime and the current state of research (well, at least, up to 2004).  I don’t think much has changed since then, except that the Large Hadron Collider is up and running, and it hasn’t (as of this blog post) found anything yet to prove or disprove any of the theories mentioned in this book (specifically: no Higgs particle has been found yet, no evidence of miniature black holes being formed, and no evidence of the extra dimensions required for string theory).

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RT @timtfj:

Passive [voice] makes the facts harder to absorb. Disengages the reader.

Harder than in normal non-scientific writing, I mean.

I wonder if anyone’s done the experiment: ”One version of the paper was prepared in passive voice and 3rd person in order to test the reader’s information retention. We wrote the other one in 1st person to test how much you remember.”

You’d take an actual science paper, & keep it exactly the same except for editing all the passives out of one version, then test how easily & accurately people could follow it, what criteria they used to evalute it, etc.

Results would probably vary depending on whether it was a paper in the reader’s own discipline.

—[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

My responses:

Interesting experiment idea, and well-described as well. ;) In that case though, the “we” seems more correct. My case is more vague.

I think passive voice works for mathematical research because it doesn’t matter who sets it up, or even if anyone does.

—[1][2]

I think the results of above experiment described by Tim would also depend on whether the norm for the test paper’s discipline tends towards passive voice or active explanations of what the researchers actually did.

In mathematical physics, there are a lot of situations where it seems more natural (in my humble opinion) to use passive voice.  Specifically, I’m finding this to be true when the only other choice is what I’ve recently learned (thanks @candace_nast) can be called an “inclusive we”, where I mean the reader and myself, for example when I am demonstrating something so that “we can see” whatever it is I’m demonstrating. I’d much prefer to take myself out of the picture, and just state what is being demonstrated, letting the reader decide whether s/he sees it too.

If, instead of opting for passive voice or inclusive we, I take too much responsibility for what I am sharing, it may seem like I am the only person who has ever figured out what I am demonstrating. Obviously, I do need to take some credit for my work, because the whole point of a thesis or dissertation is to put my work on a pedestal. However, I think it would be too distracting to do this within the body of the explanation, where I really want the demonstrated concepts to be the focus. The math speaks for itself, after all, and would still demonstrate the same things whether I was the one who did the calculation, or you did, or we did together, or nobody did it at all.

Perhaps I am just struggling with modesty, which is why I am tempted at times to use “we” to mean my fellow researchers and myself, even though it blurs my own contributions with those of my collaborators. Maybe this is okay for my first draft, after which I can ask my advisor what parts he thinks are my own extensions to his work, and so they would be better described by a more personal pronoun.  Of course, this brings up the question of whether I should then choose the overly-formal method of referring to myself as “the author”, as awkward as that tends to sound…

Ah, the dilemmas that interfere with research are so much fun, aren’t they? :)

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1. Getting involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Going against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
3. Holding an important meeting the day after St. Patrick’s Day.

via meetingboy

:)

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- by Qrystal

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Bleh.

I used to think it was a safe choice of resolution, because the Best Me is always the one that I am being, because there is no other Me by which to judge.  Eventually, however, I started to realize that I wasn’t actually being the Best Me I Could Be, and that I didn’t know how to fix it.

So I started to research about how to procrastinate less (via many many websites filled to the brim with fantastic advice), how to plan the tasks I want to do (via many many websites filled to the brim with fantastic advice), how to manage my time (via many many websites filled to the brim with fantastic advice), and how to work towards living a rewarding life (via many many websites filled to the brim with fantastic advice).

If you couldn’t tell by the sarcastic repeating of the same phrase in parentheses, I’m pretty sure I spent more time researching all of these subjects than I spent doing research for my thesis, and it’s now been almost seven years since I started my graduate degree… though I should point out that I abandoned my first thesis topic after three years, and I’m just over three years into my second topic, which feels about half done and accelerating (unless I’m feeling really stuck, in which case it feels like I’m about 10% done with zero forward momentum).

So what happened with all the studies of how to be a Better Me?  I’ve thought a lot, read a lot (sometimes writing about my findings), tried a lot of time management systems, made mindmaps, tried motivating myself with a target date and even a five-year plan, checked whether antidepressants (combined with counselling) would help me kick the lack of motivation, did a 30-day trial to see if I could stick to something (NaNoWriMo) and complete it, and I even took part in a weekly discussion group that explored Moods and how they influence and are influenced by behaviours and thoughts.  Of all of them, I think the last one was the most effective, perhaps because the ideas were reinforced weekly… but I still feel like I’m not my Best Me.

I have to remember that I’m definitely a much Better Me than I was, and that I’m always improving.  I’m kinda like my thesis, in that way:  any effort always improves the status of the project, whether it’s a writing project or a self-improvement project.  It just sucks that I feel stuck, still.

Or do I actually feel this way?  Could it be that I just think I’m stuck?  I guess when I sit down to actually do some work, I kinda know what I’m going to do next, so… no, maybe I don’t really think I’m stuck.  I’m just behaving like I’m stuck.  Whoa… I’m reminded of a triangle diagram from the Mood Group:

This behaviour of stuckitude influences and is influenced by thoughts and moods, so which came first?  Maybe I feel stuck because, looking at my behaviour, one would think I must be feeling stuck, because I certainly seem like I’m stuck. (Suddenly, I am reminded that I was just reading about self-perception theory a few weeks ago.) Or maybe I’m stuck in my thinking, unable to bring myself to think past the stuckness, and so my behaviour and emotions are following suit.

What’s more important than what caused the stuckness is the fact that there are three ways to mitigate it:

1. I can change the thoughts telling me I’m stuck, by acknowledging that I have in fact been making progress, and so there isn’t as much evidence supporing the fact that I am stuck.
2. I can change the behaviour of being stuck just by starting to do stuff that I think I’m stuck on, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes.
3. I can change the feelings… somehow.  Hmm.  Maybe this is where Havi’s discussions on destuckification are most useful.  I can just acknowledge where I am, in a kind and compassionate way, and let the mood evolve how it will… while I’m applying steps 1 and 2, of course.

I just noticed that this list shows ‘behaviour’ in the middle, which seems odd because it is the thing that is most urgent for me to change.  I guess this way it’s sandwiched between ‘thoughts’ and ‘feelings’, which lets it be exposed to different influences on both sides.

So, I guess I mostly need to stop thinking I’m stuck, and just let myself go ahead and do stuff despite some residual stuck feelings.

This brings me to my actual, concrete New Year’s Resolution, which isn’t about my thesis or even, necessarily, about overcoming my stuckness, but which could be a tool that helps me do this.  My resolution is to choose three Most Important Tasks (MITs) to do each day, and then do them.

Doesn’t that sound easy?  It’s also Specific, Measurable, Attainable (if I choose appropriate tasks each day, of course), Reasonable, and Timely (because I’ve recently learned just how much I appreciate confirming to myself that I’ve done some important things in a day).  It’s a SMART New Year’s Resolution.

The choice of tasks to do each day is totally flexible, which my freedom-loving inner brat loves immensely.  I can take into account which day of the week it is, what things are most stressing me on my to do list, and of course what things I really want to push forward in order to make progress on important life-changing projects (like, say, my thesis, or my future business).  But I only have to pick three, which feels like a nice number because I’ve always liked it, and because it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

Of course, I can always do more than three (for example, writing this blog post wasn’t one of the most important things, but really feels good to be doing) and there will always be important everyday stuff that isn’t quite an MIT because it will probably get done anyways (like showering, catching up in email, or doing dishes or laundry… unless it’s a weekend or I’m sick, and getting going on even those things is difficult).  In general, the MITs are meant to be special activities, special because I’ve chosen them to be so.

Anyways, here’s hoping this notion helps me get through my stuckness!  I’m going to go do item number three on my MIT list now (spending one hour reviewing where I left off in my thesis at the end of last year), and when I’m done that, I will have four successful days in a row of accomplishing my resolution.  Cheers!

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This is a diagram of mental states, as developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, showing how challenge level and skill level contribute to various mental states.  I found it when looking up Anxiety, something I am trying to understand in myself.

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The new retweet feature has a lot of potential, but it’s being overshadowed by the fact that it isn’t the same as the organic retweeting that emerged from how we use twitter.  It seems the main problem is that people expect retweets to be more like forwarding, that is, with commentary.  What I’ve noticed is that the new RT seems to be more like what favouriting could be, if that was to be enhanced drastically.

Perhaps you should consider moving some of this exciting new functionality to be a part of fav’ing instead, turning *that* into another way of sharing tweets with others.  Make it possible for us to opt in to seeing other people’s favourites (perhaps on a sliding scale: none, a few, some, most, or all), and then *those* tweets could appear in our tweetstream with the original author’s avatar and name.  After all, this way is more like passing on of the original message—and, I wouldn’t have to see the original more than once, if this were to make use of that intriguing aspect you’ve incorporated into new retweets.

Then, you could change RT to be a little bit more like the way a reply is, especially the part where it links to the original post.  You could pre-populate the status field with

RT @whoever: “(insert entirety of the tweet content here)”

and use something like the “in_reply_to_status_id” part of the reply-to link to make a connection back to the original tweet.  This would overcome the false attribution issue with oldschool RT: if someone *really* retweets someone, it will be proven with an actual link.

Best of all, this proposed change would allow people the freedom to comment on tweets in a way that is different from replying.  It would also be different from “wishing others could see the original tweet” (which is what new retweet seems to want to do, but my proposed change to faves would do instead).  The downside of commenting, currently, is that tweets often have to be edited in order to fit.  However, if there was a link retained between the retweet (aka the forwarded quote) and the original, people wouldn’t feel like they need to try and retain most of the context, because the context would exist as a link to the original.  So, the character limit wouldn’t be as strained, because we could quote just the part we want to emphasize, like so:

RT @ev: “We may add commentary.”  Yes! Please do! For some of us, it’s the main reason we retweet!

[in_reply_to_status_id=5845730902&in_reply_to=ev]

Note that I cut out the part of ev’s tweet that didn’t apply to what I wanted to comment on, but I still am passing on the part of the quote from ev that I want to share with my followers, as well as adding my own comment to it.

This change I’m proposing would still allow for tracking the retweets made of the original, as seen on the “Retweets by others” page (which would pretty much be unchanged from what it is now).  However, on hovering over the images of the people who retweeted, one could easily review how each person had edited it, and whether there were additional comments added!  I’m also proposing that there be a way to review who has faved the things I’ve said, or what other tweets my followees have faved recently, so there could be a set of pages much like the new Retweets pages, but for Faves as well!

So, in summary, I think there are a lot of great ideas incorporated into this new feature, but that they aren’t all appropriate for the way that many of us use the retweeting ability.  An extension of favouriting would be able to make use of some of these great ideas, while freeing up retweets to be more attuned to the organic way that they originally emerged.

If you like my idea, please feel free to give feedback to twitter (using the link they give near where they say, “What do you think of the retweet feature?”) and refer to this link to my zendesk post: http://help.twitter.com/requests/710688. Thanks for the support, and for not just merely complaining like most other people are doing!

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Oh xkcd, you make me laugh so often, but it’s especially potent when the content is so timely.  Boo iphone, yay androids!

Currently trying to resist, with all my might, going out and getting myself an htc hero. However, I can’t quite pin down why I’m resisting so much.  Am I afraid it will distract me from my work?  Maybe I need to set it as a reward for accomplishing something awesome, like… catching up in my marking.  Yeah.  That sounds good!

OK better go get marking, then!

UPDATE:  I got the htc hero on November 25, 2010. Yes, it distracted me, but I think it mostly distracted me from my other distractions.  My uber-distractability is what’s to blame for the distractions, not the device itself.  Oh, note that I am calling it a device, not a phone, because I probably only use the phone aspect 1% of the time.

ALSO: There is more to this comic than meets the eye… you must go to the site to hover over the comic and read the punchline!

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This month, I’m trying something that might sound counterintuitive, but as soon as I thought of the advantages, there was no talking me out of it.  Ever hear of NaNoWriMo, the internationally-acclaimed National Novel Writing Month?  I had heard of it last year, probably from people talking about it on twitter, and thought it sounded like a great idea to do after my thesis was done.  If I love writing so much, I would probably really enjoy the practice in letting a story flow from my mind to fingers to page, right?

I put the idea aside for almost a year, but then near the end of October of this year I was reminded of it again.  This time, I couldn’t get out of my head the fact that there were SO many advantages to be had from a time-limited, word-count-driven writing project.   NaNoWriMo encourages intense output, ignoring the inner editor until the month is over.  Since it seemed that part of my problem with my thesis is all the second-guessing I go through in order to get a single sentence written, let alone a paragraph, it seemed that turning off the inner editor might really help the ideas flow out of my head with less resistance.  All it would take, I figured, was practice.  So, Awesome Advantage #1 to doing NaNoWriMo right now is that I will get a lot of practice in turning ideas into words on a page.

In order to succeed in NaNoWriMo, one must be diligent in writing about 1700 words a day, every day.  Diligence is something that I’ve struggled to cultivate in myself, especially when it comes to making regular progress on my thesis.  In October, I started keeping track of the days that I actually did an hour or more of thesis work, trying to make a chain of accomplishment that could be the start of a beautiful habit (since research seems to indicate that it takes 21 days to form a habit).  My longest chain was 4 days in a row, but in my defense, the weekends were pretty busy… but that was really just an excuse.  There wasn’t any real incentive to keep working, except the vague promise that I would be done faster if I worked more often.  On the other hand, in NaNoWriMo, if I skip a day I might sacrifice the entire project.  So, the diligence here is crucial to success, and that’s a great lesson that I’d love to carry into the rest of my life, especially my thesis work.  Thus, Awesome Advantage #2 is that practicing diligence will help me, right now.

Of course, I realized that if I were to write some crazy-fun fiction story, I might distract myself from my thesis so much that this exercise hinders instead of helps.  The last thing I need right now is yet another thing to take up my time, and I know I have the tendency to jump into other projects and forget about my thesis.  However, for NaNoWriMo, I was struck by the idea that perhaps I could write a story about a girl who is writing her thesis, and that the girl could be me!  To further the plot, I would have to work on my thesis!  So this is Awesome Advantage #3:  the story can’t progress unless the thesis does.

Now, this idea sort of goes against what NaNoWriMo encourages, because it’s meant to be more of a creative endeavour than a journaling one.  I even found evidence that other people frowned upon the idea of writing an autobiography, because it’s not technically a novel, which is defined as a lengthy work of fiction.  In order to get around this, to make it at least feel a little bit like it’s a story that could be featured in a work of fiction, I decided to write about myself in third person.  My main character may be me, but I call her “she”, and I’m observing her actions and thoughts instead of merely experiencing them for myself.  Somehow, this makes me less likely to spend the time wallowing in the guilt about things that haven’t been done, although that still does happen.  Mostly, though, I can see my main character consciously turning her attention to the things that actually did get done, and when she acknowledges her successes, her mood improves and she feels less resistance to moving forward in everything else that needs to be done.  So, Awesome Advantage #4 is that I can look at myself more objectively, and write away the negative feelings, instead turning my main character’s attention (as well as my own) to feelings of accomplishment that encourage her (and me) to do more.

Not only does writing about my accomplishments help prevent me from discounting how useful they are, but I also get to remember where I left off on something when I need to continue it later.  I can also use the writing to prepare myself mentally for what I need to do next, whether I need encouragement to believe that I can do what needs to be done, or just motivation to get started because the only way to finish something is to start it.  I know a lot of productivity tips, but they don’t do me any good when I’m feeling discouraged or unmotivated, and even acknowledging this doesn’t seem to help very much… except in writing. Somehow, though, writing makes it real, perhaps because of the feedback loop of both writing about and being the main character. Or maybe it’s because my main character’s intentions are more set in stone than my own, and I wouldn’t want her actions to not follow her intentions.   Or maybe she is stronger than I am;  or maybe she is just more naive and willing to do whatever her author writes that she is supposed to do next.  Whatever the reason is, Awesome Advantage #5 is that I can motivate my own next steps a lot more easily by writing them as part of the plot.

What has amazed me the most so far is the insights I’m getting into myself.  I mean, I knew this would happen, because I’ve seen this before with journaling, but I’m still in awe every time my main character figures out something new.  Apparently, this is something that NaNoWriMo authors find happens a lot with their main characters, since the word count goal encourages the words to sometimes flow of their own accord.  In my case, sometimes my main character comes up with an analogy for something that brings out a memory from the past that I didn’t even realize I held onto with any amount of fondness.  One time, she was drawn to analyze a dream that I was perfectly willing to let pass in order to focus on what needed to be done for the day, but she ended up realizing something about herself that completely amazed me.  So, Awesome Advantage #6 (the bonus one!) is that I get to understand myself better, even though I thought I understood myself rather well already.

These six great advantages have been keeping me going strong with NaNoWriMo for eleven days so far, and I have a good feeling about the rest of the month as well.  In fact, I’ve managed to write every single day this month, and just yesterday I got to the point where I am a tiny little bit ahead of the target number of words I should have by now in order to assure completion of 50,000 words by the end of the month!  Yes, I have also been making decent thesis progress, despite all the marking that had piled up in October when I was struggling to focus heavily on my thesis.   My poor main character has a lot to deal with in addition to the thesis, but she seems to be taking everything in stride—and therefore, so am I. :)

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For the longest time, I was not alone on this battlefield. Two years ago, I had enlisted the help of one Venlafaxine to act as a morale officer, to help boost the enthusiasm that was waning after a long four years. My battle-weary mind felt unable to provide its own enthusiasm towards anything, not even the things meant to provide relief between battles, things like music or companionship.  But with Vennie’s help, I remembered how to enjoy those things, and even found myself keeping enthusiastic in the face of adversity.

Eventually, I was starting to stand taller on my own, leaning on Vennie less and less.  I turned to music or friendship or haiku or other fun activities for restoration, and developed exciting goals to pursue after the current battle.  The desire to finish That Which Must Be Done was increasing in intensity, and the enthusiasm required to do so was aflame within me.

Unfortunately, the tendency to avoid That Which Must Be Done had also strengthened in the meantime.  The ways to restore myself had multiplied into too many avenues for distraction, avenues that were more like rivers of fascinated enthusiasm whose currents keep pulling me in every direction.  I wanted to explore them all, and as always, Vennie was so supportive, encouraging me to enjoy what excitement I could draw from everywhere.

Eventually, I realized that Vennie was playing on both sides of the battlefield, supporting my tendency to avoid my foe at least as much as encouraging me to keep pressing forward.  I didn’t feel particularly betrayed, but I still knew I had to break off the relationship with Vennie sooner rather than later.  If the reason to hire Vennie was my lack of enthusiasm, and if that aspect of myself had been restored successfully and was strengthening on its own, it was time for a change.

Slowly, carefully, I worked towards reducing Vennie’s ability to influence me, even though each step away was disorienting and made me feel mildly ill.  But these effects were merely physical, perhaps a result of becoming accustomed to using a crutch for so long, and I was not deterred by the challenge.  The enthusiasm I had developed over the time with Vennie was still glowing within me, pulling me toward the goals I was determined to pursue after the battle was over.

Then, one day, Vennie was gone.  Consciously, I knew that I had been working towards this moment, and I was pretty sure I was ready to move forward on my own, but I was a little concerned still.  The battle had gotten a little more complicated, but the newly-arrived other Things Which Must Be Done were not as fearsome because I had enjoyed my previous encounters with them, and I was confident of my ability to handle them.  However, in the past I had let them take my attention away from the main target, and I couldn’t let that happen this time.  I needed the battle to be over, for good.

There were two of these other Things Which Must Be Done vying for my attention, and I started by parrying both, trying to determine a pattern that would let me subdue them without straining myself.  In fact, I had a mind to turn these Things into my allies:  if I could craft an intricate dance out of our interactions, I could use their closeness to help me space out my attacks on the main target, That Which Must Be Done.  I could also use the energy of built-up adrenaline to create a sort of inertia to keep me moving forward, without the need to force myself.

So I circled around, and then slowly backed away, preparing for the next round.  I can’t be sure, but I think I managed to keep my shakiness from being noticed.  In the meantime, however, a third Thing was galloping headlong toward me, but I had seen it coming and was prepared, if a little nervous.  I knew this third Thing was only going to let me have one chance to strike, and I also knew I would be watched by many others who have battles similar to my own.  Thankfully, this interaction was along the lines of the encounters I enjoy, the ones involving Things other than That Which Must Be Done, and taking care of it was exhilerating.

After this, a pause in the action gave me some needed recovery time, which I celebrated by surrounding myself with good people and music. The next day, I took some time to sort through some of the rubble that had accumulated over the years of battling, hoping it would help provide clarity for what I needed to accomplish in the weeks to come.  However, it took quite a toll on my time, and I ended up talking myself out of some further recreation that probably would’ve put me in a better position to handle the next week.

But, as they tend to do, Mondays happen… and the battle to begin was a fierce one.  The tendency to avoid That Which Must Be Done was so overwhelming, I found myself cowering behind battle plans instead of making any effort to enact any of them.  In fact, I was even cowering from the less-frightening but still-crucial Thing which needed be handled before the next day, and that drained my energy and confidence even more.

By the next day, I had steeled my nerves enough to strike instead of merely parry the Thing, but it felt like too little, too late.  Luckily, I discovered a way to duck through its attacks and avoid getting too beaten up, but the Thing increased in intensity while I avoided fighting.  Meanwhile, the other Thing was pressing towardme, but I took the initiative and kept it at bay by jabbing at it a few times, resulting in an increase of my own confidence.

The newfound momentum inspired me to take a running leap at my ultimate target, That Which Must Be Done. I readied my weapons, started the battle music, but then–oh no!–I tripped and stumbled to the ground, burying my face in the dirt!  I stood slowly, shaking my head, wondering what hit me.  But I was not deterred, and somehow I held on to the determination to make at least a single strike against That Which Must Be Done.

Unfortunately, every step forward was thwarted, and I was constantly getting spun around to face in any direction other than the one I wanted to go.  I kept falling, crashing to my knees, each impact battering my determination, which was crumbling but somehow holding together.  I dragged myself away from the battlefield to gather my thoughts, and then turned to face my foe.

The battle felt different than any other I could remember… or perhaps, I was different.  I was not succumbing to the urge to avoid the battle, but instead, kept trying to press forward, despite my efforts being totally ineffective against That Which Must Be Done.  Instead, it seemed I was tearing apart something within myself, and it was hurting, but I didn’t stop until all that was left of me was a sobbing heap of what felt like uselessness.

I was carried away from the battlefield by wings of love, but the tears and confusion continued until my mind was far enough away that I could feel myself relax.

When I turned to analyze what had happened, a realization struck me:  this was my first attempt at battling That Which Must Be Done without Vennie’s presence!  I was still feeling empowered from my own ways of building my enthusiasm, but I was missing (and misunderstanding the effects of) that emotional crutch, which would explain the recent feelings of frustration over little things.

It is such a relief to know that my system is probably still recovering, and that it should pass with time. Emotions are pretty confusing things, especially when they overshadow the logic that could’ve helped me realize that it’s only been a week since my last dose of Vennie’s encouragement, and only about a month since I cut my doses to one every other day. Somehow, I had convinced myself that the fading of physical discomfort would coincide with the fading of emotional confusion, but there is no reason to assume this to be true.  Now I know I just need to be sure to be careful for at least another week or so, because I am still fragile, and healing takes time.

Anyways, thank you for reading this far… I want to wrap this up with special thanks to the wonderful people who sent me support yesterday when I was feeling especially low.  Hugs (in approximate chronological order of support received, because I’m still amazed at how quickly people responded!) to @candace_nast, @bpick, my dear sweet husband, @Stephanie_Bauer, @Victoria__Rose (haha sis, your message was at 5:37! 37 strikes again!), @timtfj, @PesciTriD, and the little girls who delivered chocolate without knowing how much they were helping.

*By the way, the first line of this post was, indeed, a nod to one of my favourite movies of all time:  The Princess Bride.  It’s based on a quote from the Battle of Wits between Vizzini and the Man in Black, which I thought seemed delightfully appropriate to this post… and not only because laughter really is such a great medicine.

**Also, in case it wasn’t clear,  ”That Which Must Be Done” is my thesis;  the two other “Things Which Must Be Done” are my teaching assistant duties for two physics classes, and the third “Thing” was a workshop on Explaining Difficult Concepts to Others.

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