Becalmed ...

My supervisor, who is now about 1.5 months into his 6 month stint in California (he does this every year), does not disappoint. He has a way with words, that's for sure. Had a conversation with him yesterday. He says "Mark, you sound becalmed ... (long pause) ... like a sail that has lost it's wind" ... and I agreed. No momentum. No direction. Basically, I'm spinning my wheels, thinking "is this going anywhere? am I wasting my time? is anything I'm doing useful for anybody?"

It doesn't help that the two projects I'm working on are going slowly because 1) my collaborators totally botched an experiment, saying they were being "selective" in the samples they run yet I can only use 26 of the 126 that they ran to look for things they want to look for ... 2) trying every type of analysis imaginable on another data set that is just too noisy to get anything out of. The other curious thing about my projects is that I do not collaborate with anyone at our institute. I do most of my work for a group that is on the other side of the city.

Not sure what I need. I could certainly use someone in the field to chat about stuff to. With supervisor #1 in Berkeley (read: very busy with about 100 other projects) and supervisor #2 seriously stressed out (and not really interested in my project), I'm not sure who that would be. Lynn suggested I try and get a third project, which'll give some motivation while the others are not working out. I can see now that I've been sort of spoiled with previous work places (U of T especially but also MDSP) having lots of people to talk things through with. But, this is not unlike what Lynn went through in her degree: not having anybody on a similar project to chat with. At least I don't have to teach postdocs like she did.