Defeat...

I think quitting the PhD in February last year has left me feeling defeated, and I only realised it in the last month. I intend to write more about this but I just don’t have the energy right now, but that’s also part of how I think I know I feel defeated - I feel like don’t have the energy to “fight the good fight” any more. I just removed and blocked somebody on Facebook, which might be trivial enough for some, but is a huge thing for me, because I feel like I’ve passed a huge judgement on somebody by removing them as a “friend” on Facebook, but blocking them feels even worse because I’ve effectively shut the door on them. Generally I make a point to “leave the door open, but stop checking if they’ve come through it” in situations like this; as in I don’t want to turn my back on anybody, but this person’s demonstrated on several occasions to seemingly discard the evidence and draw a conclusion completely to the contrary of what that evidence would have suggested. And the most worrying thing about it all is that - from what I can tell - they genuinely think they’re right.

In the film “Captain America: Civil War”, there’s a line where Peter Parker (Spiderman) says to Steve Rogers (Captain America) that Tony Stark (Iron Man) said that Steve thinks he’s right, and that makes him dangerous. I thought I understood and this statement and the gravity of it well enough and of course it made me reflect on my own convictions well enough (including now; I’m aware that just because I think the aforementioned person is wrong doesn’t mean they are, and the consequences of me thinking that they are could also be dangerous - it’s not a comforting notion to doubt oneself, of course, but it’s still something we have to do…I think), but I think I had never seen such outright denial of evidence/facts until the last year or so with this person. As in full on twisting of facts without seemingly being aware of it, of the fact itself that they had completely misinterpreted a number of people pointing out their argument was wrong and coming away from it thinking they had managed to convince some of those people they were right and this was cause for celebration =/ And whilst it’d be plausible in this day and age to think that they are a ‘master troll’, I really don’t think that’s the case. And it’s so worrying.

But yes, I think am defeated. I couldn’t put in the effort any more to try to gently and constructively point out the flaws in their logic, nor put up with their accusations about me, when before I could and would tolerate it in the hopes that this was just an innocent misunderstanding on their part. I couldn’t fight “the good fight” (could a fight ever be such a thing?). The thing that makes me really think I’m defeated, though, is that it no longer feels “All or Nothing” to me, I don’t feel like “either I will live in this world upholding principles as best as I can or die trying”, I just feel as if I should resign to whatever this fate seems to be, and just accept things as they are, not as they could be.

Here we go again...

I’ve realised that, for most blank white/off-white walls that I sit by, I tend to think of them as a canvas for what’s in my head to be splattered across.

Minor update...

Still alive! Whether or not this is a good thing is still be decided, but I suppose it is.

Anywho, been particularly busy these last few months since quitting the PhD. I did a IT consultancy training course for Business Intelligence which was sometimes interesting, and sometimes very much a drag, but hey, it’s a way to get my foot in the door (something the training company specialises in) and they took me on, so for that I’m very grateful. Plus most of the people in my class made it not just bearable but enjoyable, so yay for that.

Now I’ve started a job as a contractor (from said training company) working as a data scientist predominantly for Ordnance Survey. Turns out they do way more than make those Explorer Maps used for Duke of Edinburgh (seriously, apparently those maps bring in about ‘only’ 5-7% for the company)! I quite like it so far, both in terms of work to do, colleagues, and general atmosphere.

Also, for the job, I’ve relocated and moved out into my own place in Southampton (still renting, of course :’)) and, as much as I love my family and feel guilty for not being there to try to help with things directly, the change in environment and having my own space really seems to have made a difference...I feel both glad and, as I said, guilty for this apparent fact. But it seems to be the best option given how things were whilst I was back with family. Still have some ‘dark moments’ here and there, but we’ll see how it goes.

Right, “minor update” that was originally three lines in my head is now done. Thanks for reading, whoever you may be, and take care :)

Things About My Mother - I

Rather emotional right now. Not in a particularly ‘good’ way. But just thought I’d write this here because I think my mother’s been through a lot and for some irrational human ‘reason’ want her legacy to be remembered (I ‘get’ legacy yet at the same time don’t really get it).

When she was a kid, she really wanted to be a solicitor.
When she was a kid, she also really wanted to go to school (girls typically didn’t go to school in the society she grew up in) so badly that she’d keep washing some of her clothes for school to try to soften her father into letting her go. (She managed to go for a little while but her family couldn’t afford to keep her there. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere I believe).

Note: Please don’t try to fill in the blanks/interpolate/extrapolate about anything. There’s nuance to take into consideration and I often have to spend so much effort dispelling misconceptions and people filling in the blanks according to their prejudices and narratives. Just take what I said as data points and acknowledge that the rest is “unknown”. Please. Sorry for being so curt, too :(

A little update...

Hello there. It’s been a while, as usual, despite my intentions. Just thought I’d at least drop in to update you on my situation regarding my PhD. I quit, a little over a month ago. Too many problems to handle - from not getting enough support during my PhD (even though I addressed the relevant persons on all levels about this several times…) to the ongoing family dramas I’ve alluded to and mentioned before. I was actually pretty close to the end of my PhD it seemed, in that all I was doing now was pretty much writing up, but turns out I couldn’t hack coping with the environment I’m in again any more. So it’s a shame, I feel quite bummed out, and pretty much every day I’ve felt like bursting into tears, but crying is something I don’t seem able to do any more (pretty sure this is psychosomatic as that seems more likely than physiologically being unable to cry…I think?), so I just carry it with me and am constantly feeling on edge.

That said, quitting seemed to be the most pragmatic outcome in a way. My though process was pretty much: “I need to get out of this environment, but I have no financial means of doing so, so I need a job for financial income, but I can’t get a job until I finish my thesis, so I need to finish my thesis, but I can’t focus on my thesis with all the stuff going on around me here, so I should try to focus on resolving those problems first, but I’ve been trying that for most of my life and nobody here seems to actually listen, so I need to get out of this environment…” and it just seemed to a vicious cycle that dragged on. So I had to compromise the thing I actually really wanted to do - a PhD - for a long portion of my Life (this is in the version of my Life I entertain/hope for where I don’t commit suicide, in case you’re wondering about inconsistencies). Though compromise is not foreign to me, of course (that’s not to say I’ve always compromised, or even compromised the most compared to others, or anything like that at all. Just relegating my stuff to the back-seat or even chucking it out of the car altogether is something I’m familiar with and almost ‘normalised’ for me.

But yes, one of the ‘lighter’ questions this leaves me with is: Am I no longer able to consider myself a scientist? Without any publications that have gone through peer-review, I don’t have any official credit to my name in that respect. To be frank, I didn’t really call myself a scientist before anyway, as I figured that’s a title/right I earn after submitting and passing my thesis and viva. “The Dark Scientist”, my blog title, was meant more as a light-hearted joke with some relevance to me doing a PhD, but at the same time was intended to be qualified once I’d completed my PhD. So now that I’m not doing a PhD and have no research published to my name (yet? Not sure…), is my blog title slightly fraudulent and requires a change?

Still thinking this one over…

The "Death-Friend"

Hello :)

I know I haven’t posted here in quite some time, and I have been meaning to quite regularly to be frank (say once a week, at least). As usual, though, there’ve been other things getting in the way, be it actual stuff to do, or more likely the constant apathy and my lethargy in anything that seems to be ‘for myself’. Anywho, here I am trying to make amends of sorts (to whom? I have no idea - to you the readers and audience, I guess, but I don’t think I have any ‘regulars’ that wait with baited breath for my next post :P If I do, though, I am sorry! I don’t mean to overlook you or anything, I just wasn’t aware and had no indication of it, as far as I could tell.).

So, the “Death-Friend”.

This is a concept that’s been more or less been floating around in my head as some vague and unidentified form for almost half of my life, and I may have even made allusions to it in my past posts, but it’s only very recently that I think I figured out what that presence in my mind was. In short, a “Death Friend” is a friend who you feel comfortable sharing your Death with, and the moments leading up to it, be it the moments just before your passing, or the months and years before as you try to set your affairs in order.

Of course, there are a few things to point out with this:

1. It presumes you know when you’re going to die. Nobody really knows this for sure until the moment it happens, of course. However, the general implication is that this is either somebody who’s “terminally ill”, or planning their Death (be it suicide or assisted-suicide). So we’re on ‘dark’ territory here, but that’s usually the case with me, as you’ve probably figured out by now if you’ve read my previous stuff, and if not, now you know! :D

2. I actually wouldn’t consider this any different from other types of friends, and would hope that, if faced with the situation for whatever reason, a good friend would be able to support one through to the end of one’s Life. Of course, Death is not necessarily an easy thing to deal with and we all have our own thoughts and feelings about it, so I’m certainly not saying one has to be able to fulfil this, and that’s why I thought of the notion of a death-friend in the first place. Because some times the person you may consider your best friend may not seem ready or able to bear such a weight, and that’s understandable, and you don’t want to impose upon them or burden them any more than you may already feel like you are doing or have done.

3. When I say “sharing your Death with”, I don’t mean they die too, like a suicide-pact or something, just that they’re with you at the moment of your passing so you don’t feel alone at the end of this Life, at least (if you want them to be and don’t want to feel that way, that is).

Anywho, that’s all. Hopefully I’ll be posting more regularly and of about this length from now on (as a general guideline, not a hard rule).

Take care :)

Guilty feelings

The idea itself of expressing any of my feelings - whatever they are - makes me feel guilty and I wish I could figure out how not to.