Nope

Ain't got much for you today.  I stared at spectra tell my head went silly.  In about...several years, I'll be a published astrophysicist for doing that, albeit the third author, but not, sadly, today.

I don't want to talk about the whole not-astrophysics-but-physics-or-not-future whirling around in my head, there's just too much there.  Only one professor of all the ones I've had and talked to about it has been supportive of my "you know what I would rather go into industry or at least get work experience first" stance.  I know exactly why:  academic physics is a status-seeking political bloodbath and taking time off or in any way deviating from The Path To PhD--which I already do a little bit by having two x chromisones but nevermind that--will reduce my chances of ever cutting it, and thus their professorial investment in me as Default Pre-Graduate School Undergrad (although I paid them, so it's my investment to blow if I want) is wasted.   That's the exact reason I have little desire to go to physics graduate school anyway.  That, and the whole gamut of Oh-God-Gender-And-STEM-freakfests, from the blatant-but-still-quite-present "women don't have logic why are they here" to the trying-but-failing-to-be-helpful "women can succeed too! (so if you're doing badly you are making Woman look bad)" and the feminists-would-kill-me notion that no, actually, I don't want to leave my Serious Love Interest because I don't want to and not because I'm conforming to the patriarchy or am afraid of being alone or want to spend my life making babies or whatever external reason people who don't know me might want to say.  So, enthisuam for spending six years in pursuit of a physics Ph.D is just not there.

Until I crack open a physics textbook, that is, and then I think damn it I love this stuff.

You know, I didn't start this draft intending to write about physics and physics graduate school at all. 

What I meant to do was list the personal-development type of things I'm working on, because when recently asked, in a job interview, what keeps my morale up, the honest-to-god answer to that is making lists and micromanaging my day with google calendar.  None of these things are things I should say in a job interview.

So, Things I'm Working On:

• Not saying sorry when I don't really need to
• Not getting defensive when Love Interest points out some detail I forgot/failed to notice/think he's being nitpicky for caring about
• Trying to notice the details before he points them out and I get defensive, because they matter to him even though it's hard to make them matter to me otherwise
• formulating intellectual arguments of my own and rebutting those of others
• running
• befriending my neighbors
• making connection with the people of this town re: applying that physics degree to community-bettering, fulfilling, and gainful employment
• gardening
• cutting back on stylistic run-on sentences used in subtle ways to make various points (okay, not really so much cause this ain't English class, but I am aware)
• not getting timesucked by other people's blogs (but I sooo want to!)