It's cold. Cold in Memphis. We don't "do" cold very well, which is silly because it's only hot here for 6 or so months of the year. Starting about now the weather gets grey, and chilly. The damp stays in the air and the chill is pervasive, leaching into your bones. It demotivates. All I want to do, and I think a lot of my fellow Memphibians would join me, is find somewhere warm to curl up. Somewhere with an open fire, a limitless supply of soup and good books (substitute TV for anyone not me).
Alas.
The cold. It demotivates in a different way to the heat. The heat saps your strength and energy. The constant grinding humidity. It never cools off in the summer. The nights are a miasma of discomfort.
I am demotivated. I got my "old" job back and a promotion is promised. I still don't have a faculty position so I am demotivated to work on grants for the third year in a row. I do a lot of the writing and editing and am "just" a line item. It's stupid, I know. I need the grants to keep myself and my team employed, and I need them more to prove I am the One who Can and thus earn the faculty position. But, I am demotivated.
I have book reviews to write for
Lablit, and they're half written. Discarded and angry passages and paragraphs. Aimless and meandering. I promised a book review; I have others waiting to be written and now even WW Norton have stopped sending me books.
I have editing I should have done, but I lost my motivation and lost my contract with a major publisher to serve as a free lance editor.
I have blog posts to write. I used to love writing and blogging.
BANTER and the Society for Neuroscience meeting are coming up. This time last year I was railing over at LabSpaces and getting excited for SfN. My dear friend and beloved colleague
Dr. Becca is doing it all on her own right now, and god knows how she finds the time with her new lab.
I am demotivated. Depression is a shitty illness.
