End of the year musings

I guess five months is a long time to not update a blog. Most people have probably deemed this blog dead by now, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that just yet. I can't quite say if this is just a quiet pop from the fire before the embers cool beyond having the capability of setting alight a new log or if this is a spark of rejuvenation that signals an old engine returning from its year long slumber. In any case, like times before, here I am.

Certainly many things have happened in the last year that are at least of some note. I've officially joined the Comeron Lab and am slowly climbing hand-over-hand toward the next rung of my professional career. I now live in an apartment where I don't want to run outside and scream at the blabbering drunks who think that pulsating low frequencies somehow bring them closer to undergrad Nirvana every weekend. Which also means that I now have my cat living with me--which, is more of a highlight than I'd like to admit, truthfully. I've also been in a relationship with a cultured human being for the entire year too. I hope I've not scared her off after bringing her down to Alabama this holiday season.

Bama is always curious. I returned to my hometown after a year to see that absolutely nothing has changed, save for a new exit off the highway that was designed as a sort of heart bypass,but now is a frivolous plastic surgery since most of the hosiery mills have moved away. Everyone's a little bit fatter, including me, and going on with their lives with a pace that you'd think was predetermined at the point of conception. They're buying houses, getting married, and having children. Now the pattern is so clear. Everyone is doing the same thing that the generation before them did with only minor alterations to the plan. How change comes about in any form is remarkable.

So I suppose I'm trudging on in my own way. Towards some fantastic goal that is sure to impress my friends and family. Some days I yearn to be a cabinet maker or fisherman, producing immediate results with my own hands, cracked and dry after years of work.
I've been so cut off from reality. My work is all about thinking: How can we do this? How does this fit our model of X? What is the purpose of Y? Can we demonstrate that Y affects X? How can I spin this in a way that the government will give me money?  Science is not for the impatient. That's what I learned in 2011. That, and sometimes you've got to stop and appreciate where you've been and where you are. Graduate school has taught me that it's okay to feel stupid and that each person is here for their own specific reason--not just for the same reason I'm here.

It's taken me too long to realize the importance of family and friends. Before, I was so focused on the end that the journey was irrelevant. Anyhow, welcome to 2012. Lets see this as a spark that returns the engine to life.