The Plan: month 5

I'm having a break from The Plan, kind of, while I'm home, although I did pinky swear to maintain my commitment to personal fitness, so I'm running most days (I did skip a couple while travelling further, and because I figured cleaning the squalor in my brother's house so he could have his 21st there counted as a workout). I’m feeling very unfit, despite all the gym going, because I got another cold and cough and couldn’t go far without getting out of breath for a while. The hills are killing me, too. I’m used to nice flat ground.
I have been trying to see all the people I've been slack about keeping in touch with, but several are away, unfortunately. One has actually swapped cities with me. I’m feeling bad about not keeping in touch very well. I think once I get back I should add writing an email each day to the star requirements.
I haven’t really been doing the positive thoughts, either, which would be good. I’m noticing how my mum could do with trying that, though.
Here's the late update for last month.

1. Health



I’ve been going to the gym (or running outside when the gym was closed/I didn’t have time). Luckybuzz was kind enough to take me to her gym and show me around the weights machines so I could start using them, but I was too scared to try the ones at the gym I go to by myself. I’ll have to work on that once I get back.
I’m still not doing so well at eating proper meals, although I’m working somewhere with slightly better lunch options and I think I wasn’t counting dinners when I ate out, even though I originally created that goal to encourage myself to stop eating cookies and junk food for dinner, so I guess that should count. I did start doing better at bringing my own lunch, though. And I’ve been getting up earlier, although that might not be such a good thing when I’m still going to bed late…

2. Professional



I actually made preliminary graphs for this before the 30 days were up, because I had a feeling I had done more work than ever this month and I wanted to see the encouraging positive slope. Mainly that’s been due to finally getting to do the first of the big set of experiments, so I had a lot of set labwork that absolutely needed to be done, rather than trying to figure out what I should be doing with my data. I’ll be back to more amorphous work for a bit, but hopefully I’ll have enough data to work with that I’ll be able to keep the upward trend.
When I told the therapist that I’d been doing much better for a while now, she asked about how work was going. I said it was better than it was but I still wasn’t doing enough, she asked why that was and if I actually liked my program/project. I’ve spent a long time just working on optimising technical details, which isn’t very exciting. I’m hoping that I’ll be more interested and motivated once I have some real results to do something more interesting with, but that is still worrying. I’m back to wondering if I should be more excited about my work in general.
stage 1: finish optimising the assay conditions, repeat the big set of experiments, analyse data
I did the first batch of the big set of experiments! I’m not sure exactly what to do with all my data and it’s a bit hard without having internet or anyone to talk to about it, but I’ve been playing with it a bit.

• stage 2: make/find the new reagents I need, use them
  I still need to discuss this with my advisor
• stage 3: in vivo stuff
  This stuff is almost ready, no thanks to me. I’ll get to do some fun stuff with it once I get back, I think.
  

3. Social
I sent an email to the people in my program who I wanted to see again and none of them replied so now I feel all rejected… I don’t feel like trying again, which is a pity, since I like them.
I didn’t invite anyone to the barbecue my house had, but I did go and talk to people, at least.
I’m waiting to hear back from the social anxiety people about group therapy. I’m trying not to think about it so I won’t freak out.
I’ve got a few people to catch up with while I’m home. I’ve already seen 2 people, but some of them I haven’t been very good about keeping in contact with so I’m kind of scared of calling them.

5. Being Selfish
I haven’t done a thing for this.

6. Other
I didn’t really do much for this either.
From last month: "I think I've been forgetting that The Plan is not only about the stars... I should keep track of the other components better."
I forgot about that, too…