I was waiting to write a post that was more well thought-out and structured. Something that could get published somewhere important.
But a few days ago, I was reading through the old posts on my blog and realized I used to do a lot more free-writing, where I had no idea where the piece would end up. I would come to some sort of conclusion at the end, but it wasn’t about that conclusion as much as it was about welcoming you, the reader, into this space where I thought aloud.
It was a slow loss – one that occurred simply as I did start to get things published and people started to ask me to write on certain topics.
Like the piece I did for Common Pursuits on the art of composting my dreams during COVID or the series I’ve been working on since last year around the intersectionality of my faith, culture and everyday life. Not that there’s anything wrong with more goal or audience-oriented writing, but I was doing so much of that focused, targeted writing that I had forgotten how my writing used to be.
It’s also probably because when I started this blog, I was regularly camping out in cafes and musing on the journey of the PhD that lay ahead of me while I attempted to hammer out my literature review.
But now, being halfway through, with my time now looking like long hours on my feet making sure I don’t blow up the lab with the 330C reactions, or in a tiny dark room peering into a microscope, or commuting to my lab on the South Shore, I don’t have much time to sit down and let my thoughts flow with no goal in particular.
Or at least I haven’t allowed myself that time.
But if there’s one thing I’m learning in this season of life, it’s to let things BE more.
That instead of insisting the piece revolves around this central theme and that everything ties together exactly the way I want, I can let it just be its natural, wandering self.
That instead of insisting that the results of a day of standing on my feet turn out the way I want, I need to let it just be what it is.
And that I can still present imperfect drug release curves to my supervisor even though I have no idea why they aren’t looking the way I’m expecting to, and don’t have any concrete explanation – only tentative hypotheses.
I did a lot of music during quarantine – just me and my guitar on the couch.
I started to film these sessions, at first just as a record of what I was working on, but later it evolved into collaborating on little projects with friends because I just missed singing with people.
When strict lockdown ended and I started going back to lab, I realized how much I enjoyed making music. It wasn’t my job or for any sort of monetary gain. I didn’t even care about the number of views on Youtube, because it wasn’t about that.
My music wasn’t perfect, but it was what it was – and it brought me joy.
So, I’m continuing to carve out time to make music each day.
I sensed the critical spirit in me rise up last weekend when my voice didn’t sound the way I wanted. It got a bit obsessive where I kept on re-recording the vocal part until I couldn’t tell if the takes sounded different because I had listened to them too much.
And I had to remind myself that it’s okay to be imperfect, to have an imperfect voice, because that’s just where I am right now.
So I sent the project I had been working on to a couple of close friends (and now you!) as an exercise of letting people into that imperfection.
Perhaps it’s the Instagram culture we live in that perpetuates this notion that everything has to be air-brushed, filtered and carefully crafted before it’s fit for consumption.
Perhaps it’s how our inboxes are so over-filled, our brains so over-stimulated, that anything that is not curated and edited to perfection is automatically glanced over.
We only want the glamorous and thrilling.
During our weekly evening chat this week, my boyfriend was describing the book on Luther’s writings he’s currently reading for his 16th century theology class.
“This kind of book would never be published today,” he commented, “Luther rambles too much on subjects the publishers would have deemed boring.”
“Ugh I know, we want everything to be summarized in pithy 3 alliterative points before we will actually pay attention,” I replied, before telling him about the pithy 3 alliterative-point announcement our pastor made this past Sunday on returning to the theatre for service.
The service will be Safe, Spacious and Sanitized, it was repeated to us during the announcement and in the multiple emails that were sent to us after.
(Although, admittedly, the 3-S alliteration was quite memorable, to his credit :P)
Science is suffering severely from that need for excitement and novelty, as I’m reading in my new favorite book, “Science Fictions”.
The pressure to always publish a new, groundbreaking finding is so suffocating that sometimes, researchers resort to fraud and manipulation to make their result seem bigger than it actually was.
In a less nefarious but much more widespread way, we spin our results to make them seem impactful, skipping out on things we found boring or uninteresting.
We like publishing papers that show significance and “progress” versus more boring papers that reproduce an existing finding.
And to show this significance, scientists use measures like “p hacking” where the data is re-analysed over and over again until some sort of significance appears.
“Roll the statistical dice enough times and something will show up as significant, even if it’s just a freak accident in your data,” the book says.
The truth is – science, and by extension, reality, is complicated and to be honest, boring at times.
It can’t always be packaged in pithy 3-point alliterative sound bytes.
Not every study will advance the field or come to some sort of revolutionary conclusion at the end of it.
So, it’s been a journey of me accepting that.
To let my science just be what it is – in its messy, uncertain, frustratingly small state.
It means I can still go to lab, even if what I find at the end of the day invalidates my previous hypotheses and it feels like I’m moving more backwards than forwards.
It’s valuable because regardless of how many papers I manage to publish from this time, I’m learning what perseverance is and that being a scientist is a lot more about being curiously persistent and hopeful than generating great Nature-ready data.
I’m letting my music just be what it is – in its imperfectly tuned, unprofessionally produced, hack-filmed with Photo Booth on my Macbook propped up on 3 pillows state.
It means I am still allowed to sing into a mic and send what I worked on to others without obsessively editing it and comparing it to all the covers that are out on Youtube.
It’s valuable not because of what other people think of it, but because I found joy in making it and it is my form of worship.
And I’m letting my writing be this: me free-writing for an hour about the various thoughts floating around in my head, without needing it to sound polished or geared towards a certain audience – and publishing it anyways.
So, thank you for reading down to the bottom of this unstructured, rambling post instead of closing this tab because it seemed like I wasn’t really going anywhere with it.
That’s valuable to me – but even if that wasn’t the case, it would still be valuable because this is me being as honest as I can.
It’s me attempting to share what’s really going on in my slightly long-winded and scattered way.
It’s me showing up to this space.
It’s me embracing journey and imperfection amidst a world that is constantly telling you how to package yourself to be more attractive and “sellable”.
And no matter where I get published in the future, or how big this blog grows (or not), I want to keep writing like this.
