For months, I felt like climbing over a steep hill. Pushing myself upward and forward demanded not just physical power but mental agility. The intellectual demand is almost making me mental that what I keep feeling these days is discomfort (sometimes extreme pain) in the frontal lobe area of my head (or at the back of my neck), signifying tension and mental fatigue.
But how can I not think too much if that’s part of the job? I think about so many things even in my sleep (especially in my sleep). And that job is to think about the research question I want to answer and figure out how to get where I want to be.
This ache from mental stimulation, when gone, is ironically something I crave.
Most of the time, this pain goes away, especially when I’m finally unstuck from a rut. But as a researcher looking for answers that might not be there (or are there but require a lot of time and patience and resources to find), how rewarding it is to get the fruit of one’s labor.
How to be unstuck? Hammer relentlessly until the wall breaks.
Seek and you shall find.
And I feel like I’ve finally broken through that invisible wall I’ve been hammering down for months. But it wasn’t a stroll to get here. It had many side quests that were equally important as the main quest.
I just look forward to seeing the end of my work—not just get published, but stick and be cited for a long time.
jessa 