So, so close

It all falls apart. I knew what I was talking about when I despaired over adapting to a given instant in an environment defined by constant change.

Things have been good lately. One paper got accepted (the third one from that post)! Yay for supportive reviewers with constructive criticism! And for finally learning to stop speculating and just report what I know! The reviewers understood what I wanted to say and offered some lovely suggestions.

The other paper is almost revised. After months of effort, I’m finally changing small phrases rather than addressing major structural issues. It’s good! And we’re aiming for a much higher impact factor journal than I originally planned!

And the histograms were almost complete! I had a significant effect and a strong trend for my 2 groups. My presentation was lovely! I had collected literature to support my findings!

I was pleased – feeling professionally competent and headed toward lofty goals.

There could be a huge confound within my patient population. This fact came up in the middle of showing my pretty slides. My histograms could show this super-cool trend or just the confounding effect. Nothing to do about it – my methodology is good, and the patients are either appropriately distributed or they aren’t. But my precious authorship is in grave danger if my lovely trends disappear.

Which made me nervous about the paper I’m revising. It’s as good as it’s going to get. The work is done. We’re saying exactly what happened. If it can’t get published as is, it’s not going to work at all. There’s quite simply nothing more to fix. It’s no longer a neat project presented in a flawed manner. And I hate to throw it away – it was such a major part of my thesis work. And much of my planned work rests on the basic concepts I want to present. If it's garbage, that's quite bad.

The paper that got accepted? With easy revisions? Some of the final data got lost in the move. It's exciting to finally find a journal and to have strong ideas for improvement. But revising a paper that's nearing age 2? Stuff got misplaced! I’m still looking, but I may be recreating some major figures. That’s fine – not a total loss, obviously. But as projects officially begin, it’s going to create a time crunch that I can’t get too excited over.

So I was down. I know it happens – we all have bad days. I even realize that, for me, a small glitch gets blown out of proportion and colors many other areas of life. Pouting through my drive home is made worse by remembering the sunny optimism of the commute to work.

I’ll be fine. I’m just preoccupied and trying to work tonight. Tomorrow will be better. And if not, eventually I’ll adjust to disappointment, right?