Fears to Confront and Overcome in the New Year: Part 1

As I have entered a new phase of my life outside of academia the past year, I’ve realized that I’ve built up some hangups that are slowly holding me back from achieving my goals. Maybe this sounds like self-help talk, but for me I can see the hangups are real. Subconscious or otherwise, but they seem to have come from my past experiences, traumas, and failures, and stem from the idea that the same bad things will happen again – which of course is irrational. I don’t know the future, but I can try to build a good one.

In part, I think a good chunk of my hangups come from academia and grad school. Before I moved to my PhD program, I felt upbeat and more alive, even though I lived in much more humble situations. When I think of 2010-2014, it was a positive time in my life. I was still looking forward to the future, dreaming up books and stories and stuff to do, and hopeful that I could make a career out of science. Early in grad school, in 2012-2014, I was grateful to be there and having a blast teaching and learning about physics and astronomy. But the seeds of insecurity were already planted. I was surrounded by brilliant people and forced to compete with them. Could I pass my qualifying exams? Write a good thesis? Manage a really cool research project?

By 2016, our research project was a mess, a couple of people had dropped out or quit for other things, and those of us left were depressed and, in a couple of cases, dependent on substances to keep us going. I blamed myself for some of the issues with our detector. In part, sure, I could have handled things better. But I also look back and see myself alone, without a proper mentor or coach, on site at this crazy experimental facility and it’s like ‘How did that happen? ‘ and ‘If I was handling things alone, why was my boss so critical instead of saying how great I was?’ Around that time I also entered a romantic relationship that would prove to be a disaster. My partner moved to be with me in Hawaii, and didn’t really like it or embrace the lifestyle I lived. We were often at odds, and the things we did enjoy in common felt oddly out of sync with the Hawaiian atmosphere, as opposed to where we shared them before in Baltimore. Finally, I also edited and put out my first book at that time, and it was a mess, reflecting my own troubles in life. I’m still proud of it, but I wish it had come out better.

The combination of the failure of our research, my writing, and of that relationship left me adrift at work, and physically and emotionally drained. I had low energy, and having fought with my ex and my roommate, didn’t feel as comfortable in my own home. I went to the bar alone sometimes, tried to date, and smoked a fair amount of weed.

Somehow I internalized the idea that either I wasn’t a hard worker, or it didn’t matter how hard I worked because it wouldn’t change my supervisors’ opinions of me, or our chances of success. I started to think I might be a bad person. My writing felt… messy. Unpublishable. Ultimately, I did work on a better research project, graduated, and moved on to a postdoc with a better group, albeit in a city that wasn’t the best fit for me and my new partner, Gina. And now we’ve moved again to a place that’s a better fit, and a new job. I made more money, have a wonderful wife, contribute to projects at work, and still put my creative writing out there. In 2023, I got paid for a publication, and in 2024 I put out an indie magazine. I have cut down on drinking and weed, and regularly do sober October and Dry January, yet I still feel sort of… I dunno… anxious about everything. Anxious that it’s not working out.

Part of my attempts to fix this involve this journal. Writing about things can be cathartic, and studies show that externalizing these experiences helps us re-contextualize them so we can move on. I also believe in “growth mindset” — the idea that we can change, grow, and improve over time (or the opposite if we’re not careful). Last year, I embraced growth mindset and it worked out well for me. This year, I hope to do more of the same.

In part two, I’m going to list out some of my fears, and how I think I can fight them and build myself up to be that positive, upbeat person I was in my late teens and twenties.