A Quest

This is a story about a quest, and also not a quest.

Like stories, quests are contained. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This story has one such quest, but the other is not, because it is a quest to battle anxiety. I do not say defeat anxiety, because it is not something that can be defeated like one would slay a dragon. It is part of the daily, ongoing quest that is called living. Most mental health problems are like this; they cannot be fought and "cured," only tamed.

Quests are also like stories because most stories, and especially those from mythology, are about quests. A hero goes on a journey, to find, to capture, or to kill, and eventually to return. These days, our heroes are found in books and movies, and our quests are found in video games, in which you are the hero and you complete the quests.

Most importantly, quests have a purpose, a goal. This is why stories and myths appeal to us: they bring meaning and order to life, which is inherently meaningless and purposeless. (If you disagree with me that life has no over-arching purpose -- as opposed to the small purposes that motivate the actions of living things -- that will have to be a discussion for another day.)

So anyway, I got this adult coloring book.

Jigsaw puzzles are my favorite anxiety-reducing pastime, but they take up a lot of space and aren't very portable. Though to be honest, my absolute favorite way of dealing with anxiety is computer games, but sometimes they have too much associated guilt (as in, "I really shouldn't be playing video games"). Which means sometimes they only reduce anxiety for the duration of time I play them and increase it the rest of the time. So sometimes I need a stress-reducing activity that I not only enjoy, but is grandma-approved. Hence jigsaw puzzles.

Anyway, adult coloring books have been getting good reviews, so when my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday months ago, that's what I said.

It turns out she probably forgot even having that conversation, because she asked me again just a few days before my birthday. Annoyed, instead of reminding her of what I actually wanted, I told her I wanted World Peace.

This is what I have to show for my snark:

I have to say, it is one of her better gifts.

But now I really wanted an adult coloring book. Could I buy one online? There's no Norway branch of Amazon, so I would have to try to avoid customs fees and pay international shipping. Blargh.

This is where the anxiety beast rears its ugly head. It is always there, curled up in the corner, but now it lifts its head and turns to me, snorting in a condescending way. It is visually striking, very pointy, and red; not really ugly, exactly. Its ugliness is on the inside.

The quest that is not a quest has now taken shape. I want to do a thing that should be a reasonably stress-free thing to do, but anxiety gets in the way. Sometimes that just happens. Sometimes your brain turns mundane things into huge, large, BFDs. Or, at least my brain does. (The anxiety beast is in my mind of course, because it is mine; it is me.) And when this happens, to cut out the "I should be able to do this normal adult thing what is wrong with me?" voice, it helps to think of these as a quest, because quests have a goal, a purpose, and there is loot at the end.

I fully expected to have this on my To Do list for a long time, because dealing with customs or venturing into a new place in search of goods or services are exactly the types of things that give me anxiety, which means I avoid them. (I usually go an unnecessarily long time between hair cuts for just this reason.) Perhaps I am a hobbit at heart and do not like going on adventures. But this quest was for something to help with anxiety, which would help me complete more quests! What to do?

It turns out, this adventure was unexpectedly easy. I avoid the eyes of the anxiety beast. I wander into a local book store, which has plenty of adult coloring books. I pick one. I spend a long time choosing colored pencils. The anxiety beast flicks its tail with impatience. A shorter, but not small, amount of time choosing between two sharpeners. Everything seems as expensive as ordering online with customs and shipping would have been. I worry over that for a bit. I buy them anyway.

The loot is better than I could have hoped. The coloring book is also a treasure hunt, with 16 rabbits, 14 butterflies, 9 spiders, etc. hidden in its pages. (Plus I learn the Norwegian for spiders, "edderkopper," which reminds me of the part in The Hobbit when he's taunting the spiders in Mirkwood with "Addercrop", which makes this "Magical Forest" coloring book even more magical.)

It gets better. Flipping back and forth, I notice that the pages seem to be connected - a picture of a telescope is followed by a zoomed-in image of the Castle, which is at the end of the book. The back has some pages that can be folded out, which I start to do, but first I translate:

"Turn the next page to find out what is hidden in the castle." 

Should I wait until I'm done coloring to see? Then the page before:

"Fill in the nine symbols to unlock the castle door."

Wait a minute.

This coloring book is a quest!


(This is the part of the story with an actual quest. Hooray, you found it!)


Like all good quests, it starts with a map:

From "Den magiske skogen" by Johanna Basford

The map is representative of what you will find on your journey through the pages of the Magical Forest on your way to the Castle: a tree-house village; a lake; a rabbit hole; a hedge maze. I decide to finish it in pieces as I finish the full pages, starting with the compass:

It turns out, these leaves and things are tiny. Coloring this takes a long-ass time, but of course there's no rush. And it takes even longer, because I find myself deliberating over what color to use, like, a lot. I've turned the color choices into a BFD: "I can't make all the leaves green, that would be boring. But leaves aren't orange (and I hate orange anyway!) But wait, leaves can be orange in the Autumn... and these diamond-shaped leaves are magical so they can be blue, and otherwise I wouldn't use blue very much anyway.... but I fucked up with those mushrooms, I should have kept them red...." And so on.

It may sound like coloring is giving me anxiety, but it is not as bad as all that. Sure, every time I have to make a decision, like what color to use for this very special leaf, the anxiety beast lifts an eyebrow as if to say, "Really? That one?" (Did I mention it had eyebrows?) But it's okay. In a coloring book, there is no danger of making myself believe these choices will have a huge effect on my life or alter the course of reality, which I tend to do for other decisions. If my brain is going to turn things into a BFD anyway, it is safe to do so within the pages of the Magical Forest.

It has just occurred to me how different this is from jigsaw puzzles. Maybe those allow my brain a safe space to figure everything out, because unlike life, there is a correct configuration of puzzle pieces, a right answer, and you just have to be smart and patient enough to find it. Maybe jigsaw puzzles help with a different type of anxiety beast. (That one is blue.)

The coloring book also allows you to be creative and to imprint your own meaning, tell your own story. So if I want to turn the compass into a symbol of the yearly cycle, that's exactly what I'll do.

Pessimistic Advice on How to Succeed in Academia

Ever wondered how to succeed in academia? Here are 10 things guaranteed to see you to the top.

Follow this advice and a tenured professorship isn't far away. You can do it!

1. Be white and male.
2. Attend a top tier or Ivy League university as an undergraduate. Be able to afford it.
3. Do graduate studies and be employed at only top tier or Ivy League universities. If your CV doesn't say Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. then give up now.
4. Have a sheltered, privileged upbringing. Bonus if you have family members with PhDs.
5. Do not have any mental health problems. Ever.
6. Have advisors and bosses who use their influence to get you, a young researcher, leadership roles and first author positions on big projects. (Also, they won't ever minimize your achievements or sexually harass you - see item 1.)
7. Be a part of a research group that only ever cites themselves and not their competitors.
8. Do minor, incremental work. Improve things slightly and publish. Rinse. Repeat. Watch your h-index grow.
9. Research a hot topic sub-field that gets a lot of funding. You don't have to actually care about it.
10. Exude an unnatural amount of confidence. Know that you are doing awesome research that everyone cares about. Know that your shit doesn't stink.

Succeeding in academia is hard work, but if you follow this list, success is guaranteed!

Your 'Gender Issues' Proposal Section is BS and it Doesn't Even Matter

Imagine this scenario:

You, a cis/het/white/male scientist, are writing a grant proposal. You have an awesome CV, everyone loves you, and you have crafted a ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting research plan. But this one section on "gender issues" is confounding you... the guidelines for this part read like a glossy business report and just say things like "gender is important" and "gender should be balanced". Actually, you probably didn't bother looking up the guidelines, so you really want to know: what do you write here? How could this hurt your effort to win money to do science?

Obviously you don't know what any of the issues are. You've rightly been focusing your efforts on producing amazing science instead of "diversity" or "social justice" or "womany" things - but you've paid enough attention to notice all the extra opportunities for women (and sometimes minorities) that exist, so you know that your female students will have no problems finding a job just because of their gender. (You have confidently told them as much.) So what do you write about "gender issues" in relation to your awesome Nobel-worthy science proposal?

Well, you're in luck. It turns out, your reviewers are probably also cis/het/white/males, and they don't know what the issues are either! Your bullshit paragraph saying how "You will totally collaborate with women, thereby providing female role models to your students! You have a couple of women in your department already! You will try to recruit more women, because women are important and gender should be balanced!" - this bullshit paragraph is absolutely good enough for you to win money to do science. Hooray!





Still here?

Well, if this scenario rings a bit true for you (even if you're not, however statistically improbably, a cis/het/white/male scientist), but you nonetheless would like to improve your "gender issues" section so it's not complete BS, even though it totally doesn't matter, I've assembled an inexhaustive list of "Do's and Don'ts" compiled partly from my own experience.

• DON'T joke that you're including me because it will look good in your "gender issues" section. Also, don't believe it. Even though it's probably true. It's just not a funny joke.
• DO take down all the pictures of old white men in the conference rooms and replace them with pictures of science. You know, the thing we are all here to do.
• DON'T be proud of that one year you had more than one female PhD student. You did not earn that. The female PhD students earned that, despite all the apparent barriers you're still not sure really exist. Be proud of them, not yourself.
• DO write a better "gender issues" section by maybe perhaps possibly doing some research? You know the kind of thing you did to figure out the background knowledge, specific parameter values, targets, etc. for the science section? Reading papers, absorbing information, putting it all together? You can do that here, too. If you want. Whatever though. It doesn't matter.
• DON'T ask me for advice about your proposal and wonder what "he" will think when "he" reads this section, even though you haven't time-traveled to the future and determined that your reviewers prefer masculine pronouns. Your patriarchy fails to impress me, as does your lack of a time machine, and I won't feel like giving you advice anymore. I'm petty like that.
• DO broaden your conceptions of equity. I don't care if your country is as white as the new-fallen snow, by paying lip service to gender issues and completely ignoring all the other dimensions of discrimination, marginalization, and bias that people face, you are part of the problem. Just think of all the other things you could be paying lip service to in order to pretend like you're actually doing something good! Race! Class! Ability! Gender identity and gender expression! Sexual orientation! You could give yourself so many cookies for even knowing that these concepts exist! It's okay if you don't, though. It doesn't really matter.
• DON'T suggest, when your female astrophysics student is struggling, that if it has been her dream to be a Veterinarian, for example, she should totally follow her dreams. Don't invite your male student to watch football at your house without also inviting your female student. Also, don't pee in the women's bathroom. I can't believe I even have to tell you this, but seriously, DON'T.

[A final DON'T for readers: don't go sharing this with people who could be my past, current, or future bosses - I like being hilariously critical of academia, but they just wouldn't get it. In fact, they are probably featured in my real world examples and are therefore the "butt" of my jokes. Except for future bosses, due to aforementioned lack of a time machine.]

The Freedom Tart

I made up a dessert today.

Basically, I made some delicious double chocolate chip cookies that were going stale. A microwave could rejuvenate them, but I don't have one. But I did have some leftover cream.

Eventually, my friends and I decided on a perfect name for this new dessert creation. But it is perfect only if you have a certain sense of humor. Don't get me wrong, the dessert is perfect either way, but the name may be an acquired taste.

May I present to you,

Freedom Tart

Built on the broken backs of stale dark chocolate cookies, with whipped cream, strawberries, and blueberries on top, it is the perfect metaphor for America.

You start with dark chocolate chip cookies that will be the foundation of your dessert. (Nestle's "double chocolate dream" cookies work here if you can find their recipe on the back of the bag). But, after a few days, they are looking a little worse for wear. The dessert really doesn't work without them, but you can cut some strawberries and add them to freshly whipped cream (whip 1 pint of heavy cream with 2 Tbsp sugar until stiff peaks form) and spread this over the broken chocolate cookies. (Once the cookies let you down, you must break them.) Top with blueberries for an extra dose of patriotism. You should not be able to even see the chocolate cookies, which again are the foundation of this dessert. It makes it easier if you don't see them - you can then pretend that they and their concerns don't matter.

"Mommy, why are the cookies broken?"

"Well honey, if they weren't broken, how would the rest of the tart stand up? Plus they are just naturally broken like that."

If you want to be technical, this is an unbaked tart; instead of a pie crust, the crust is provided by the broken cookie bits - without their consent of course - and the whipped cream, strawberries, and blueberries are the filling.

In much the same way as America was built on the exploitation of black slave labor, allowing it to become an economic power in the early stages after its creation, the Freedom Tart relies on the existence of an easily exploitable source of stale delicious chocolate cookies. Strawberries and whipped cream are mere fluff without this solid chocolate base.

I hope that you can enjoy this recipe. Joking aside, if you find yourself in the position of having too many double chocolate chip cookies, the Freedom Tart is an easy way to whiten - er, lighten up the stale dessert into a fresh new American treat.

[A picture could not be provided because we ate it too fast. It was damn good and tasted like Freedom.]

Your Brain is Not Your Fault

The year I graduated college, my sister had her first child. Luckily, I went to grad school in Baltimore while she was in the D.C. area, so I could visit often. Sometimes I would take the MARC to visit for a weekend, for no reason. Other than to be around family; other than to escape my life; other than the fact that playing with a 2, 3, 4 year old immediately reaffirmed the joy in life. Other than the fact that immersing myself in family drama reminded me that I was needed, to temporarily fill the vacuum that had grown up around my sense of self that grad school had torn down - other than that, no reason.

I learned a lot about myself during that time. And a lot of it came through watching my nephew grow up, who my sister calls my son because he is so like me.

He is like me because he is quiet. He is scared. He is good at math. He doesn't like to try new things.

I've watched him make life so much harder for himself. But it is hard to say, you don't have to react this way - when someone catches you doing something wrong, it doesn't mean everybody hates you and the world is falling apart - you're not going to magically be immediately good at riding a bike, it takes patience and practice - etc., etc. And yet all I have is compassion. What I want to say is, it is not your fault. Your brain is not your fault. My brain is not my fault.

It became even clearer when my sister had a second child, who is definitely her daughter and not mine at all. She talks and talks. She is fearless. She may or may not be good at math, it is too early to tell, but she definitely likes pink. She jumps into new things the same way she swims - with reckless abandon, expecting the people around her to keep her head above water.

Her fearlessness is not her fault. His fear is not his fault.

The things that happened when I was young, the way my brain is wired, my overactive amygdala - none of this is my fault. But it is still hard. I still make choices. Surely some of those I have responsibility for. But sometimes I just can't. Maybe I could, though. I never know.

In all of this confusion and uncertainty, the only shining light that I can see is compassion. How to obtain that compassion, I have no idea, but I believe that is what's needed. We have this illusion of self-control, of power over our thoughts and deeds, and yet when we prod our human natures with science we learn of our biased perceptions, our need to construct stories about ourselves, and the mental shortcuts of our lazy, energy-saving brains. It is too easy to judge someone by what you think you would do yourself. But what would you do if you had their brain?

Compassion for yourself means giving yourself a break. Compassion for others means embracing uncertainty - without understanding what motives, what life-choices, what brain chemistry brought them to where they are, compassion means withholding judgment.

Of course, compassion is hard, because our brains do not do well with uncertainty. But your brain is not your fault.

Black History

I remember when Black History Month would come around in school. We would learn about slavery and those who fought against it, about Frederick Douglass and abolitionists, about Jim Crow and Martin Luther King, about Black pioneers like George Carter... Carver?... The peanut guy... We learned about the horrible things that happened back then and the people who made it all better. And peanuts.

What we did not learn about was the system of white oppression. We did not learn about how the structural inequalities were built into our system of government and continue to affect Black people today. We did not learn about redlining, or if we did, it didn't leave an impression on my young white self. The horrible things that happened back then were committed by evil people like the KKK. White people back then were either ignorant racist mobs under the lynching trees and in the courtrooms, or they were saviors who fought for freedom and equality.

In our history books and in our pop culture, white people are re-writing Black history, just as they have been ever since they first stole people from Africa. Take for example the movie The Help. It is not really a movie about the help, but about a young white woman who helps those poor black maids stand up for themselves against the mean, racist white women who treat them poorly. This type of whiteness-centering and caricature of racism is so embedded in American society that most of the time we don't even know it's there.

When Trayvon Martin died, I was pretty angry, so I wrote an angry piece about how racism is often a subtle and unconscious reaction based on stereotypes and bias, and we all need to do better. While true, it is not the truest truth. It was an attempt to dispel the myth that racism is racist people intentionally committing racist acts, but supported a myth of its own by emphasizing racism as individuals behaving poorly to each other instead of as the system of oppression built into our institutions, as prejudice + power.

I didn't really get institutional racism until I read The Case for Reparations. As I said when I posted it,

I learned a lot, but I can't see a way to post this without it looking like I want credit for having read the whole thing. Because it was long and difficult. It made me sad and upset and angry.

Angry at the injustices, at how difficult it will be to change anything - and as cases of police killings of Black Americans continue to happen, over and over again, while police districts suppress evidence and the judicial system turns a blind eye, angry at ignorance. I, now enlightened, wondered how anyone could presume to have an opinion about these things without knowing the history? How could I have ever thought to have justified opinions on race before? 

Black history is really American history. Coupled with the systematic genocide of the Native Americans, it is the slavery that made our fledgling nation an economic power in the world, the Jim Crow and segregation that helped white America build their identity as individualistic entrepreneurs and reject social welfare programs, the modern doctrines of colorblindness and multiculturality that ease any remaining white guilt while we wash our hands of our ugly past.

Though I do believe that education is the key to making things better, it is not enough. It only addresses individuals and not systems. I didn't understand institutional racism for so long because as a white person, I don't have to. And when the knowledge appeared in my lap, I was eager to absorb it in part because I'm an academic. Plus, I really love to appear smart. Now when I'm having drinks with people I get to say "race is a social construct" or explain redlining and feel superior.

Pessimism aside, I encourage everybody, especially the people who will probably never read this in the first place, to do some real Learning this Black History month. Heck, maybe I will even dust off something on my reading list - The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander perhaps. But never stop learning, and never assume that Knowing Things will make everything better. The structure of white supremacy will stand until we can tear it down.

Tigger Warning

Luckily I'm not the first to think of this pun.

From DeviantArt

Recently I realized that something is basically acting as a trigger for anxiety. This is good because I can now focus on separating the thing from the anxiety, so that I can handle both in an appropriate way, instead of just reacting to anxiety and not really dealing with the thing.

This is also good because as I was writing trigger I noticed how close it is to Tigger, and then I thought about how being triggered is like being bounced.

I am enjoying this analogy immensely.

Being bounced is almost always unexpected and unwanted. It knocks you flat on your back. And then there's a Tigger on top of you. The Tigger is kind of child-like, and it won't go away.

Tigger: I “recoggonize” you. You’re the one that’s stuffed with fluff.
Winnie the Pooh: Yeah. And you’re sitting on it.
Tigger: Yeah. And it’s comfy, too!
~ (Tigger), A. A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh

Once you are bounced and would like your Tigger to go away, I suggest feeding it extract of malt.

There are a lot of ways in which being triggered is not at all  like being bounced, but I am deciding that when something is causing me anxiety, and it is not really that thing's fault, I will treat it as if I've just been bounced. There's a Tigger in the room and I need to feed it extract of malt or go climb a tree before I can go back to dealing with the thing.