Lower lifeforms

I've come to realize that over the last 3/4 year or so (since leaving Madison last summer), both my motivation to do paid work and to write/draw in my "spare" time has close to vanished. Which is damn bloody suicidal for someone just starting grad school. Granted, there are other things that have delayed progress on my project (like my advisor being not around a lot and extremely scattershot as to what he wants me (and everybody else in the lab) to do; waiting for eggs to grow and viruses to ship, things under the control of biology and bureaucracy), but I'm having trouble focusing.

Part of it is fear - I don't have a good grounding in molecular biology yet - but my reaction to fear, doing nothing, is creating a horrible positive feedback loop, because if I don't spend time in lab, at least trying to work with viruses, design vectors, etc., I will learn nothing.

"Free" time has also been totally wasted because instead of making anything or even just reading good fiction/nonfiction, I've been spending a lot of time just surfing the Internet and shopping (mostly window) online. Turning into someone who shops as a form of escapism is turning into the very sort of woman I despise. I was planning to do something to enter the Writers of the Future contest this past quarter. I'm still thinking of a bunch of specific drawings that I want to do. I haven't saved anything in my writing folder or touched my sketchbook these past months.

A lot of this sluggishness is from last year when I was staying at home in Bentong. So, for future reference, being unemployed is very very bad for me and I'll need to make a rigorous program of stuff for myself to do - writing, drawing, reading technical stuff - to keep occupied the next time I find myself in that position.

Yeah...choking on self-pity atm.