I loved the Wonder Twins on Saturday morning cartoons in my childhood. They would reach for each other and say "Wonder Twin powers: ACTIVATE!" And sproing, one of them would be a -- hmm, the memories are blurry, 40+ years on -- maybe a harbor seal, while the other would be a hydroelectric dam, so that the second one could immobilize the bad guy by pouring water on his head while the first one bit him on the ankle. That doesn't sound very plausible now that I have written it down, but I am not going to google it. Am. Not.
This blog post is itself a procrastination, and it would just be too meta to procrastinate further in the middle of my procrastinating.
I am supposed to submit my first NIH grant on the 19th of June, and instead of Wonder Twin powers I am observing the ferocity of untrammeled impostor syndrome. I open the interface and something inside me says "Impostor Syndrome: ACTIVATE!" Impostor syndrome speaks with measured skepticism: you, Jamie Gladly? You are going to submit an NIH grant? For real?
Maybe you should do another KenKen first.
Maybe you should see if eBay will sell you replacement spice jars for the 1960s spice rack you got from your MIL when you were engaged. (Answer: I can get jars with no lids, or jars plus rack. I just want 5 or 6 jars with lids. Why is this hard? Wait, it is distracting me from the scary grant-writing stuff so I don't actually care if it's hard.)
Or maybe, just maybe, I should write the stupid grant like an actual grownup.
I am going to harness the power of the internet to arrest my procrastination instead of fueling it. I am going to put words in a row until I have a draft personnel justification that I can send off to my contact in the grants office. I'll report back when I've done so.
And maybe then I'll find some spice jars. Impostor Syndrome: DEACTIVATE!
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