Trying Something New...

One of my great pleasures during my Ph.D. was blogging and participating in the community surrounding blog culture - The 'blogosphere' if you will. I managed to post somewhere along the lines of 3 posts per week on average, which I was satisfied with given the demands of school and life. I'd hoped to keep up a similar regimen during my postdoc, but for a while, it just didn't seem like I could pull it off.

So far, I've found postdocing to be far, far more time consuming than doing a Ph.D. This is partially work-related (I generally work from 10-7ish plus weekends, whereas during my Ph.D. I was more 9-5 plus weekends), but also compounded by 'externalities'. I now commute by bike 45 mins each way and try to go to the gym every morning. Thus I leave at 7:30 am and get back at ~8 pm. Factor in getting stuff together for the next day and there's little time left.

All this being said, I'm finding that this work all day followed by vegging out at night is becoming unsatisfying. Between Monday and Friday, I accomplish little in the way of non-work related personal development. Looking back, I know realize that this extracurricular stuff was a major factor in what got me so heavily involved in research in the first place. I read tons of science and humanist related material, which kept me immersed in the culture. I also got to incorporate some of the former into my own research.

Keeping up a website (or blog) is a form of personal development as well. On the rare occasions during which I felt the desire to revisit earlier posts on my former website, I realized how much I've improved at writing down ideas over the years1. My current focus on getting a research program up and running (which seems to be going quite successful so far!) hasn't left much room for writing, and I fear that I've been falling out of practice.

A few months ago on my former blog, I said that I wanted to get back into blogging. I meant it, but did a very poor job of following through with my intentions. There are many reasons for this, but one critical factor hinged on the baggage that my former blog carries. It was written druing a different period of my life, under different circumstances from which I've now moved on. I'm happy with the discussions I had on Musings of the Mad Biologist, but it's time for me to start something new.

All of my future musings will be here. Stay tuned.

1Please don't misconstrue this as tooting my own horn. I'm constantly trying to improve my writing, but it's heartening to see the progress that I've already made.

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