I turn 30 this month. I went back and forth about writing lots of different things for this post. A couple ideas included, “30 Pieces of Unsolicited Advice on my 30th Birthday” and, “A Sappy Ode to my Parents and Mentors.”
While I may write some variation on these pieces one day, I didn’t end up landing there. Instead, I was inspired to write this post by a friend who asked me why I liked the band Bleachers so much.
My answer to my friend could have gone in many different directions. But if I were to try to to pick one song, one lyric, that both shows why I love Bleachers and how I feel about turning 30, it’s this:
“I know what I’m not. / But just like you, I can’t leave.”
Bleachers, ’91, Take the Sadness out of Saturday Night
You can take a listen to the song and try to find the lyric, here:
Jack Antonoff, who formed the band, describes what he meant when he wrote this lyric–that it had to do with realizing what your faults are (“I know what I’m not,”) but still knowing you have to try to do something (“but just like you, I can’t leave.”) Here’s a video of him talking about the song’s meaning. If you go about 11 minutes in, you’ll hear him describe the lyric I’m referencing:
If I’ve landed anywhere again and again in trying to figure out how I want to live in the world, it’s in this space that Antonoff describes–a space where I know the limits of my mind, but still have to try to do something. For me, that translates to knowing the ways in which I struggle to be a scientist: my endless curiosity pulls me in many different directions when I need to focus, my depression and anxiety have paralyzed me when giving presentations, wanting to ask questions, etc., etc., etc.
But after feeling all of this, after knowing all of my inadequacies, I still can’t leave science. I’ve beem drawn back to the lab again and again and again. I can’t not try to be a scientist. Because, in the end, not trying would be more painful for me than failing as a scientist.
I have to try.
I don’t know if trying will mean that things will work out in an expected direction–it’s unlikely they will. I just know there are few other other places in the world than the lab, where we are trying to figure out some sort of ground truth–where I feel more alive.
“I know what I’m not. / But just like you, I can’t leave.”
What ends up being extra cool about this milestone birthday, is that I–along with many of my close friends–were born in ’91.
The Lazy PhD 