But I Won't Call it a Project

For some reason, I got it in my head that I really had to read The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. I'm not sure why. I'm actually a pretty happy person.

But anyway, I'm reading it. So far, the parts that have resonated with me the most are where she is defending the pursuit of happiness as a worthy goal and where she is exploring the way that other, less happy people, interact with happy people. This is no doubt because I believe that happiness is the point of life (making it a very worthy goal indeed) and because I have, at various points in my life, found myself in that strange dance between a happy person (me) and someone who seems to simultaneously want to draw on my happiness for energy and convince me that my happiness is all a delusion.

The funniest thing about reading this book, though, is how I felt compelled to write a list of things I want to do in order to be happier. Even though I'm not unhappy. I think this means that I am very suggestible. Regardless, here's my list:

1. Listen to more of my music. Almost all of the music I listen to these days was either made for children or selected by my husband (he is the one who is motivated enough to put CDs in the cars). That isn't to say it is bad music (OK, some of the kids stuff is, but mostly I try to avoid that kind of kids music). But whenever I take the time to put on my Pandora station or dig out one of my CDs, I'm always struck by how happy it makes me. So I should do it more often.
2. Do more yoga. I need to do this for physical reasons- I have a repetitive strain injury on my right arm, and yoga is the only thing I've found that keeps it at bay. But also for mental reasons. I love how yoga makes me feel. And yet... I haven't settled on a yoga class since changing jobs (and therefore not being in the right location to continue going to my old yoga class). There is a free one in my building, but from what I can tell it is more vigorous than I really like. I'm not doing yoga for exercise. I like a very gentle class. But maybe I should take it anyway.
3. Get out more. I live in a top vacation spot. There are lots of fun things to do. We should go do them.
4. Lower my expectations. I have more fun when I let go of my perfectionist streak and just let life happen, even if that means that Petunia's nap gets screwed up. It turns out, Petunia doesn't really mind that. 
5. Put a positive spin on things. I wasn't stuck taking a day off with a sick kid last Friday (Petunia had another one of her fevers). I was given a chance to get some errands and chores done while also spending more time with my adorable toddler! Yeah, that only works up to a certain point... but up to that point, it really is amazing how much changing the way you look at something helps.

I haven't finished the book yet, so maybe I'll add more things to this list. But maybe not. Five is a nice number. Large enough to seem meaningful, but small enough to seem doable. We'll see how it goes.

Networking 101

I recently participated in a career advice session on a local campus. The session was attended by grad students and post docs who were either interested in the field in which I work or desperately casting about for something to do that is at least somewhat relevant to their training. I had fun- hey, I write a blog, so it should be no surprise to you that I don't mind talking about myself. I was also struck by how completely clueless some of them were about networking.

To be fair, I was probably equally clueless, if not more so, when I was where they are now. But regardless, I thought I'd write up some of the advice I gave them, so that maybe a few more people might benefit from what I've learned from two rounds of "layoff school" (a.k.a. "outplacement services") and more than ten years experience in industry.

First of all, it really is true that most industry jobs are landed by networking- at least in my industry (biotech). I have never landed a job any other way, in fact, and I do not think that I am unusual. This is not because we are all heartless jerks who only want to hire our friends. It is because most industry jobs require not just the appropriate technical skills but also the appropriate cultural fit, some sort of clue about how to function in a corporate environment (surprisingly lacking in many scientists), and various other traits that are hard to discern in an interview.

So, like it or not, if you want to go into industry, you need to network. Now, this is hardest to do when you're looking for your first industry job. Once you've had a job or two, you have a natural network of past coworkers, who- if you weren't a complete jerk or flake- will almost certainly put in a good word for you if given a chance. So how do you get a network before you have worked in industry? I can think of two good methods:

(1) Join organizations like AWIS, industry associations, and local industry networking groups. Go to the meetings. Talk to people. And, most importantly, volunteer on a committee or two. If all you've done is schmooze with me, all I can say is that you didn't seem like a freak (still a valuable recommendation, but you want better- particularly in this tight market). If you've worked on a committee with me, I can talk about how you work in groups (very important in industry), your work ethic/reliability, and other relevant things. This, incidentally, is how I landed my first industry job. That, and I got incredibly lucky in that I graduated with experience in a relatively hot field at the peak of the dot-com/biotech bubble. But even with that luck, without that networking connection, I may not have gotten that first job.

(2) Organize some "informational interviews". These are interviews where you ask someone who's working in a job that sounds interesting to you lots of questions and try to figure out if you'd like the job and how you might get such a job. You do NOT contact someone and ask for a job. Even if that person has a job you want posted. You contact her and ask if you can ask some general questions about her field and how she got to where she is today. When someone emails me and asks me for a job, I generally ignore that email. Sorry- but that shows a level of cluelessness that I don't really want to have to deal with. But if someone emails me and asks me if she can ask me some general questions, I generally take her out to lunch and answer those questions. And, here's the kicker- if it turned out that she was a potential fit for the job I had posted? She'd have a pretty good chance of landing an interview.

Yes, I said that if you contact me and want to ask me general questions about my field, I'll usually take you out to lunch and try to do anything I can to help you in your job search. Think about that. The worst outcome of this scenario is that you get a free lunch. Not everyone takes people who ask for informational interviews out to lunch, but a lot of us do. It gives us a warm fuzzies and an excuse to go out to lunch. So don't be afraid to ask for an informational interview. They are a great way to start building a network.

Those are the basics of networking. Well, you should also always be nice to people and remember that biotech is a small world. If you're going to gossip about someone to me, there is a good chance I know that person. Do you really want to gamble on me sharing your opinion? The old "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" adage is a good one.

Questions? Ask 'em in the comments. I'll try to answer.

Weekend Reading: The Self-Destructing Pharma Industry Edition

Like most people working in drug discovery and development, I've watched the waves of mergers between pharma companies with sadness. The mergers never seem to do much good for the companies- hundreds of people are laid off, but even worse, the productivity of the resulting company never seems to live up to the promises made by senior management at the time of the merger.

No company demonstrates this sad recent history more that Pfizer. When I was leaving graduate school, a job offer from Pfizer was greeted with enthusiasm. Now, people are reticent to take a job there, because the industry scuttlebutt is that morale is at rock bottom, and no one trusts that his or her job is safe.

As I've written before, I think we all need to adjust to a world without job security, but I can attest that it is possible to have high morale in the absence of such security- most biotech jobs are quite insecure, but I love the energy and team atmosphere in biotech.

Last week, Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline had a post that led me to a recent write-up in Fortune about the most recent shake up at Pfizer. It is depressing, but fascinating, reading. I think everyone should care about this, not just those of us whose industry has suffered from the upheavals at Pfizer. If the pharmaceutical industry self-destructs in a wave of short-sighted, finance-driven mergers, who will develop the new drugs that will treat the many conditions still in need of treatment?

Despite what you may have heard, government and academic scientists do not make new drugs. They excel at identifying new drug targets (the proteins that the drugs modulate), and recently they have started to do some very good work in lead discovery (identifying a small molecule that has the right properties to be the starting place for the development of a drug). Some have even started to push towards clinical candidate identification (a clinical candidate is a small molecule that has been thoroughly tested for activity at the target, checked for undesirable off target effects in vitro and in various animal models, and also shows good properties with respect to metabolism, absorption, etc.). But I am not aware of any academic or government site that is doing large scale development- the work of taking a clinical candidate and figuring out the formulation that can go into humans, doing the preclinical testing required by the FDA, and more. Maybe they will start to do so. Maybe small and medium-size biotech will adapt to fill the void. Maybe the resulting system will work even better than the one that has been destroyed by the recent rounds of mergers. But I have to think there was probably a less painful way to get there.

Why I Blog

A little while ago, I stumbled onto this post from Stirrup Queens about why she prefers blogs to tweets, and it got me thinking about why I blog. I'm not trying to get a book deal, or make enough money at my blog to allow me to quit my day job, or do anything obviously measurable with my blog. There are plenty of other things I could do with my limited kid-free time, and there is a good case to be made that many of them- tackling that pile of papers on my desk, for instance- would be more useful. So why do I carve time out to write blog posts and read the blogs of others?

When I first started this blog, I thought I'd write stories about traveling- and I still do that, from time to time, but that didn't turn out to be a compelling enough reason to write for me.

The blog didn't really take off until my first child was born. Pumpkin was- and is- an intense little thing. Delightful, wonderful, and, along with Petunia, one of the biggest sources of joy in my life. But her arrival tore my life apart, and I turned to this blog as a way to figure out how I wanted to put the pieces back together. It was my touchstone, a place where I could work out who I was now that I'd added "mother" to my identity. A place where I could admit that reworking my identity was hard-  one of the hardest things about adjusting to motherhood for me, harder in some ways even than the sleep deprivation.

I don't need that so much anymore. I'm now comfortable in my reconfigured life, and usually feel well-connected to who I am, although I do occasionally still need to work things out in that regard.

I also used to write a lot more about the mechanics of motherhood- sleep, breastfeeding, and the like. These topics do still pop up from time to time, but if that was all I used my blog for, this site would probably have gone dark a long time ago.

Now I write because it gives me a way to explore issues that are on my mind- from working motherhood to food to my thoughts on work-life balance- and pretty much anywhere else my fancy takes me. The blog probably spares my husband from having to listen to at least one rant a week. I do love to rant.....

The blog also retains one of the roles it has had since the very early days of motherhood: it is the proverbial room of my own, a place that is all mine, paradoxically untouched by the needs and wants of my kids and husband while also often being about them.

Over the years, I've gained valuable insights from the comments left on posts, and found friends whom I will probably never meet. I have felt less alone, able to pull away the perfectionist veneer that often covers real life conversations with other parents, to expose my parenting reality and find others who understand it. I think the blog has probably made me a better parent, both by giving me new ideas and by boosting the confidence and patience I need to follow my own parenting instincts.

I don't really have any goals for this blog. I've dabbled in money-making ideas, but realize that I do not take this anywhere seriously enough to truly monetize my blog. I have more ideas, but pursuing them is not a priority for me right now, because I am realistic enough to know that they are unlikely to provide a sound return on the time I'd have to invest in them.

(This, incidentally, is why you won't find me at BlogHer this weekend, even though it is in my hometown and I would have enjoyed meeting some of the people whose blogs I read. Just looking at the agenda gave me unrealistic ideas about what I would do with my blog if I were to devote much, much more time to it. It seemed silly to spend money to go somewhere that would probably leave me feeling unhappy. But I hope everyone who comes has a great time, and enjoys both the conference and my city.)

My hit statistics have gone steadily but slowly up, but I am not really trying to get them to any particular level. It is gratifying to know that people out there like to read what I write, but I don't know what I'd do if my readership suddenly skyrocketed. Probably freak out a bit, and then keep writing the same things I write now.

If I have an agenda at all, it is in my hope that I can serve as an example to ambitious young women who are afraid they can't have a satisfying career and a family- but I am not egotistical enough to think that many of those young women are reading my blog. I suspect they hang out in far cooler corners of the internet.

Given all of that, the only conclusion I can draw is that I truly am writing for myself, as a slightly (or maybe hugely) narcissistic hobby. Most of the benefits I derive could probably also be gained from an old-fashioned journal, but the publishing aspect has made me keep the habit going far longer than any previous journaling attempt. And I've learned a lot and gained interesting perspectives from the other blogs I've found via comments sections (both mine and others) and blog rolls. That is enough for me- at least right now.

What about you? Why do you write a blog, if you have one? Why do you read blogs?

A Rambling Post about Sleep, Lessons, and Our Collective Need to Snap Out of It

I sometimes think that people parenting kids with lower than average sleep needs and people parenting kids with average (or, wonder of wonders, above average) sleep needs are occupying parallel universes. Our experiences are familiar to each other, but not quite the same.

For instance, I was talking to someone the other day who casually mentioned how she gets so much done in the evenings, after her kids are in bed at 7:30, since she can go to bed as late as 11 and still get a full night's sleep- the kids don't wake up until 7 a.m.

I just nodded and smiled, because what could I say? My toddler doesn't go to bed until 8:30, on a very good night (on a bad night it is after 9 before she is asleep). My preschooler's light goes out at about 9, and our bedtime routine is done at about 9:15... but sometimes, particularly during the week, when she naps at day care, it is close to 10 p.m. before I am sure she won't be calling me back in. At least she sleeps through the night- the toddler is usually up once. And they both wake up at about 6:30 or sometimes 7 in the morning.

(And before anyone lectures me about how much sleep they need, and how I'm depriving them of sleep... no, I'm not. They show absolutely no signs of sleep deprivation (which is more than I can say for the grown ups in the house), and they generally wake up on their own with no help from us. Actually, they generally wake us up.)

Anyway, to get anything close to a good night's sleep, I basically have to go to bed as soon as I'm done getting Pumpkin to sleep. Which doesn't really work, since there are also dishes to do, and every once and awhile I'd like to talk to my husband. (Blogging generally happens during the 15-30 minutes of "on call" time while I wait to see if Pumpkin's really down, or after everything's done, as way to unwind and "shut down" the day, usually with a beer, and usually only if Hubby has to do some work and is therefore not available for chit chat or The Daily Show.)

This means that we have started to find ways to grab some time to ourselves when the kids are still awake. For instance, tonight I did yoga while my husband put Petunia down for the night. I just had to do it with Pumpkin. She keeps up a running commentary for the entire DVD and doesn't really do the stretches, but she loves to do yoga with me. So I'm adding that into our weekly routine, because I really want to do more yoga.

I find it funny that I get a vestigial twinge of guilt about this, as if some part of me thinks that we should be doing a more enriching activity instead.

This is wrong on a couple of levels.

First, I find yoga to be an almost miraculous way to decrease stress and increase my sense of well-being. If my kids pick up a yoga habit from me, that is probably a good thing, as good as picking up a love for reading or an interest in science.

Second, when did we as a culture decide that our kids need so much of our attention and focus? Yeah, yeah- newborns do. But a 4 year old? It is probably good for her to start seeing her parents as separate people, with their own agendas. To start coming to the slow, and hopefully gentle, realization that no, she is not in fact the absolute center of the universe.

I alluded to the fact that I think modern kids get a lot more focus from their parents than kids did in the past in my weekend reading post about how mothers have always worked, and the comments on that post included some really interesting thoughts on that subject. I have some half-formed thoughts on this, which, if I had more time, I'd love to research and turn into a carefully crafted blog post. But that's not going to happen anytime soon, so instead, I'll just type them out in all of their half-formed glory, and y'all can tell me where I've gone off the tracks.


I look around me, and even the sanest of the other day care parents have filled their kids' schedules with at least as much stuff as we have. We're all discussing kindergartens as if we actually had a bad choice in front of us (for the most part, we don't- we almost all live in areas with schools that are at least decent, and frankly, some of the most worried parents I've talked to live in areas with downright awesome schools). When we go to someone's house on a play date, the toys on offer always include a fair number of educational/enriching options- and they would think the same about our toys. I know at least two parents who don't let their kids watch any TV at all, and we all limit screen time.

All of these things are fine, and even good. But I can't help but think that we've gone a bit off our collective rockers. It is like we all see our kids as having been born with almost infinite potential, and think that it is our job to try to keep as much of that from "leaking away"  due to suboptimal activities as possible. Watching Yo Gabba Gabba instead of an educational DVD- or better, doing a science experiment in the backyard? There went some of that precious potential, gone forever.

Since I've clearly bought into this to a certain degree (hence the Chinese lessons, and our own ever-evolving rules about what constitutes acceptable screen time), I can't judge the other parents. And I don't want to.

But I do wish we could all give ourselves a big Moonstruck slap and snap out of it.

The way I see it (in my saner moments), the human brain is this amazing plastic thing. It is adapted to learn from experience, but also to give us second and third and even hundredth chances, and to learn the most from repetition, not from casual encounters. For centuries, humans have passed on the skills their offspring needed just by making those kids a part of their daily lives. My kids are going to live in a technologically rich world- so of course I should let them learn about technology the way human children have always learned: by using it. It makes no sense to try to pick and choose what things they need to know- how would I possibly be able to predict that? I can take my best guess, and that is what school and any enriching classes will cover. But I won't get it all right. And even if they learn some frivolous things, so what? If all Pumpkin learns from Yo Gabba Gabba is what "break it down" means, is that such a bad thing? Some day, that knowledge might smooth a social interaction and spare her a awkward moment of feeling like a clueless geek.

I'm not arguing at all that we should stop giving our kids lessons in various things, or just sit them down in front of the TV all day. But I am arguing that we should take this parenting thing a little less seriously. There are no guarantees, no matter how we do it. We rolled the genetic dice when we conceived our kids, and all we can do is try to give them a fair shot at living up to the potential set by the genes they received.  It is not our job to shelter that potential and make sure that it is never harmed, because that is just not possible. It is our job to introduce them to our world, and try to give them the skills they need to go out and enjoy it. While also maybe giving them an obstacle or two to overcome, because we all have to have the story we tell at cocktail parties, about how we overcame such and such and went on to achieve so and so. We wouldn't want to deprive them of their chance to look noble and heroic by making things too easy for them.

And now my beer is gone, and it is past time for bed. I can already hear Petunia shuffling around in her crib. If I want some time in bed without a toddler bedmate, I should hurry. So I'll just ask you- what do you think? Should modern parents loosen up? Or is our current state of affairs a perfectly reasonable response to a society in which most families only have a few kids who mostly live into adulthood, and therefore we should invest more in our kids than our forefathers and mothers did?