Don't Go There

One of my college homework assignments, back in the days when the USSR was going strong, was to read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I studied better with background noise (I still do), so I sat in my dorm room with the door open. My hall-mates would pass by and peek through the door to see what I was doing, and several of them were scandalized by what they saw. They seemed to think that merely reading this forbidden treatise would somehow pull me over to the dark side. I might begin asking questions about things that should not be questioned. I might begin to think independently. It was all very dangerous.

People like their ideas neatly contained, finite and easily managed. In the movie The Truman Show, Truman Burbank grows up on the elaborate set of a reality TV show, but he's not aware that millions of people are watching his every move. Christof, the director of the show, rationalizes this manipulation by saying that he's enabling Truman to live an ideal life, free of the pain and violence of the outside world. When Truman begins suspecting that all is not as it appears, Christof uses every means at his disposal to prevent Truman from discovering that his friends, including his wife, are actors and his world is an artificial construct enclosed in a bubble.

This year has been an exploration outside the bubble for me. I'm exploring who I am and what I like to do when I'm not constrained by the necessities of getting up early every morning and commuting to a cubicle. I'm listening with a sense of amusement to politicians talk about "takers" who don't pay income taxes. I'm one of those "takers" this year, but I'm taking the resources that I earned through my own hard work. I'm listening to talk of jobs and assignments and stress and evaluations with the ears of someone who is standing outside of that culture. And I'm realizing that after my experience of life off of the hamster wheel, I'm not sure that I want to go back.

Now that the year is coming to an end, I'm getting a lot of questions about what kind of a job I'm looking for. Friends and family are genuinely concerned about me, since I had told them that I wasn't financially ready for retirement and I would have to find a source of income after my year is over. I have been trying to use the term "source of income" rather than "job", because money can come from a variety of sources. What would be the point of taking this year if I merely went back to the same life I left behind?

Some people get that idea, some don't. For some, "money" means "job". Job means office, commute, benefits package, managers, promotions, and performance evaluations. Jobs mean productivity, efficiency, being a team player, and working hard so that some executive or business owner can live out his dream (and if you're lucky, you can live a few of your dreams after you hit 65). Some part of my mind believes that, too. My career has been such a big part of my life for so long, it's hard to think in other terms. No one in my immediate family has been an entrepreneur for any great period of time. My sister and I have both done freelance gigs, but they tend to span the periods between job-type jobs.

Some people have told me how brave I am to be breaking out of this mold, but they could never even consider doing something similar. Some people are distressed when I tell them that I'm not sure what my next move will be. I tell them about the freelance projects I'm doing, the work I'm publishing, the little networking opportunities. That seems to reassure them that I'm doing something that might get me a job and bring me in from my wanderings in the wilderness. It tends to reassure me that I'm not just wasting my time, waiting for the money to run out.

For the time being, my savings are holding out rather well. I'm well aware that I will need to step up my efforts very soon. But it feels like cutting corners on my grand adventure to start looking too hard too soon for another niche in the machine. Might it be possible to make a life outside the office? If I succeed at that, would it disturb those friends of mine who are silently suffering in jobs that they hate, but have told themselves they must endure? Is it safer if we just don't ask certain questions?

Prison on a Pedestal

I read Chris Richards' concert review in the Washington Post today (Bieber Live: Less Than Believable) about last night's Justin Bieber concert at Washington DC's Verizon Center. The fans had a great night. The business side of the Bieber Empire had a great night. Apparently, The Biebs did not have a great night. Richards wrote, “The star didn’t seem to want to be there. His audience didn’t seem to want to be anywhere else.”

One photo that ran with the article showed Bieber descending onto the stage, strapped into a harness that sported 15-foot "angel wings" fashioned from cymbals, guitars, and other musical paraphernalia. This was no angel, just an 18-year-old kid who had posted a little music video on YouTube just a few short years ago, and who had been transformed into a hugely successful commercial product.

Beiber's fans have created an image in their own minds of what he must be like, incorporating a large dose of their own hopes, dreams, and needs, with a small sprinkling of what's left of the actual human that is Justin. The business end of his mammoth commercial enterprise relies on the human that is Justin to occupy this larger-than-life persona, born of the union between preteen fantasy and savvy marketing, in order to continue generating the huge amounts of money that the enterprise needs in order to perpetuate itself.

Bieber did not work his way up through smoky bars and small-town auditoriums. He is not grounded by a small following of fans who have been with him since the beginning, and who know him close-up. No, he burst into international fame overnight through the magic of social media. His far-flung fans enjoy a one-sided familiarity, the illusion of knowing this person whom they have never met. Like Sovietologists, they search out and dissect the tiniest factoids for some small insight into this mythical being. One wonders if they would turn away in disappointment if they caught an accidental glimpse of the man-boy behind the curtain.

Chris Richards immersed himself in this online world in preparation for yesterday's concert and wrote an article about it earlier this week. Says Richards, "On Twitter, Bieber’s name is tweeted roughly every second of the day, and he’s amassed more than 29 million followers. ... Tweeting at Justin Bieber is like sending a prayer to God. You hope you’ll be answered, but the real comfort comes from believing he can hear you.”

Quoting one of Bieber's Twitter fans: “Dear Justin Drew Bieber...can you notice me and follow me? I EXIST.”

Watching Bieber perform, Richards mused, "Makes ya wonder: Did Bieber even want to be onstage? Were his dreamy doe eyes actually spaced-out stares of exhaustion? His vocals — a mix of live singing and pre-recorded backing tracks — lacked a pulse and frequently sounded Bible-paper thin." The commercial persona had grown so large that it was becoming too heavy for the human being to carry.

I have no idea what this kind of dual existence must be like on this scale. Not even close. I do know, however, what it's like to be burdened with someone else's expectations of what I should be like. I know how miserable I can make myself when I try to be the person that someone else expects me to be. Someone sees some small part of me that they like, or that fits in with their agenda. They don't really know the rest of me -- my hopes, dreams, needs, and desires. Nor do they want to know.

Sometimes, it goes beyond not caring enough to find out. I once dated a young man for more than two years before I could no longer bend and distort myself to satisfy his demands that I become the ideal woman that he had created in his mind. I was just as deluded about him as he was about me. I had mistaken his ego and coerciveness for confidence and leadership. I had thought that he would continue to care about me after I became a "sure thing". Had he bothered to know me on an intimate level, however, I would have ceased to be the blank slate on which he could draw his fantasy woman. Not knowing me was central to his agenda.

More recently, my need for comfort and support in the face of an impending job loss (mine) revealed the weaknesses in my year-long relationship with a man who had made his life into a shrine memorializing a traumatic event from his teenage years -- 30 years before. Again, I was just as deluded as he was. I mistook his appearance of vulnerability and his willingness to talk about his trauma for true sensitivity and openness. When I became the vulnerable one, however, it became apparent that he had no interest in reciprocating my care and concern. The painful story that he had shared with me was well rehearsed and intended to solicit empathy from tender-hearted women. When I allowed myself to step back and observe him, I heard him recite his tale many times, almost exactly word for word, and then bask in the rescue fantasies of his carefully selected audience.

One of my discoveries about the government contracting world is the extent to which contracting companies engage in creating a shiny, enticing product with which to win over the government agents in charge of awarding the contracts. This includes recruiting and hiring highly credentialed people to back up a rosy picture of what the contract could be at its most ambitious and innovative. Once the ink is dry and reality sets in, the job usually turns out to be much less challenging and satisfying than the picture in the contract proposal. The "science communications" job turns out to be aggregating dry prose for quarterly reports and cobbling together exhibits for trade shows. If your manager knew how deeply you yearned to write informative, engaging articles about research and its context in society, he or she would be forced to acknowledge how deeply unsatisfying your actual job was. It would be that much harder to report up the chain of command that all is well, and the worker bees are happily productive. So much easier just not to know. Your boss is not your friend.

I have also experienced real friendship and real concern for others in my life. The biggest difference that I see is that the more I find out about the person, the better I like them. I don't have to agree with the person, nor do I have to share all of their interests. Getting my preconceived notions blown to bits feels like a good thing. Here are real human beings, with all their strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and personal histories, and I like them better the more I know.

I do not normally join celebrity fan groups -- I left breathless boy-band worship behind with my adolescence. However, I am following the emerging career of Andrew De Leon. Like Justin Bieber, he became famous overnight (he auditioned for America's Got Talent, and the videos are all over YouTube). He has a very active Twitter account. His fan base spans around the world.

Unlike The Biebs, he was not immediately picked up by a high-level talent scout and catapulted to platinum-record fame and fortune. He's back home now, working his way through small-venue performances and sessions in a local recording studio. His family and long-time friends are in close proximity, and he still has time for trips to WalMart and The Cheesecake Factory. He makes videos for his fans, but they are the musings (and belches and funny faces) of a very normal 20-year-old, not the lavishly produced performances of a rock superstar. I find that very reassuring. Andrew is still a human being.

Recently, he released a song, "The Devil's Knight", that he wrote himself. If you had really listened to his earlier interviews, the dark style and lyrics of the song would have come as no surprise. Andrew may have sung opera, art songs, and Ave Maria during the talent competition, but he made no secret of his admiration for Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie as well. He toned down his Goth makeup for his television appearances, but he also let it be known that he was a makeup artist for low-budget horror flicks.

Predictably, some of his fans were scandalized and let it be known that they would no longer be following him. I check in now and then on his Twitter page, and I could see it coming. The fans who had cooed and fussed over him, the ones who tweeted him as if they were sending prayers to a deity, the ones who begged him for just one little reply -- how much of their version of Andrew was really a creation of their own minds? The hyper-religious fans who left him because of the dark metaphors in his song -- well, really, what did they expect? One especially astute line from his song states, "Perfection to the blind, true devil lies inside. No lies when I tell you that my soul is in the night."

Unlike The Biebs, Andrew did not don the angel wings and dutifully shoulder his public persona for the fantasy-fulfillment of his fans. Part of the reason that he did not go further in the talent competitions is that he refused to be the clean, neatly packaged product that fills up the seats in the Las Vegas theaters. Andrew's reaction to the loss of his disillusioned fans? "Apparently I have lost my 'Christian' fans due to The Devil's Knight. How many f***s given? Zero. I still have you guys <3." (That's a sideways heart at the end, in case you didn't know.) Mr. De Leon isn't much of a diplomat. I find that very encouraging.

Update: On November 17, Andrew De Leon tweeted me: "I came across your article about me. I wish more people could be as understanding as you. <3"

The Storm This Time

Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days cooped up indoors, riding out Hurricane Sandy. Looking back, I realize how different this experience was from the time I spent in this same little home in 2003, riding out Hurricane Isabel.

Back then, I had been living in this condo apartment a little less than 6 months, and I didn't know any of my neighbors well. We were directly in the path of the hurricane. The power went out fairly quickly and was not restored for a week and a half. Only one of the building's backup generators was running at full power. One had partial power, and the other had none at all.

Fortunately, my kitchen was on the line to the fully functional generator, but it wasn't safe to use my electronic devices because of the power fluctuations. No television, no email, spotty telephone service -- and no lights in my bedroom. I suppose I could have sought out company in the building lobby, but I was afraid of being so close to the window wall that fills the lobby with sunlight on a normal day. I had never been directly in the path of a hurricane, and I had no idea what to expect. I felt so alone.

Fortunately, I had booked airline tickets many weeks in advance for a trip to see my family in New Mexico. Thus, after a few days (that felt like an eternity), I was able to board the plane right on schedule and fly away from my windswept exile. My sister kidded me that I had to go almost 2000 miles to get a hot shower and cash from a working ATM machine. I was just glad to be back among familiar faces.

This time around, the Washington DC area was hit with a glancing blow. Again, I spent a couple of days housebound, but it was a very different experience. The day before the storm, my neighbors and I chatted in the lobby. I knew that if I needed anything, I could knock on any one of a dozen doors and find a friend to help me. We never did lose power, but I knew from previous storms that our current building maintenance crew was diligent about keeping the generators ready to go. I didn't have plane tickets this time, but I didn't need them. I was prepared and well connected.

I thought that I might work on several projects around the house during the storm, but instead I spent a lot of the time online chatting with friends and family all over the country. I posted photographs and status reports online and kept up with my local friends who were doing the same.

I surprised myself by what I didn't do during the storm. I didn't turn on the television until late in the day. I knew from past experience that all of the stations would be broadcasting nonstop, breathless coverage of the very worst effects of the storm. There's only so much of that I can take, especially if I'm looking out the window to see how much damage is in my own back yard. I didn't watch movies or work on craft projects. I didn't do any writing (although I filled up six pages in my journal the day after the storm).

No, what I did was to seek out my friends and stay connected with them. It was a more concentrated version of what I've been doing lately during normal weather. I'm not nearly the news junkie I used to be, and I have a whole list of household projects that I haven't even started. Sometimes, I criticize myself for not being more "productive". Then I realize that I am doing exactly what I need to do.

When I started this year, my goals included improving my mental and physical health, making more time for the people in my life, working on creative projects, and finding a way to make a living that uses and builds my strengths. I have a pretty good handle on the mind/body thing, and now I'm working on building up my friendships. I'm making small inroads on the list of projects (paying and not), but for now, I'm building and strengthening my own personal community. The rest of it will come in good time.

Serendipity and Intention

Last night, my Deepening Circle celebrated our tenth anniversary with cake and sparkling wine. Twice a month, since October 23, 2002, we have gathered in a living room or a restaurant to discuss prearranged topics, enjoy free-form discussions, and share our music, histories, and dreams with each other. Members have come and gone, but the group goes on.

We were all a little hazy on our starting date. The original agreement was to meet for six months, then disband or continue as we saw fit. Our beginning had none of the trappings of a ten-year journey, just an experiment that we had agreed to carry out for a few months. The historical record surfaced when Callie, one of the two women responsible for launching the group, found an old e-mail printout as she was decluttering her house. The e-mail had a list of the original members of our group, our contact information, and the time and date of our first scheduled meeting. Callie found this just a couple of days before last night's scheduled meeting, just in time to get the cake and wine (one of her dad's favorite brands, which happened to be on sale) so that she could surprise us with her discovery.

October 23, 2002 was a Wednesday, and we've been meeting on Tuesdays. I don't remember if we changed our meeting day after that first meeting, but it doesn't matter. Callie's serendipitous finding of that e-mail added a touch of magic that honored our ten years of intentional community.

I like to think that we discover things that have been there all along by focusing our attention toward finding them. Like tuning in to a particular radio station -- the radio waves are there all the time, but you have to tune your receiver to a specific frequency in order to hear the music. That presupposes, however, that you have the right kind of receiver already and that you either know what kind of music that station plays, or you scan all the frequencies available to you until you find what you want.

But what about things that come to you unbidden -- things that you didn't even know how to ask for (consciously, anyway)? What is it that goes on outside of our consciousness that brings just what we need when we need it, even if we didn't know we needed it? Things have come to me that I didn't know how to ask for, or that I have asked for but that came in a form that I couldn't have imagined. Job offers, a cherished pet cat, lovers, a 35-mm camera, my current home, an artist whose work moves me in ways that I still don't understand.

So we do this curious dance, acting intentionally and purposefully, while keeping a space open for the unexpected. Too much open space, and you lose all focus. You drift aimlessly through the fog. Too little space, and your possibilities become limited to what you already know, what your mind is willing to admit. The world sees you as being self-sufficient, so it offers you no help. Other people need to see some open space so that they can gain access to your life.

But even there, we have to maintain a balance. You don't just leave your front door open to let strangers wander through your home and take what they please. You don't invite the neighbors in to watch your most intimate moments with someone you love. (Or maybe you do! I don't.) There has to be a safe space where you can guard the tenderest and most precious things. A place where you can retreat to safety when the world gets to be too much. But if you spend too much time in your sanctuary, the world goes on without you. People forget that you exist, and it's hard to come back out and find a friend when you need one.

Serendipity and intentions. Engagement and retreat. It's all a big balancing act, a big ebb and flow. An acknowledgement that we have the power to love things into existence, and a willingness to receive what we did not create.

The image at the top of this blog posting is something that I've been using as an icon for a some of my social media accounts for the last few years. I found it on the Internet, unexpectedly, while I was looking for something else. It really captures the concept of the balancing act for me. If you know the original source of this image, please leave a comment below.

Blueprints and Data Mining and Jigsaw Puzzles

There are many ways to go about finding something when the way ahead is not entirely clear. Some of my friends take a goal-oriented approach. Assess where you are now, define where you want to be, then make a detailed outline of the steps you need to take to get from here to there. That's great when you have a clear idea of what "there" looks like.

Some problems can be solved by diving into books and articles and advice from friends. Find out what someone else already knows, and use that to make your design. That's great when the question you want to answer is something that someone else has already answered.

My problem is that I seldom know what my goal will look like. I may have a general dissatisfaction with the way things are and a vague sense of what direction I need to go, and that's about it. The life I imagined for myself 30 years ago bears little resemblance to the life I have today, and that's not such a bad thing. I didn't have the ability back then to imagine this life. I discovered it as I went along.

I did the best I could with what I had, and every now and then I took stock of things and saw where the pieces fit together and suggested the outlines of a next step or two. It's been like solving a puzzle.

First, you clear out an empty space where you can work. It's much harder putting a jigsaw puzzle together on a cluttered table. The pieces don't fit because of all the stuff underneath. You can't see what fits where because there are too many things in the way.

When you begin, you don't have a clue where most of the pieces are supposed to go. You might not even have a picture to help you along. So you start with what you have. Edges and corners, pieces that are clearly part of a bright pattern, like a flower or a jewel. You fit those together, and the spaces between them suggest other pieces that might fit in. The colors along the edges suggest interior pieces that might fit that general area. You try pieces out, and sometimes they fit and sometimes they don't.

You take a break when you need to, then you come back and fit a few more pieces into place. Pieces that you wouldn't have known how to place before you put those first pieces in. Sometimes, you realize that the pieces aren't fitting properly, and you have to undo a section before you plow on ahead.

Little by little, the picture emerges. Maybe it's what you expected, maybe not. Sometimes, pieces get lost and you wind up with blank spots in your puzzle. As long as the picture is relatively clear, it's enough.

I cleared things out in a big way over the past couple of years. I cleaned closets and weeded out files and got furniture that harmonized and fit my space. I quit a job that was taking up too much space in my life. I made time for quiet, reading, long walks -- and blogging!

I have begun to fit a few pieces into this clear space:
Yoga and walking, for a quiet mind and a healthy body. I went from "plank pose is gonna kill me!" to "I can do this!" The balance poses need more work, but I'm getting better. A three-mile walk now seems very ordinary to me.

A new guitar and several new CDs, for more music in my life. I feel self-conscious about playing my piano, especially with my touchy downstairs neighbors. My guitar is quieter -- and much more portable. I'm having to re-learn what little I knew about playing guitar from my few lessons in the 1970s, and I am in serious need of some finger callouses. That will come.

Movies, art exhibits, panel discussions, and other events for mental stimulation. Sometimes with friends, sometimes by myself. Sometimes, I come away with an idea for the next move in my career. Sometimes, I just come away feeling inspired and happy. Both are valuable to me.

Writing projects, because this is a big part of who I am. I have a fiction piece coming out online next month, and a nonfiction piece being published this month. (I'll put in some links when they go live.) I am getting small bits of inspiration for several stories in progress. And most mornings, I write Morning Pages (a la The Artist's Way), which vary from brain dumps to aimless meanderings to bloody brilliant.

Social media, as a way of getting the word out there and reminding people I still exist. I'm learning my way around Twitter and news feeds and my very own website, and a professional FaceBook page. It's kind of disjointed right now, and I can spend way too much time just looking at other people's updates. Gradually, I'm getting a feel for how to skim the important stuff, avoid the negativity, and make a presence for myself. It's a skill, like anything else.

Little pieces of the puzzle, coming together. I'm still not sure what the picture is, but something is starting to emerge.

Pushing Back Against the Haters

Some of my best writing is inspired by the occasional convergence of news items around a common theme. I'm right in the middle of one such convergence, and I just have to share this with you all. I am getting a lot of this from my FaceBook friends, whose news links are a great way to aggregate stories from all over the web. The theme that is coming through almost on a daily basis is this: people are beginning to push back against the haters.

Story 1: A quiet, "free spirit" of a teen girl is elected to her school's homecoming court as a cruel joke. The entire town comes together to give her the royal treatment.

For the homecoming dance Saturday, businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her hair and nails, and dress her in a gown, shoes and a tiara.

For the homecoming game Friday, residents will pack the football stadium so they can cheer when she is introduced at halftime.

They will be wearing her favorite color (orange) and T-shirts with messages of support. A 68-year-old grandmother offered to be her escort.

"I am in awe, overwhelmed at the amount of support," said Jamie Kline, 35, who began a Facebook support page. "I never expected it to spread as far as it has."

From The Detroit News

Story 2: Someone sees a young Sikh woman who has an unusual amount of facial hair, which she made no attempt to hide or remove. The person posts a surreptitious photograph of the young woman on Reddit, and "wait[ed] for the abuse to flood in." The young woman's friend alerted her to the photo, and she posted a response that was so gracious and kind that the photographer posted a sincere apology.

... I've read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

From Jezebel.com

Story 3: Nate Phelps, a son of the "minister" who runs the Westboro Baptist Church, left his family just after midnight on his 18th birthday, and has pursued a much more loving path in his life. He has had to work hard to heal from the psychological wounds of his abusive upbringing, but now he is reaching out to help others.

Now in his 50s, Nate finds himself publicly squaring off with his father and siblings to reverse their legacy of intolerance. He lives in Calgary, where he has become a public speaker who champions LGBT rights and raises awareness about the connection between extreme religion and child abuse. He is currently writing a book about his life and is the subject of an upcoming documentary.

From Salon.com

Story 4: Andrew DeLeon, a teen from a small town near Austin, wasn't into sports or athletics. He became accustomed to being "hated" and "rejected" by the kids in his school, but he summoned up his courage and auditioned for America's Got Talent this year. I've written about him before, and I continue to be amazed by his generous and loving attitude toward his many, many adoring fans. This young man, who is now 20, amazed everyone by singing operatic arias in an other-worldly falsetto voice. Even though Andrew didn't get past the semi-finals in the competition, his fans continue to support him. He is currently paying his dues, performing in small venues and recording songs from a makeshift studio.

Here's his Austin audition, and here's a more recent clip that he made to keep in touch with his fans. The comments on his Facebook fan page and on his YouTube video page are almost entirely positive and supportive (an amazing feat), and he routinely gets messages from depressed, rejected, and out-of-the-mainstream teens who have been inspired and encouraged by his example.

Story 5: Lady Gaga, back when she was just Stefani Germanotta, was once thrown into a trash can by a group of bullies from her school.

“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point,” she said. “I didn’t want to go to class. And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was.”
From the New York Times

Lady Gaga went on to become an immense success as a musician and performer (to put it mildly!), but she hasn't forgotten the pain she experienced during her teens. She and her mother have founded the Born this Way Foundation, which is " is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a kinder, braver world."

Bit by bit, kind souls are pushing the pendulum back from the mean-spirited, winner-take-all attitudes that have dominated our environment for far too long. I hope to see many more such stories, and I will pass them along to you, gentle readers.

Signal to Noise Ratios

Back to the science metaphors today. I got to thinking about how radically I have emptied out my schedule this year, and how it's helping me pay attention to things too long ignored. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio, as it were.

Right after grad school, I spent three years as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Lab. I was studying the way that surfaces influence the structure of thin coatings, to see if you could set up a surface that could direct a thin film to form with the properties you wanted. In order to pick up any kind of a signal at all on my instruments, I had to start out with substrate materials that had a whole lot of surface area, just to have enough of the thin film to make a detectable signal.

I had to make sure that the substrate surface was as clean as humanly possible, to eliminate interference from contaminants -- including air. For every sample I made, I had to start by baking my substrate material at a high temperature, under vacuum. This required custom-built glass furnace tubes that had to be made in the lab's glass shop, by the resident glass-working experts. My fellow researchers showed me how to set up the furnace and vacuum pump setup, and they clued me in on putting a cold trap between the two parts, so that pump oil would not back-flow into the furnace tube. They also told me that the copper coil I needed for this could be found at a local auto supply store.

After I baked out my samples, I had to close off the glass tube and transfer it to one of those big glove boxes that you may have seen on TV shows where people are working in a lab. The man in charge of keeping the glove box maintained had very large hands, so the gloves were sized to fit him. I have very small hands, so I had to learn to manipulate tiny tweezers and allen wrenches using thick rubber gloves that were several sizes too big for me.

Coating the sample surface was an exercise in patience. Meter in a little gas, let it condense onto the surface, wait for things to settle down, meter in a little more, repeat. Do this until the gas pressure gauge shows that no more gas is condensing down onto the surface. This sometimes took hours. Once, I tried to put two layers down on a surface, and I stayed at it for 36 hours straight before I finally gave up.

After I collected data from my instrument, I used a computer program (written by another colleague) to tease out the tiny signal from the thin film from the much larger signal from my supporting surface. Another computer program would interpret the resulting pattern, but the specific material I was studying hadn't been studied much as a thin film, so I had to piece together what I could from existing information and make reasonable assumptions.

I did manage to put together a general picture of what the surfaces were doing to the thin films. It's been almost 25 years, and others have gone much farther than this than I could.

What I'm getting at is this. In order to see anything at all out of this year-long experience of mine, I had to set up a situation in which I had a lot of time just for me -- my supporting substrate surface. I had to clear out any interfering noise from this time -- residual stress from a long day at work and commuting, much of my extracurricular activity, anything that would take away from what I'm trying to find. After the initial clearing-out, I had to protect my time from re-contamination. Only then could I begin to let in the things that I want to pay attention to.

I'm getting a lot of advice and assistance from friends and colleagues, but ultimately, I'm having to put this thing together myself. And now that little hints of answers are starting to come in, I'm having to try and make sense of what I'm finding out. Looking at what other people have done is giving me a general direction, but ultimately, I'm having to take what I can find and make some reasonable assumptions about the rest.

Very slowly, a little pattern is starting to emerge from the background. Other people may do this more elegantly or simply, but this is my project, and I am having to put together an answer that applies to me. The learning how to do it, the actual process of doing it, and the friends and mentors I'm meeting along the way are just as important (if not more so) than whatever answers I may come up with.