Building Blocks

Retraining is always useful thing to have in the background, as the more skills you have the more versatile you can be. This is something that I really wish I had come through strongly in the course of my PhD but instead it was a relentless and repetitive struggle with the same problems over and over and over. 'Could have, should have, but didn't'. Alas, dwelling on past difficulties is really not the way to go.

Diversification of skills is a great way to spend a spell of unemployment. It's difficult to get started, but once begun it is halfway done. I am choosing to spend this period becoming reacquainted with Statistics and learning how to data analyses in the language R. While in its early stages, it is clear that a proficiency in R, as well as the previously adopted Python and odd thing we call FreeFEM++ provides quite an impressive portfolio of computational tools. Bring on the Statistics.

It feels stupid to be talking about disadvantages or disenfranchisement, but there are things that happen in the course of a spell in the Wilderness. Mostly they are things that you do to yourself. Confidence problems can be such a pain. There was a time when my lack of confidence was so ingrained and embedded into the DNA that I tried to do nothing at all, and just hide in the hole of safety. It's always a tempting option, and when you're stuck in job hunting mode it gets very easy to dismiss so many jobs as being unlikely or impossible...

So, in the final analysis we're faced with two kinds of blocks: Building blocks and mental blocks. The building blocks are helpful tools like learning R, or reading articles that are interesting as well as (or even instead of) useful, being proactive, and taking online courses. The mental blocks are far harder to shake, but that's mainly because they're distracting in their very presence. You feel the giant oppressive block sitting there, forcing you into stillness, and forming the focus for what can only be obsession. The word 'stillness' is the key here, as the best thing to do is to do. Make progress in something, anything, and then the energy will bleed over into everything else. Activity is what eliminates inactivity.

There's a lesson there somewhere. Perhaps it's the old one about macaroni being the key to a truer conception of reality.

O.