I finished the Aran-braid socks last night. Here's a not-very-good picture (I was in a hurry this morning, and also my camera was on its last few seconds of charge):



I started another pair, using some of the KnitPick's "Simple Stripes" yarn I got for Christmas; I'm doing one of the chevron-y patterns designed to work with self striping yarns, from Charlene Schurch's book. They're not far enough to photograph yet.

I want to start another pair, out of some new pink, red, and green Regia, using the Dublin Bay sock pattern (N.B.: .pdf file) from Mossy Cottage.

This push of wanting to start things is because I'm frustrated at work. I'm trying to rewrite a paper - this would be the second half of my dissertation work. My co-author and I submitted a paper based on this topic some five years ago (I know it was, because I was still in the old building when I got the rejection. I remember it that well). My co-author, ever irrationally optimistic, had us send it to one of the premier journals in our field.

Well, it came back. UNREAD. That's, like, the second biggest insult a journal editor can do to an author - it's just short of turning it back unread with a letter accusing you of being a crackpot or a plagiarist. Anyway, the journal said the work "wasn't innovative enough" for them.

And that was five years ago? And you're suggesting we rewrite it and resubmit now?
Well, yes, of course, to a different journal, and with re-analysis.

Well, I did the reanalysis. Finished it yesterday. Printed my graphs. And, the best phrase I can come up with to describe my feeling is "I got nothin'." Or the best one-word kinda-word-kinda-sound is "Meh."

But I have to work on it, see, because my co-author and I already had one near argument about it - about me just wanting to bung the whole thing in a file folder and forget about it, and him wanting us to keep on trying - and I kind of lost the argument. (I say kind of lost because as I said yesterday, I'm a conflict avoider of the first water; I would rather cave on a great many things instead of getting into a shouting match about it). The other thing is, he's suggesting another prestigious journal for this one, and frankly, I would like to just send it off to one of the small journals local to the state where the research was done and be through with it. I'm not all about "your reach should always exceed your grasp" or whatever the heck the saying is - 'cos you know, it's EXHAUSTING to keep trying, it's exhausting to shoot arrows at the sun when you know it's 93 million miles away when what you really want to do is hit that chicken running around on the ground so you can go home and have supper.

But anyway. Part of me is bitterly saying "OF COURSE he thinks it's a good idea to keep working on it - you are doing all the work" and part of me is saying "you know, your personal inner critic is a little too highly tuned, maybe he has a point that with some reworking it could be publishable."

But mostly I'm just frustrated that I don't find the research interesting to read about, and if I don't find it interesting (and I'm the one what did it), how will other people find it interesting?

Oh, and about the whole "why don't you just abandon it and tell him to go suck eggs" thing, I will quote to you Crazy Aunt Purl's "Hor-o-scope" for me for this month:

PISCES (Feb. 19 - March 20)
It's half past backbone time. Remember when you thought your lucky number was 1-800-2PLEASE? Indeed, the people-pleaser gene is so strong in you that I sometimes wonder if you have ever done anything just to please yourself. Have you? Wait, don't answer that. Ya'll just start getting all defensive and that does neither of us any good. Try instead to remember your daydreams, the ones that involve you being successful and happy. Your real wants are right there, beneath the surface. As soon as you realize that the most important person to please is the person in that daydream, which by the way should be YOU, you'll be on your way.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me. Even though I really truly don't believe in astrology, even though I have a lot of really pointed questions about it that I'd love to ask some true-believer astrologer someday, ironically enough I am about the most "Piscean" Piscean you will ever run across.

And the people-pleasing thing is SO true. I think it's partly inborn but it's also partly - in my case - a reaction to having the main memory of school from age 5 to about age 14 as one of being taunted and bullied and ultimately rejected by my peers (that girl eating alone in the cafeteria? That's me.) And so, now that I have what I view as a little peer-acceptance, I'm desperate to keep it. And I don't quite know how to do that - I tend to believe, falsely, that the love of most people outside family is at best conditional. So I'm all about "Look! I brought donuts today! Everybody love me!" or "Look! That horrible chore you were procrastinating about! I did it already for you!" or "Hey! I took on all this thankless volunteer work, aren't you proud of me?" And I realize that's not entirely healthy, and I also realize I'll probably get fifteen comments now telling me I need therapy (No, I really DON'T, I'm pretty functional in most other areas of my life). But it's something I recognize about myself - that I could really let myself tip over to the...well, it's not the dark side, I don't know what you'd call it...but I could let myself basically become a big human version of a Golden Retriever. I try not to but there are certain areas - like dealing with coauthors - where I'm just not good at putting my foot down and going, no, I will not do that.