Looking Forward, Looking Back

As they age, most people wistfully look back at pictures from their younger days and long to look as they once did. Inevitably as we grow older, we put on weight, we lose our hair or go gray, we gain wrinkles and creases, all the while wishing we could look a little bit more like we used. Most of us, men and women alike, probably look back at things like our wedding photos or pictures of us in our 20s and admire how we looked. For me personally, though, I'm the complete opposite of that mindset...as much as I love my wife and have been blessed to have been married to her, the only reason I like looking at our wedding pictures is because she was as beautiful then as she is now and it reminds me that I made one of the best decisions of my life in marrying her. When it comes to me, I prefer to not see myself back then at all. I was 22 when we got married and it must seem strange to many of you, but I absolutely cringe when I look at myself in our wedding photos. In fact, I'm at the point where I can't really bear to look at any pictures of myself between the ages of 20 and 30. For me, that decade was marked by my becoming really overweight and out of shape. Most of it was my own fault as I stopped exercising and eating right, partially caused by the time consuming and stressful nature of being a PhD student and postdoc. I got lazy and stopped taking care of myself, and I figured that since I am tall (6'5") and have a large frame, I just carried it differently than other people. I had been slimmer and very active in my teens and early 20s, playing many different sports and running avidly, so I figured I could go back to doing at some point in the future.

It didn't really hit me until I turned 30 and it began to affect my health. My annual physical that year was not so good, with my blood work showing high cholesterol and the beginnings of diabetes. I also had high blood pressure and constantly sore knees and back. The final straw for me was when my doctor at the time gently suggested that maybe I should consider weight loss surgery. For whatever reason, that was the kick in the ass I needed and over the next year, with the help of a free iPhone app for tracking my calories and improving my habits, I took up running again after a decade and managed to lose over 100 lbs. I'm proud to say that even now at 5 years later, I've kept it off. In fact, my new doctor, who has only known me since we moved here this past year, commended me on how excellent my health is when I had my annual physical last week, something for which I was justifiably proud. 

However, I've never been able to reconcile the contentment I feel with being healthier and in better shape now than I have been since I was 18 or 19 with feeling so ashamed to look at pictures from my 20s. So many wonderful moments, from getting married, the birth of all four of my children, graduating with my PhD, and fun times and vacations with family and friends...all are preserved in images that are painful for me to look at because of how awful I looked and felt back then. The fact that this prevents me from reminiscing and enjoying those memories is doubly sad and does nothing but exacerbate those emotions in me. I've always been self-critical and self-conscious, but there is basically an entire decade of my life, which at the moment is almost 1/3 of my existence, which I can't bear to literally look back on because of this. When most people my age are looking back on those years with fondness and wishing they looked like that now, apart from the fuller head of hair I had back then I'm the complete opposite. I'm not sure if I'll ever get over how much I wasted my 20s being so unhealthy and out of shape, but for the sake of so many of the good things that happened in my life during those years, I've got to try and at least make enough peace so that it's not too painful to look back. The one good thing, though, is that all of those photographs have been excellent motivation for me to keep living a healthier life. Any random day when I feel too tired to run or decide that eating right is too much of a hassle, I just pull out one of those pictures to remind myself where I was five years ago and where I am now...it keeps me going and gets me back on track because I will never allow myself to go back to that ever again. Having just written that, it's occurred to me that perhaps that is the silver lining in all of this; those photographs can serve as a cautionary tale and continue to motivate me to live as I am now out of fear for how I was then.

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What Would You Do With An Extra $100?

See the C note? Wouldn't it be nice to have an extra one?

(WARNING: The following is a fun little post I was inspired to write...I had fun thinking about this and writing it and I hope you have fun reading it, too!)

Being the parents of four energetic and wonderful children, my wife and I are always looking for ways to save money. That's why we do things like buy our groceries in bulk at wholesale clubs, keep our kids' clothes clean and in good shape for hand-me-downs, and try to live slightly below our means.  When we do spend some money on nice things, we always make sure it's of high enough quality that it's going to last a long time so that we get our money's worth. It's also one of the reasons why I still drive a car that is twelve years old and has almost 300,000 miles on it.  Any money we can save can be spent on something more important, or saved in the bank for the future. In today's uncertain and dismal economy, every penny is important.

Being a man of Greek descent, I'm also always trying to save money and time on shaving. I should be shaving every day but my sensitive skin can't handle that, so I stretch it out to every other day. Even so, I have the literal shadow on my face after my morning shave that shows up well before five o'clock.  And any man who has to shave on a regular basis knows that razors are damn expensive! I try to get as many uses as I can out of each cartridge but this leads to dull razors and a shave that is decreasingly close each time and really chews up your skin. While there are many ways to save money on razors, one of the ways I've been considering doing this is by signing up for Dollar Shave Club, which delivers razors to you every month for half the price of the store brands.  In fact, if one were to do the math, this could leads to savings of $100 a year! So when I first heard about Dollar Shave Club via one of their humorous TV ads, I thought it was a great idea and it made me think about the money I could save. I thought it'd be a good idea to write a post describing what I would do if I had an extra $100 in my pocket, and during my last shave  this is what I came up with...

If I'm being responsibly practical, I'd spend it on...

- A few new pairs of dress pants or dress shirts to wear to work

- Some new clothes and shoes for my kids who are growing so fast!

- A nice piece of jewelry for my wife
- A day at the museum or aquarium with the family

- A place in my savings account so it can go toward something bigger

However,  if I'm being irresponsible and self-indulgent, I'd spend it on...

- That pair of the Beatle Boots I've always wanted

- A whole stack of CDs to add to my already massive music collection

- A bunch of new books

- Music gear

- This jacket

- A nice dinner out with my wife (without any kids!)

While saving money is important, it's also important to spend it since you can't take it with you. Even if you're responsible, you need to live a little and have some fun! I know I can come up with a bunch more ways to spend an extra $100 and I'm sure you can, too!

How about you? What would you do with an extra $100?

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A Career in Chemistry: My Long and Winding Road (So Far)

Central science indeed!

Now that I've been at my new job for a few months and am fairly settled in, I've been reflecting a lot on where I am and how I got here in terms of my career as a chemist. It's been a very strange, interesting, and (I think) unique journey, and one that's made me realize we can never predict where we'll end up or what we'll be doing. 

As I've written before on this site, I was educated and trained as a synthetic organic chemist, although unlike most who go into medicinal and pharmaceutical research, I did this as it applied to materials chemistry. I was a purely synthetic chemist but I also had a strong grounding and lots of experience in physical organic chemistry, which is the study of the properties of organic molecules.  Looking back, I see that what I studied and how I learned it was really the precursor to today's dedicated materials science degrees, albeit with more of a pure chemistry bent (which makes sense since I was a chemistry major first and foremost, while the materials science degrees tend to have a broader scope and less specific/more general chemistry, physics, and engineering components all rolled into one). In any event, to make a long story short, I was a PhD organic chemist coming out of graduate school and the same when I finished my postdoc and started my first job in 2008. At my first company, I was working as a synthetic materials chemist in the area of nanotechnology, so I was still solidly in my comfort zone. When things really started changing for me was in 2011 when I took a new job at a new company that was completely out of my area of expertise or knowledge. For reasons I still fully don't understand, I decided to move to a company in the field of electroplating, an area I knew nothing about apart from a basic understanding of it.  Looking back, I realize that by 2011 I had gotten a little bored working on the same class of molecules (fullerenes) since grad school; I was also really afraid of being pigeonholed as a chemist who could only work on these types of materials, which wouldn't bode well for any future career prospects in the event that I needed to find another job sometime down the road. Thus, I decided to take the plunge and take the chance to do something new and learn about a new area of science. The learning curve was quite steep at first but eventually I really picked up on it and enjoyed it. While I was no longer working as a synthetic chemist and was doing more engineering in my role, there was still a lot of chemistry involved and it really forced me to draw upon my broader knowledge of chemistry. In particular, I had to really dig deep and recall all of the inorganic, organometallic, and analytical chemistry I had learned years before, as well as some physical chemistry and physics. Beyond that, it opened me up to an entirely new field of science and technology that allowed me to use my chemical expertise in a more engineering and manufacturing-based R&D setting than I had been used to. 

This is what my career journey feels like sometimes

All of which leads me to where I am now. As I wrote several weeks ago, my family and I recently relocated out of our native New England so that I could take a new job at a large company. This company is one of the biggest in the world when it comes to producing connectors, wires, and electronics technology. My work is in the area of advanced materials development, moving even further away from synthetic chemistry.  I was hired for both my organic chemistry background and my experience in electroplating, product development, and process engineering.  I've been here three months and am really enjoying it, as it's allowing me to use both my broader chemistry (mainly inorganic and organometallic) background as well as everything I've learned in electroplating and metallurgy over the last few years.  Even though I don't do any organic synthesis, I find that I need to use my organic knowledge when it comes to the chemistry of our formulations and the various interactions between the different molecular compounds involved. What blows my mind when I step back and think about where I am is that I am now someone that people will come to for advice or help with electroplating problems. Three years ago I didn't know anything about electroplating other than the basics which I'd learned from a textbook; now, it's something I do and something that I understand quite well.  Let me say that I certainly don't consider myself an expert...there are many people I've worked with both in the past and the present who have been in plating for decades and who have a wealth of knowledge that puts me to shame. But the fact that I am at the point where I have enough knowledge that it makes me helpful to someone else is quite humbling.

What all of this has shown me is that, as I've written before, chemistry truly is the central science; a degree and a strong background in chemistry can indeed lead you in any direction.  Furthermore, you never know where your career will take you, and the important thing is to make sure you never stop learning and never stop enjoying what you're doing. Ever since I started working in the plating and engineering side of the industry, and especially since I've started this new job a few months ago, I find that I learn a ridiculous number of new things every day.  Sometimes it gets a little bit overwhelming but there's no such thing as too much knowledge and I know that in the long run, it will only help both broaden and deepen my experience and knowledge base.  The main thing it has made me feel os that I'm no longer purely an organic chemist, and I don't consider myself one anymore. I feel as though I am now simply a chemist, with no qualifier in front of that word. The different types of chemistry I now work with and the breadth of science and engineering I am learning and applying on a daily basis defines me as someone who is no longer pigeonholed into one specific area of the field. It's been a long, strange trip so far, one I never would have conceived of had you asked me about it a few years ago, but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

"What a long, strange trip it's been..."

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The Rock and Roll Chemist is On the Move!

To my loyal readers and newcomers alike, this is just a little announcement to let you know that it's going to take a little longer than usual for me to publish my next post here. That's because a few weeks ago, I accepted an exciting new job opportunity! I start this new position next week, but it necessitates moving a few hundred miles away from my beloved native New England. That is an entire topic for a dedicated blog post which I am currently working on and will publish at a later date.  What this means, however, is that I am in flux right now...my wife and kids have already moved to the new house so that the kids could start school, while I've been here wrapping up work at my old job and getting ready for the movers to come pack up the old house and load it into a truck before I head out to join them. Then there will be time spent waiting to get the Internet set up at the new place, unpacking, and so on.  Have no fear because I will be back blogging as soon as the dust has settled...The Rock and Roll Chemist isn't going anywhere! I just wanted to let all of you know that the whole operation will be in transit, so please just bear with me while my family and I make this big change in our lives and before you and I both know it, things will be back to normal here.  Thanks!

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How and Why Routines Are Important in Everyday Life

The subject of this post is something I've reflected on for many years and it was brought into relief yet again this past week, so here goes...

This cycle doesn't just pertain to exercise!

We humans are, in general, creatures of habit.  With rare exceptions, we've all got habits and routines ingrained in our brains for just about everything. Whether it's how you get ready to start your day in the mornings, how you pack your suitcase, or what you do before going to bed at night, you subconsciously have a routine for nearly every facet of life. They provide structure and comfort, and keep us tethered to a sense of normalcy in an increasingly chaotic world. At their core, a habit, whether it's good or bad (and we all have both good and bad habits), is something you do so often that it becomes second nature and eventually perform without thinking about it...almost like a reflex. Many related habits bundled together make up a routine. Our brains tend to reinforce the habits, good or bad, by whatever reward we get as a result. Eventually, the reward leads to a cycle of stimuli or cues, followed by the reflexive habitual behavior, and finally the eventual reward (reward in this sense not necessarily meaning only positive, but either positive or negative). Once the pattern becomes ingrained, it becomes routine and eventually the effort involved is no longer truly conscious as the brain has by that point been trained to react to cues.  However, get thrown off of your routine and it's almost as it your brain initially panics and doesn't know how to react...it can feel a bit like a needle skipping across a record, at least to me!

I was reminded of this yet again when I was away on a business trip last week; I'm sharing it here with the assumption that many, if not most of you will be able to relate to what I'm describing.

I have a lot of routines in my life, from daily routines like how I eat my meals at roughly the same time every day, to when I wake up in the morning, how I get ready for work in the morning, when I exercise, how I relax at night, and what I do before going to sleep. In addition to these behavioral routines, my body itself is in a pretty consistent rhythm as far as when and how I sleep, eat, drink, exercise, and "stay regular" (euphemistically speaking).  I've been settled in this way for many, many years and apart from the rare occasional blip, I don't deviate from it.  I'm sure most of you have similar patterns that you follow throughout the course of everyday life.  However, last week I took one of my many business trips down to South Carolina and spent five days there. From the outset, I was completely thrown off my routine: first, I had to go bed much earlier than usual because I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3:30am in order to get to the airport in time to catch a 6am flight. Then, throughout the week, I was working long days and eating meals whenever I and my coworkers could fit them in.  Breakfast was usually between 7:30am and 8am so that wasn't too bad, but lunch was anywhere from noon to 2pm, and dinner any time from 6 to 9 pm. It's also very hard to eat healthy and feel good when you're on the road since every meal is eaten at a restaurant. Even ordering lighter dishes like salads or sushi only helps so much, because a salad at a restaurant still sits heavier in your stomach than one prepared at home.  Depending on when we ate dinner and then sat around the hotel lobby having a drink and planning the next day's work, it was anywhere from 10pm to midnight before I was finally able to get to sleep, only to wake up early and repeat it the following day. By the time I got home on Friday afternoon, I was exhausted, my stomach felt heavy and gross, my body rhythms were completely thrown off, and I hadn't exercised in a week.  I quite literally just did not feel right in the slightest. It took me until Monday morning to feel like myself again, and having finally gotten back into my routines, today I'm now back to normal (until the next time I get thrown off again)!

How many of you out there can relate? Do you ever get thrown off of your routines and how long does it take you to get back on track? Let's discuss in the comments section below!

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