procrastination

The sound of the piano wafts across the room. I lounge in my chair like a wet bag of beans. Relaxing is not what I'm doing, though it might look like it. I'd rather call it floating in and out of consciousness, hammered after an intensely brutal week at work. My eyes open and close to the tune of the music, which alternatingly fills me with energy and saps it from me.

Not that there is much to sap. A week of getting up before seven has taken its toll. Last weekend I got an email from the boss asking for a progress report on a project that hasn't been on my mind in a while. Reading her email I realized that I still hadn't prepared a poster for the conference I'm going to on Saturday. The sad truth was I had nothing to present.

Instead of doing work, I had spent the weeks leading up to last weekend hoping I would get away without a poster. Boss reminded me that I was mistaken if I thought so. No poster, no trip to Canada. Fair enough, I had to admit, but I still didn't see what I could fill a piece of paper the size of an average London flat with. I have got no results in the two years I've been here.

Boss suggested I combine two impossible things into a nice little task for the week. Sort out the project she wanted more money for and fill the poster with the results that I would undoubtedly unearth. I was skeptical but had to do something. Just fretting and procrastinating wouldn't do the trick.

I went through old data, data that two others had despaired on, data abandoned on countless hard disks and DVDs over the years. Earlier, I had spent quite a bit of quality time with some of the datasets myself, and could feel my colleagues' pain.

Since that frustrating first encounter, I had shared my dismay with some of the wizards of crystallography, scientists who know so much more than me that it's sad to even think about. But talking about them opened my eyes to new possibilities, suggested new ways of treating the data and tickling meaning from them. Since Monday I've been busy doing that, making better progress than I had hoped, turning spots on an image into numbers in a file and then tubes of virtual chicken wire on my screen, into which I modeled protein with ease.

The problem isn't solved, and I'm not sure it can be. The twinkle of excitement that flared up in boss's eyes when I gave her the latest update today might be premature – or simply delusive. But by the end of the day, I had cleared two giant boulders that were chained to my legs and dragged me down. The poster is printed now, one day ahead of schedule, and a few paragraphs of report have been written. For tomorrow, I just have to keep my focus and finish all the things that need doing before departure. If I managed to raise from chair, I could even start packing.