{"id":39,"date":"2010-12-23T18:15:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T18:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=39"},"modified":"2010-12-23T18:27:52","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T18:27:52","slug":"in-which-i-space-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2010\/12\/23\/in-which-i-space-out\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I space out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>London is beautiful at Christmas, especially when we get proper winter weather. In this lame-duck week in the run up to the 25th, many people in the metropolis have downed tools and taken off work early for the holidays \u2013 even scientists. The streets are full of shoppers, far more relaxed and good-natured than is typical for the usual murderous commuting hordes. Snow swirls down, lights glint, and each famous street competes for the honor of having the most elaborate decorations.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jennyandrichard\/5286115640\/\" title=\"Carnaby Street by Richard &amp; Jenny, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5207\/5286115640_7c34570455_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" alt=\"Carnaby Street\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A few days ago I was cutting through Soho and stumbled into Carnaby Street, resplendent in retro-chic astronomical d\u00e9cor. Vast glowing heavenly bodies floated overhead as far as the eye could see \u2013 planets, stars and the Moon \u2013 and snowflakes gently brushed my face as I gazed upwards. I overheard a small toddler say, &#8220;Daddy, what&#8217;s that big planet called, the one just behind Saturn?&#8221; Pretty impressive for a five-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>It is a relief being out of the lab \u2013 because of the way the dates worked out this year, I will end up having more than two weeks off, which is the longest holiday I&#8217;ve managed in several years. I have been under a lot of stress recently, what with an urgent manuscript needing attention, a long-haul trip to the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in Philadelphia, and the fact that my father remains critically ill in hospital more than 4,000 miles away. I crave, in no particular order, sleep, decent meals and the chance to relax and work on my fourth novel, which has just now started to kick in agreeably. And \u2013 unavoidably \u2013 I also need to do lot of hard thinking about what might lie beyond the termination of my fellowship twelve months from now, and how best to capitalize on the time I have left. I want to follow my dreams and stay in the lab, but on the other hand I have a mortgage to pay, finances are tight and I&#8217;m not getting any younger. In other words, I need to do the sort of honest thinking that the usual working routine does not permit.<\/p>\n<p>But for now, I am practicing avoidance. Christmas is good time for living, like children do, in the moment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2010\/12\/RPGtree.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2010\/12\/RPGtree.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"RPGtree\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-40\" srcset=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2010\/12\/RPGtree.jpg 400w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2010\/12\/RPGtree-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>London is beautiful at Christmas, especially when we get proper winter weather. In this lame-duck week in the run up to the 25th, many people in the metropolis have downed tools and taken off work early for the holidays \u2013 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2010\/12\/23\/in-which-i-space-out\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careers-2","category-staring-into-the-abyss-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}