Or work before pleasure. Yesterday was such a grey, rainy, dark and cold Sunday. Indeed, it instigated a feel of December rather than May. In some way I did not mind as I was preoccupied with work. Instead of my usual blog writing and doing research for upcoming posts, I spend it on putting final touches to a scientific paper.
I enjoy writing research papers and particularly this one, as we are presenting something novel and intriguing to the world. Results like these are what makes science so very exciting and rewarding. Therefore I have been a slacker when it comes to blogging and have been absent from your lovely places; thus forgive me if this week my visits as well as my writing here will be sporadic at the best. I simply have a deadline to meet.
I decided though to post my traditional Birch Tree update. As a very cold May ends, the tree and its surroundings are growing greener and summery. Even though as we stand on the threshold of another seasonal change, parting with spring is easy. It somehow feels as if it never really arrived this year at all...
Being involved in scientific research is to me an incredible adventure and an incredible privilege. When I finished my education and started to work exactly twenty years ago, I had no idea what I was about to experience. My professional career seems to have flourished over the years, as I was seemingly in the right place at the right time and met people who made it possible for me to excel in the field of science.
Working in research is a very complex and unconventional occupation. The successful scientists will tell you, it is not work, it is a way of life. You have to love it, or you will hate it. There is nothing in between. Ninety nine percent hard work and repetitions and one percent true magic.
There are days when I feel helpless, trouble shooting experiments that should work, trying to solve a puzzle with a piece that should fit, but it doesn't. And it takes all my mental power not to give up. Then, when it finally does fit, and the hidden message emerges, the obstacles are all forgotten and the feeling that encompasses me is indescribable.
And occasionally, those few precious moments in time occur, when all this leads to discoveries. Those that signify that one percent of magic, making the hardship worth my while, thousand times over.
I often feel like an ancient explorer, taking a journey into the unknown. My work is all about using my imagination, combining logic based on experience with visionary possibilities, in order to explore the biological process within the human body and the incredible mechanism with which it functions.
Our body is an amazing creation. Its simplicity and simultaneously its complexity, are astounding. We get up every day, never even realizing all the processes that has taken place over night, in the incredible machinery within us. While we have slept, multitude of small components started a chain of events, which has produced new material and new building blocks needed for repair, control or protection, inside a factory that never seizes it's production. With incredible precision, year after year, multitude of workers carry on, in order for our body to function adequately. And they work even harder, when it doesn't, as a part of our immune system. To me, it is almost as if we harbour a universe within us. Magical, fascinating and still as undiscovered as the space above us. And I get the privilege to venture into parts of it, every day.
The below is The Harvard 3D Cell Animation , which offers a glimpse into the micro-space that is the human cell. All the events depicted within the animation reflect the reality that is taking place inside all of us, right now, at a constant rate, endlessly. Resembling more an alien planet in a science fiction movie, than en environment in our cells, it can be difficult to comprehend that this world does truly exists within all humans.
Or work before pleasure.
