My Life is a Sealed Book

One of my first jobs was as a grocery store clerk for Winn Dixie--I worked in the store all through high school--it was a nice escape from home, and I could make my own money for stuff I needed. It was a pretty fun job--one crazy guy tried to smush another guy in the trash compactor one time. Another guy still owes me $5 from buying his lunch--with compounding interest, it's up to $20. The pet store next door went out of business and they released a boa--legend still had it that the stockroom manager found a huge shed snake skin draped over the heating pipes in the back....

When you're in the store for just a little while, you may not notice this, but some of the advertisements are on a continuous loop. One time, I accidentally memorized one, and I can still recall it word for word

"Ever get the feeling that if you mess up in some small, seemingly insignificant way it can have disastrous effects? Well, one of my girfriends forgot to put Jet Dry in her dishwasher and...."

Pretty trivial, right? But, one of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken", which ends with the lines:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And I, I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference.

What if you don't relize you're choosing a road? What if you just find yourself walking and realize you're going down a path?

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It was October 1996 and I was full swing into graduate school. Fran and I had just bought a new, black Honda Civic, our first new car, and we drove up to Washington, D.C. just to shuffle through museums and gawk at public monuments for a week. Washington is one of our favorite cities, and the musuems are absolutely great. Of course, Fran loves the gift shops as well and we always spend some time going through the unique items they sell.

Wandering through a shop in the National Gallery, this leather book caught my eye immediately--I loved the design on the cover and opened the book to find that it is a blank journal. An idea hit me that it would make a really cool, distinctive lab journal for my research--typically we just used a very cheap, blue notebook from the school bookstore--over time they would get very worn because they were so flimsy. I was so excited that I bought it immediately and made plans to begin using it when I got back from my trip.

It took me about 8 months to realize how bad an idea this book actually was. The book turned out to be exquisite--a hit with everyone who saw me using it. Up until this point, I had really been on track to roll through my master's program quickly, despite working full-time at a difficult job and taking full loads of graduate courses and seminars, teaching, and doing independent research.

I was in love with the idea of having the perfect lab notebook. I carefully photographed different stages of experiments and kept copies of all kinds of papers and references. Whereas in my "junky" lab notebook I had scribbled utilitarian notes, my new notebook was inspiring me to reach the heights of neatness and perfection. I would budget time to carefully write in just the right notations, glue photographs, and reference attachments. Notations became a tedious process.

Within a short time, the extra effort required to document things was enough of a deterrant to take away my momentum and distract me. I started to procrastinate the tedious recordkeeping procedure that I had designed for myself, leading to delays in advancing my experiments until I "caught up". Additionally, since the book was so thick, it wouldn't lay open like the typical lab notebooks, so it was pretty inconvenient to read important protocols that I had noted in the book.

I don't know if it was the money I invested, or the time, or the pride in trying something new, but I stubbornly couldn't make myself consider giving up the notebook. My work started taking much longer, and I got behind. By the end of May, I was just discouraged, and I stopped going into the lab. I was growing some plants, and just let them overgrow and die. I walked out on my mentor without saying goodbye and was gone for several months. Not a time I am proud of.

Just as I am glad I had an opportunity to work in the lab, I'm actually glad I was compelled to leave. I became career-focused and moved up, which, for me, ended up being the right path. It would have been nice to have finished my advanced degree, but it wasn't something that I was truly passionate about--I even went back and made some amends with my mentor and let him know how much I appreciated everything he did for me.

Going through my bookshelf last year, I found the leather-bound lab notebook and opened it--glossy photos and stiff writing popped out at me and I was filled with dread--the nagging feeling that the book represented unfinished business. I realized that it was the way I always felt when lugging it around campus and in the lab.

Last month, I noticed it staring at me from the bookshelf by my desk--I put it there because it's just a handsome decoration. Irritated, I took the blank book out of the leather cover and flipped it over and put it back in. Then I started writing, scribbling notes starting from the opposite side of the book. Stories, character sketches, an idea for a story as a Christmas present to Ryan...I just kept going, excited to finally be using the book for something productive.

Getting this book was certainly a catalyst for taking a different path in my life, but the components for the reaction were already there. It's funny how small changes can have a big impact.