Best birthday advice ever

"If you get cupcakes at work for your birthday and they don't look remarkably tasty, take one and smear it in the face of somebody who deserves it. It's your birthday and they'll forgive you." -- anonymous emailer

Today is my 30th birthday.

Regrets are things often associated with the beginning of a new year, whether it is marked by the passing of another calendar year or another year of life on earth. Though years are arbitrary, an otherwise meaningless measure of time that our small brains created to help us make sense of the world, regrets are nothing to sneeze at. For example, as small a thing as it is, I regret that I haven't posted much on this blog all month - and in particular I promised a post that I never wrote. For shame.

So, here goes.

I had three different and interesting responses to my post about the "perfect" job. (Wow, does that mean I have increased my readership from two to three?!?)

1) There's no room for advancement in that job.
2) That job isn't "special" enough [Note: my word choice].
3) When are you just going to get on with it, then?

I love all three responses because they made me think. A little about what job I would really like to try next, but also what could I be doing now to move toward something, whatever it ends up being.

Step one: investigate job options. Learn what different jobs entail - day to day tasks as well as skills that are important. Examine what kind of previous experience have going into these jobs. Discover what paths people's careers take afterwards.

I thought this might be fodder for an interesting series of posts on the blog. Here is a sampling of jobs I'm thinking about summarize on the blog:

Patent lawyer
Consultant
Science journalist/editor
Biotech/Pharma
NIH grants management

Maybe you have some suggestions too? I will try to start this next week. Also, look for an update on my year of self-improvement towards the end of the week/early next week.

I also have been tossing around the idea of starting another series of posts that highlight something interesting from my journal-y readings.

In closing, I offer you a poem from ee cummings that I stumbled across today. I am amazed I haven't heard of it before now, especially because it begins with my favorite subject.

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am
becoming something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet
bellowings.

(from XLI Poems, PORTRAITS, VII)