When my mind has strange inclinations, I sometimes anthropomorphize my mental state: “Oh, gee, isn’t it interesting that my brain cannot make the connections I usually can, or it’s making very strange connections. I wonder why it does that.” I don’t worry about the recursion there, because the technique is largely a way to stop being worried about my mental state at the moment.<\/p>\n
Case in point: head colds. I should head to bed soon (it’s a little after 10), and while part of the motivation is to heal a little faster, there’s also a role to stop wasting energy on thoughts that are going to look far less clever in the cold light of day (or at least a day when I don’t have a cold). It is only during a head cold that a full chorus of an as-yet-unwritten song about research ethics could come into my brain mostly unbidden:<\/p>\n
\nYour momma told you not to be rude to the evidence.
When your brain takes a hard right turn,
Listen to the data and you just might learn (why)
Your momma told you not to be rude to the evidence.
Now that you’ve made a bold prediction,
Looking at data better be your addiction
Now…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n(For the record, the tune in my head is far less country than it is ’70s upbeat pop. And “hard right turn” is there less as political ideology than as a phrase that rhymes with “might learn.” And yes, I’m willing to take suggestions for alternatives!) Yeah — I know what you bold and persevering epistemologists are going to say. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for this perspective. Or so my brain says tonight; I don’t have verses, and I’m probably going to wince at this on Tuesday or Wednesday.<\/p>\n
My philosophy on such days is to maintain some forward momentum; concentration is going to be limited, so pick out tasks that require less. (That, and take naps between spurts of work, at least when home.) This is an important sanity-saving maneuver, because I had hoped to use yesterday and today to get a lot of no-internet reading time that I need to catch up on. Instead, I did a portion of the tasks I had hoped to accomplish before my sinuses controlled my fate, and I just kept picking small chunks. If I’m feeling more like myself tomorrow, I’ll pick up the pace, having gotten some of them out of the way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When my mind has strange inclinations, I sometimes anthropomorphize my mental state: “Oh, gee, isn’t it interesting that my brain cannot make the connections I usually can, or it’s making very strange connections. I wonder why it does that.” I don’t worry about the recursion there, because the technique is largely a way to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-academic-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-p6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}