The traditional New Year's post

I would be angry with 2013 except it doesn't look like 2014 will be any better.

In the end, I don't really have much to say.  I observe my life to be pretty shitty.  It has been the entire year, and there is no hope for the future.

I consider every way a scientist can be measured as successful, and in every way I am a failure.  I have no graduate students, my lab is generating no data.  I am unlikely to make the paper requirement for tenure.  It is highly unlikely I will secure any sort of funding.  My grant that I submitted was deemed in the lower 50% of all grants submitted and not discussed by the review panel, aka "triaged".  I only get one more chance to get funding with that grant.  I built my lab to do that work.  I didn't expect to get funded my first time out, that would have been ridiculous, but I was hoping to do well enough to get real comments so I could have a better chance the second time.  Now I won't get real comments back.  So my next attempt will go from "shot in the dark" to "snowballs chance in Hell".  In addition, this is the single worst funding climate in HISTORY.  EVER.  And the way the economy and political climates are trending, it will only get worse.  Therefore it is highly unlikely that I will keep my job when I come up for tenure.

That is very bad, because I am living beyond my means.  I am more than broke.  I am running up debt.  I have had to borrow money from my mother.  I'm a fucking 34 year old professor at a large university and I have to borrow fucking money from my mother.  While I love my house, I can't afford it, and the housing market doesn't appear to be getting much better.  So when I do lose my job I won't be able to afford making house payments while I look for a new job.  Bankruptcy.

My social life is faring worse than my professional life.  There is not a single woman I would want to date who would want to date me within 125 miles.  Most of them out there are either Jesus-freaks, divorced with children, or dangerously insane.  And I'm no catch, that's for DAMN sure.  The odds of finding someone are beyond remote.  They are statistically insignificant.

I am going to die alone.

To make matters even worse in this arena I have an incredibly STUPID crush on a woman in my department.  There are just about a million reasons nothing could ever happen, but the most damning one is that she wants one thing in the world right now, and that's to get out of Oxford as soon as possible.  She ain't looking for anything that doesn't involve her leaving.  But that doesn't stop me from YEARNING.  From PINING.

What does this all mean?  Well, I'm going to say something that people probably aren't going to want to hear, but it's the truth.  It means there is an effective limit on my lifespan.  You see, I'm depressed.  Pretty bad.  But you see, it will get much, much worse.  Every major depressive episode I've had has been linked to one thing:  rejection.  Whether perceived or real, when I get rejected I become depressed.  And as I've gotten older, each depressive episode has taken me one step closer to suicide.  It's something in my early 20's I would never have considered.  But each time, I get just a little bit closer.  The little voice in the back of my head that says "you know, you don't have to take this bullshit, you could just be done with it," gets just a little bit louder.  In a shade under 4 years time I will likely lose not just my job, but the career I have been working towards my entire life.  That is level of rejection I have never experienced.  It is, or will be perceived, as a complete rejection of my life's worth.

I fully expect when that occurs to fall into a depression deep enough that I will kill myself.  Even now, looking upon that theoretical point, I simply cannot see a way I can move forward past that point knowing I failed at the one thing I set myself to obtain so long ago.  How every minute of every day would be filled with thoughts of "you failed".  At the age of 39, moving back in with my mother, bankrupt, alone, a failure at my life's goal.

The depression would cause me to kill myself.

That's truth.

So that's it.  No looking over last years post.  No resolutions, silly or otherwise.  No stupid floral prose that I am so damn prone to even though I hate it.  No predictions.  No hope.  Just the most probable outcome of the next 4 years.  That's it.

That's life.