Saturday 27th July, 2019
I broke my favorite coffee mug this week. It slipped out of my hand when I was tired.
For as long as I can remember, I have used it to memorize the Periodic Table of the Elements when I take a break from my writing.
While I wait for the coffee pot to boil, I draw the position of each element in the air as I recite them. Now I am past Calcium (20), struggling to remember the name of each element as I pass through the valley of the Transition Metals towards Germanium (32).
I thought about gluing the bits of the handle back together but today I realized that my cup is now the perfect metaphor to express how I feel at the end of this week. It’s been a week where I felt hammered by people and things.
So I filed the rough bits smooth with a rasp from the garage and made fresh tea.
By Saturday morning, I had retreated to the safety of my library, surrounded by my faithful Rockweather research crew.
In postgraduate research, some weeks are like that. Quickly though, you learn the techniques to bounce back. Some weeks you break things, but you no longer let things break you.
The Rockweather Collaboration 