Beautiful weather, feels like springtime, but it's summer.

I am starting to realize that I'm having difficulty remembering and making sense of more than just scientific literature. I keep catching myself doing really stupid hair-brained things like using the lab key to open the apartment door and forgetting halfway through a task what I was doing (cleaning, dusting, lab work). I frequently - 2 to 5 times/day - become aware that I have been stuck in a stupor for the past 5-10 minutes and have to shake myself out of it by doing mental arithmetic or quizzing myself on plant family characteristics. I fear I am losing my mind. It's beginning to interfere with my work.

I have also been experiencing frequent hypotension-type partial blackouts. I have come to expect blackouts and fainting as an occasional thing since I have been struggling with hypotension since childhood, but these past few weeks it has been constant. I have increased my salt intake and been...

As I keep reading about the project I was given at the start of my master's reserach in January, I keep coming across seemingly basic concepts that I am having a terrible amount of problems with. I keep cross-referencing and then that cross-reference clarifies in terms that I have to look up. I'm feeling like it's entirely out of my grasp. That somehow my education to this point has not provided me with a firm grasp on genes and proteins. I come across references to specific protein families and some are difficult to look up. It's slow-moving and frustrating. I keep forgetting and needing to go back. I don't see how I will ever understand this well enough to really know what I'm studying. I keep moving. I take notes, make annotations. It's frustrating. It seems endless. But I keep moving.

I'm feeling lost and bothered.
I will go to lunch soon. Maybe that will help me sort through things.

Posting is even better.

I have found that as I choose to lurk rather than start threads and post, I am less able to relate to the conversations that come up on the board. There are fewer things that I'm interested in reading about because I'm not personally invested in what I'm reading. If I start a thread, I want to hear what anyone and everyone has to add. I want to learn more on the topic. This process allows me to come up with more ideas for additional threads. It keeps my mind active, and piques my interest in the board.

Wondering how long it will take to fall asleep tonight. I've had more coffee today than I usually have in a month.

I'm hoping the experiments that I run next week will provide me with a better set of data than the last batch.