flail

If you don't know by now, it is the usual nature of me and this blog for there to be a lot of flailing about how much work I have to get done.

basically this, but with less happy and more anxiety

Anyway, I KNOW that if I don't work on a presentation ahead of time that it is crap. and I KNOW that I feel bad about how crappy it goes, and I get all awkward and flushed, and I fumble a lot of words and feel like a science failure.

Despite knowing this, my enormous 40-minute talk to the entire department for Monday is NOT. YET. DONE.

In fact it's barely started.

So I'm over here, flailing, but also planning simultaneously a million other things including trying to get someone to live with in fall and arranging to visit Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival next weekend. And, you know, worrying about money because taxes. etc.

Anyway, the best solution for flailing is burying my head in the sand until everything goes away, right? that's why I'm playing with yarns on ravelry and thinking of projects to knit. And actually knitting, and watching a podcast.

Lies. I keep wanting to do those things but I keep bouncing around off of them as I panic. So little bits and pieces of the presentation are done so far. I hope if I can get myself to crack down for an hour now that I can break the back of it

(hell, just structuring my thoughts for this should be easy enough; what take away points do I want to have? a talk should have just a few take-away points, not like 5 or anything. Hmmm, let's see, the most valuable output of my research is that high resolution imaging reveals diverse circumnuclear morphology in my objects, which suggests different stages or fueling mechanisms of the mid-infrared luminosity. Or really, that if this nesting of processes that somebody suggests is the thing going on, then the circumnuclear regions are in different points in their evolution/different stages. Point like circum-nuclei are settled/have not interacted with their surroundings in ... a while? and diffuse-emitting circum-nuclei have more recent interactions and may be funneling fuel into the very nuclear region OR preventing fuel from reaching it, or simply be influenced by the same process that does the funneling or preventing. but is that really what we can conclude from my results? no, will have to cast it in the bigger picture to be able to say anything like that. My results *support* but do not *create* this idea.)

my *conclusions* from my research are: we calculate 2-20 msol/yr sfr for these objects; this sf is not restricted to a central point source but can take a more extended/diffuse form, including a circumnuclear spiral; and this circumnuclear sf can account for a major portion (31% on average) of the total infrared luminosity of these objects.

my results are 1) pretty images of each object's circumnuclear region; 2) measured NeII flux and calculated SFR (use Ho+Keto graph! also Kennicutt graph!) 3) E_L_neii as measure of distribution of sf/morphological analogy or pt src/extended and 4) nuclear/total SFR

so then, I just need to think about: my sample/experiment design/observations; and the motivation behind this all. and right now I'm getting embedded in the motivation a lot but I've a lot more to write up. and I need graphs and equations and things to say and bullet points that don't cover everything but summarize them.

wow this was helpful. off to work. flailing reduced. thanks blogolandia!