The past year, I’ve been really neglecting my testing. I kept promising I’d be back, and bought a lot of experimental mixes, but never reported back, so I have to apologize for that. However, recently I’ve felt another surge of excitement about testing and playing with pheromones. Strangely, this motivational boost coincided with another event: the first novel I’ve been able to read purely in leisure in over two years. The last couple of years of school were fairly intense, and by the time I was done studying, there was only just enough time to visit with my friends. I blame this on my poor time-management skills. But this summer I took up a volunteer research job at a local college. One day, while waiting for the rotational evaporator to boil all the solvent off of a recently completed reaction to be sent to the NMR, I realized that despite how much I love doing work like this, I can only watch a round bottom flask spin around so many times, or stare at boiling liquid for so many minutes before tedium and boredom set in and I begin to become dissatisfied. So I found entertainment, and picked up a sci-fi novel at a nearby Books-A-Million. Starting was slow. I was used to scanning text, making note of interesting or relevant facts, and remembering them. All I needed to do now was sit back and enjoy, let the story take me, but the constant cataloguing of details was now a habit engrained in my brain. However, as I continued, it became easier.
By the time I had finished, the novel had me fully captivated. More importantly, it had awakened things within me which had long lie dormant: creativity and ambition.
I had become complacent because I had become exhausted from constantly absorbing facts, but never taking a moment to reflect. Since then, I’ve continued reading other novels and greatly enjoyed them. But the first one made all the difference, because of the amazing changes it brought with it. I less tired. I feel less fatigued. When I wake up in the morning, I actually get up after I switch off the alarm clock, rather than resetting it 30 minutes forward. I am completing my work more efficiently, pursuing multiple ends at once. And I am happier.
I feel a greater desire to learn than I have in the past couple of years. But where learning during that period felt mandatory and forced, even though I often enjoyed it, now I feel a return to the ravenous appetite for knowledge I had before my leisure time scarce. My brain needed a break–the sort that things like sleep or interaction with my peers couldn’t provide–and it received one. All because I was a bit bored.
Now, back to my few recent tests. Despite not using most of my mixes recently, I still tended to apply a couple of drops of A314 every morning after my shower. I believe it helped overcome the problems I might have had with my mentor otherwise. The first week that I came in to do research, I had usually stayed up late with friends the night before, or was hungover or incapacitated in other ways. I also had not had a chemistry class for over a year. So of course I made mistakes, and probably didn’t seem too bright. But by the end of the research period, my mentor and I carry on running jokes about the other professors and the state of disrepair of the university’s laboratories (the guy just arrived in January.) He is also in his office more and more, allowing me more and more responsibility and encouraging me to experiment with parameters rather than just telling me exactly what to do. I believe A314 helped in this regard.
The other day, all my friends were out, so I made a trip to a local 24-hour diner. Before walking in, I had applied a couple of sprays of MX279 from the Ammo test pack. I entered directly in front of a group of three people–two guys and a girl. Two of them appeared as if they might have been dating, and the other guy was just a friend. As I ordered my coffee, I noticed the lone guy give me a look. I made eye contact and gave a friendly smile, as I usually do, and he gave one back, but held eye contact longer than average until I looked away. I went and sat at a table by myself and drank my coffee and read, but whenever I looked up, I always caught him looking at me, and he almost never broke eye contact. He was leaning forward onto the bar, resting his head on his hands, but his body was aimed directly at me, despite the fact that this misaligned it from the bar a bit. However, this might have been because it also pointed him more towards his friends. Still, I can’t discount the possibility that I may have attracted his attention.
I had another hit today while wearing 3 sprays of MX136 (one of the “Liquid Sunshine” line). One of my guy friends works under a grad student doing research in the same lab as me. The grad student is a married woman from India, probably in her mid-twenties, and speaks understandable English, but there are still some communication problems at times. Monday, the head of the Chemistry department asked if I could drive her to a local Kroger or Market Basket to get dry ice. We ended up driving all around town because most of the expected places didn’t have it in stock, and laughed about it quite a few times. Today, I walked past her in the lab, and though she had seen me enter, as I passed directly by her, I received a quiet “Hi, Alex.” She also seemed to be asking me a lot more questions about things I would expect her to know about, especially since she is a grad student and I am not even in college yet. She also seemed to do more of her work nearer to me, and when I complained to the open air about needing another NMR tube, she went and looked around the lab and found one and brought it to me. Before today, she has ignored me. In part, I attribute this to our frantic but fun search for dry ice, but that was Monday, and she showed none of this eagerness to help me out (or greet me) yesterday. So, MX136? What do you think? I might be going out tonight, in which case I might try something from the MX311-316 pack if I can. Wish me luck!
