(my) Stupid Thoughts

Sometimes I feel like I'm a trained monkey doing work and never thinking about it. I feel like I no longer have any creative or imaginative ideas like I did when I was younger. The thought of coming up with original proposals for pursueing my own academic career frightens me.

When I was younger, I had so many curiousities and ideas but now they seem simple or I simply can't remember them. I rarely see a problem and come up with a novel idea on how to solve it. I know I was trained well to solve chemical problems but I feel the solutions I have come from a box and I just apply the tools I know how to use. I don't think of original solutions to problems anymore I just repeat the fixes already developed by my mentors.

Maybe I'm in the wrong field. I want to build things; to create things with my hands which have come out of my mind. I use to make new things. Now, I feel resigned to manipulate things with my hands in a way my boss tells me to. I can obtain results but only when directed to do so. How is it that I have become this way?

I want to be a thinker and come up with solutions to problems. But the problems seem so old and the battle is hard that I can't imagine I would actually make a difference. I know I'm not the first one to tackle a problem so what makes me think I can overcome the obstacles?

I use to have more confidence and faith in my intelligence. As you can read, I am a horrible speller and maybe stupid at many things in addition to writing. I am not looking for some piety for a casual reader. I just want to remember that I once acknowlegde my stupidity before I blisfully slip away into ignorance.

Occasionally, I read a paper in chemistry which contains ideas I have not learned. I just glance over the new material and look for the concepts familiar to me rather than challenging myself to learn the rest. I use to think there was nothing I couldn't learn if I just tried. Now, I am lazy and don't even think I could learn something new in my situation. I want to change this. I want to be somewhere where I am learning new things, not just applying the old tricks I learned like a dog.