I seem to have contracted a case of the inverse Midas touch. Everything I touch turns to crap. I mean everything. Chemistry, friendships, a pot of chili, volunteer work, you name it. What gets me is that it seems statistically unlikely that I would uncover so many large magnitude failure modes (??) in such a tight temporal cluster. A flock of black swans landed in my back yard. A monkey sat at my typewriter and typed “screw you” 500 times. A simple reaction making a simple product is fraught with unforseen complications. Son of a …
Okay, the monkey thing didn’t happen.
One thing I’ll get out of this is to be more reticent to volunteer for projects that seem simple in concept. Nothing is simple. Every single thing has degrees of freedom you can’t see and local minima to sink into on the way to the prize. It’s a dangerous world out there and in ways you can’t imagine.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Is this the SADIM touch?
Ok, it took me a minute. Yes.
I’ll bet if you haven’t already, you will gain invaluable insight and wisdom from this temporary sadim touch! Take the needle off the record and just start it over or put a new record on the turntable.
Pingback: Tweets that mention Inverse Midas Touch « Lamentations on Chemistry -- Topsy.com
Chemistry turning to crap can result in new discoveries, like the glue for post-it notes at 3M and such. True friendships withstand the occasional screwup with the understanding that it wasn’t intentional on your part. You can make another batch of chili.
Volunteer work catastrophes are a little harder to recover from, but you’re a reasonable, pleasant guy and I know you can do it.
BTW, radio theatre is BY NO MEANS simple. So if that’s NOT one of the things that’s thrown you for a loop, well, wait for it…
I’m not saying don’t do it, but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. And that’s WITHOUT egos. Throw that in and all is lost.
Bottom line, though, is that you can recover from most everything, and if you let it love will carry the day. You just can’t go wrong walking in love. Well, except maybe for that chili.
I am wary of the radio theatre project. Given that we have no script as of today, it’s very much an abstraction so far. The idea began as a readers theatre project that morphed into “hey, let’s do radio theatre!?”. Lots to do to make it happen.
Oh, and maybe it’s like when I find small, very intense pockets of extra strength gravity. I keep falling over until I realize maybe I should just sit down and stop for a while. Like the zen monks who sit quietly doing nothing.
Don’t worry about it: it is a middle age effect. You wake up one morning and wonder why nothing is ever easy. Give yourself a break, take some vitamins, look around: who on earth is doing so much better than you do? Not many people, I bet, and you would not trade your life for theirs. All is well.
Many years ago, in the before time, during the Nevernever which was my PhD, colleagues and I used to refer to this as the “Faeces Touch”. Faeces of course being King Midas’ lesser known, and less celebrated, brother.
When infected by the Faeces Touch, leave the lab. It is highly communicable. Go to the library, do some book research, even tidy your life up for an hour until everything you touch stops turning to crap. Then with a clam, serene smile, return to the lab safe in the knowledge that your product will be an easily characterisable, dense, white, crystalline solid with well defined physical properties and crystal structure, that will pass even the most rigorous elemental analysis on the first pass and arrive by simple filtration in excellent yield and astounding e.e..
And of course on THAT day, pigs will take to the skies.
Well said my friend. I was actually able to isolate white crystalline solids two weeks ago, so the curse seems to have partially lifted.