Chocolate and green tea

I emailed my grants office manager yesterday to ask when the next round of rejection letters was likely to arrive on my doorstep/desk etc. She wrote back saying that I'd made her laugh, which was problematic for her as she didn't think it was a laughing matter.

I think if you can't laugh at rejection, failure, poor reviews, criticism and the like then you definitely should not be in research. As somebody who is personally very sensitive to comments (which I readily interpret as criticism), I impress myself at how resilient I actually am in the face of constant research knock-backs. OK, so I whinge quite a lot at the time, but generally speaking I think it doesn't take too much for me to pick myself up, grin, tell my students it's all part of research and we'll have better luck next time and then get on with it all. Without money.

The email to my research office manager was really to provide some external basis to cease my repetitive internet checking behaviour. Because I'm waiting on two announcements about fellowship applications, I have been compulsively checking the granting bodies' websites. It's not quite OCD because I don't fear what will happen if I don't check, but it's still not healthy. So she told me to expect a five week wait (g-rooooaaaannnnnnnn), which helped because I haven't checked once today (so far...).

So what's the solution to all of this grant-related stress? I find green tea and dark chocolate does wonders for my psyche. With all the rejection going around, perhaps shares in cocoa beans would be worth thinking about? The current economic climate might allow that actually. Oh, except I keep forgetting that I don't HAVE ANY MONEY....................

More choc please.