Constructive sleeping

What I miss most about my current PhD position is to get the daily feeling of having helped or contributed in a more direct sense. However valuable and good medical research might seem, it is obviously a very long-term investment. You won't see any immediate applications on a daily, weekly or even yearly basis. And perhaps (not too unlikely), what you do might never change anything at all. I love the scientific thinking, and planning of projects, but I rarely get the feeling of having made "something". Something real and meaningful.

Having read a few chapters in my "The moral animal"-book, and turned out the lights twice this evening, trying to go to sleep, I still couldn't get a break. I lay there turning and twisting, not finding the perfect relaxing position, and no peace of mind. I just realized the above section, that this lack of getting the feeling of having done something concrete is what I miss the most, I started to brainstorm about what I could do about that.

I thought that I would never really have to work full time at the laboratory during my PhD, not even when I am fully free of symptoms and able to work full time. I can always get by on 75% of the rather low, but still sufficient, PhD salary. I can do something in addition to my PhD. Getting the best of the two worlds; being able to continue thinking and working scientifically, and still doing something more concrete helpful. I thought about the people you sometimes see on the streets with the money-boxes, collecting coins for some good and needed means. I just had to wake up properly, put on my glasses and start my computer. I sent an e-mail to both the Redcross and a local organisation called Individuell Människohjälp (individual humanitary aid) , offering to work non-profit a few hours of my spare time each weak. I also saw there were two positions needed at two different locations, motivating and creating a fun playful environment for homeless kids and kids in a criminally loaded area of Malmö, respectively. I have no idea if I would be qualified, or even able, to do this, but I applied asking for more information about it, because it didn't seem at all impossible.

Now, how constructive wasn't these last two hours, also being the first two hours of this 10th of august. I feel relieved only having sent those two e-mails.