Yay! Work sucks slightly less for the moment!

I think complaining worked. It looks like I'm going to have a new grant funded soon! It's not the NIH though, so a great score doesn't guarantee anything, but the program manager seems enthusiastic. Also, finally managed to wrangle a paper through the system. Of course another one got rejected during that time and I'm swamped with service obligations, but small victories right? The awarding of grants I find is a lot like the tenure process. There is not a good time to celebrate. It can take months to receive the money even after seeing the scores and recommendations. By then you are already praying for the next one to hit. Question for the successful, when do you tell people/colleagues that your grant is going to get funded? When do you celebrate? Or do you not mention it to anyone because it will only make them feel worse for not having any funding? I feel a bit of this at my place since a big chunk of people haven't gotten money in a long while.

Work sucks

I could really use some good news professionally. Annual review time is upon me and 2013 wasn't stellar, mostly because so much of it is still pending. Also, I'm trying to expand my group into some new areas and I can't seem to get any of our new results published. The people in the area I talk to are all very encouraging and don't have any criticism for manuscripts I show them, but then the reviewers keep tearing me a new one. I'm thinking maybe I should just stick to working in the same area for 30 years pushing out mediocre and derivative crap since that seems to seems to be a winning strategy for a bunch of people.