I'm writing up a research paper for a research group I'm on. I did up the first draft and got feedback from the rest of the group about it. I'm the only man on the team. It's me and around ten or so women. And all the women are managers, etc. I'm the lowest ranking person. There was one other woman who ranked as low as me but she just got promoted.

I don't think I'm going to get promoted anytime soon...? Kind of hope not. I think my people skills maybe aren't good enough. (Either because of the father I had, or how much of a dreamer I am, or just how much extreme stuff I've been through, I ultimately don't relate quite well enough, somehow.... There is also the fact I'm the only man.) But then this women who just got promoted sits in these research meetings and never says anything, while I've mostly carried the project so far and spend more time giving my opinion than most managers.

Which is a little dangerous of course. The underlings are somewhat expected to keep their mouths shut and be yesman in any corporate structure. But perhaps not too horribly so, in this particular structure. I think the people are generally very happy with my input and work. I do disagree with managers regularly. I worry a bit about doing so. Ideally, it's what I should be doing. If my managers are any good it's what they should want me to be doing. But such "ideal behavior" at times hasn't worked out for me in the past. And I'm definitely tempering it a bit more these days than I once did. Ultimately though I've always felt extreme disgust for the yesman. Those who obey authority even when they know it's wrong. Those of the Milgram shock experiment. The "good germans", etc. And so, so many people I've known in my own personal experience.

Anyway a few people suggested changes to the paper that I could have expected well enough. Really I figured it was just a first draft. But I must say making the expected changes to make it read more like other published work, will actually make it not as good of a paper in terms of actually imparting information to the reader. What I mean to say is the established writing form isn't entirely rational. And that ultimately I'm a bad writer because I try to follow the rational instead of just following the crowd. And I suppose I'll always be a bad writer for this reason. (Although the Finnish papers I read were far more rational, but I'm expected to follow the American ones...)

And then furthermore, despite my endless reading and endless attempts to write, I'll never be anything special at it. For example, I don't see the point in avoiding a repetitious structure when starting a new paragraph that explains yet another person's previous work. You make it harder to follow if with each chapter you switch things around, yet I know that's what I'm supposed to do. Same thing in that I don't think a different word/adjective should be used when you refer over and over to the same thing. Again, just brings potential pointless confusion. Finally I want to start out with a very very brief introduction of all the potential benefits of the practice change we want to make before jumping into the particulars. This way the reader sees all of them, right in one paragraph. All together, very easily compiled.

But no, that's just not how it's done. So I'll have to break that up into at least three paragraphs and make them not as brief and make it a bit harder for the reader to quickly get information from it.

So this first draft was very easy to understand, I have to now go back and make it less easy to understand and instead more like other people's papers.

So today I sit, still sick with the flu, trying to do this. And it's harder for me than it might be for another, because I'm not just copying the accepted normal way. I'm caught between doing it in what ought to be the right way, and doing it the accepted way. Trying to figure how far can I push it towards the right way. Probably not very far actually.

And this is what it's like, again and again, reiventing everything, because actually most things really don't work that well. It's a bit of a pain in the ass today. And if you carry it all the way, it makes life hell. It leaves one in torment. Take it all the way, and good luck functioning in the actual world at all.

"...there are people who are dead-alive, people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment." Yevgeny Zamyatin

It is so much better than my time working as an engineer/scientist though. There is absolutely zero tolerance for any originality whatsoever in that massive field. You have more freedom of speech and are less compelled to kiss ass in the military.