I’m sitting here, 2 AM again, looking at another pile of ancient dirt samples (honestly, who chose this life?) and I just wonder if anyone, ANYONE at all, will ever care about the pH levels of prehistoric soil when I’m gone. It feels… trivial, sometimes. Like all that discipline I learned in the service, all that focus, has been pointed at something so utterly pointless to the world outside this sterile lab. I just have this nagging feeling I’ve spent my whole life marching straight in the wrong direction, just because it was *a* direction, you know? (And here I am, still marching.)