What am I doing right?

There’s that moment in the first Spider-Man story when Peter Parker gets his first clue that he can do things he couldn’t do before.

Wouldn’t that be a strange, heady mix of elation and “What the...?!” Because you’d have to be thinking, “I’ve done something amazing... and that is not normal!” Wouldn’t you be worried by something so far out of the bounds of your normal experience, no matter how cool it was?

Earlier this week, I got another acceptance letter for an article from a peer-reviewed refereed journal. I now have more articles in press than ever I’ve published in an entire calendar year – and that’s on top of what I’ve already published this year.

I don’t mind telling you – it’s freaking me out a little.

It is just that far beyond what I’ve managed to achieve before that I am thinking about how this happened, what do I do for an encore, can I keep up the pace, should I be trying to publish fewer papers in better journals, will anyone notice, will anyone care, can I maybe use this momentum to have a decent crack at some funding for projects instead of paying out of my pocket... It’s a whirlwind in my head.

What, you thought all those crazy thoughts stopped after tenure and you get to relax? Well, it sure as hell hasn’t been that way for me.