Nightmares that do not end

 OMFG, as the kids say, this publishing process in peer reviewed journals is just the worst. 

I finally got the proof back from a journal where the article had been accepted way back in July. The proof had 29 corrections that needed to be made, including every figure, which had to be redone to be at 600 dpi, not 300 dpi. I had checked their art guidelines way back when I first submitted, and the requirements were 300 dpi, but they changed the requirements. So I had to go into all of my code in R and re-do the actual analyses to generate new figures, because my tech setup for graphics really sucks. And when I re-did the central analysis in the whole study, the results were different. 

I still do not know what the everloving hot damn is going on with that, as I used the exact same code and the exact same inputs as I have in dozens of fully reproducible iterations. I emailed the authors of the package in R that I am using, asking if they have changed the algorithms or other aspects. The only thing changed on my end was updating my version of R and R studio. 

Anyway, I changed the necessary portions of the proof, and submitted. But the project had me up until 1 a.m. and reminded me of the seriously soul wounding traumas of my dissertation completion that stretched over 15 months or so. The endless revisions, the endless incompetence on my part, the endless frustrations in trying to get software to do very fucking simple things, the endless despair of feeling like it would just...never end. I realize the proofing stage is the *last stage* and if I just get through this hurdle, the article will be published. But I am so done with this particular study, and the last thing I needed was for the analysis to produce different fucking results using the exact same inputs and the exact same code. What the actual fuck is that about? It is exactly how my entire life went for months on end, over and over, as the chaos demons in Hades presented me with all kinds of bizarre challenges that not even my committee members could figure out. I mean, fuck, the whole reason to do data analysis in R is to have 100% reproducible results. To use the exact same code and inputs and get a different output is theoretically not even possible. I look forward to hearing from the authors of the code. The resulting model that I produced was better than my original, but it's still disconcerting as fuck. 

And working with graphics is my Achilles heel for sure. No one bothered to tell me that a huge part of the PhD competencies in science now involve expert knowledge in figure creation, working with high resolution, and manipulating images. I got precisely zero training in any of that. And it turns out that the most popular platform for generating graphics for science articles is R, and *it is not possible to produce high resolution images in fucking R*. The work around that people use is to export a graphic as a pdf, and then do a high resolution conversion to a jpeg. That just seems so entirely fucking stupid to me I literally am unable to even. 

So I went to bed at 1 a.m. and felt great despair and agitation. It took a long time to fall asleep. I woke up instantly aggravated at about 7 and it took me four hours to finish revisions in the proof. I re-submitted it, but fully expect there will still be problems. Who knows. 

The whole feeling is like Sartre's No Exit, except instead of hell being other people, it's manuscripts and editors. It's great to be headed toward publishing, and it will be good leverage for future endeavors, but hot damn it is the single most exacting and arduous series of tasks I have ever tried. 

It's no help that the paper I am proofing included eight fucking images. Jesus. An example of one of the images is below. It's a prediction map of suitable habitat for my study species. The color shading ranges from pretty much zero habitat suitability to perfect, in dark green. I swear I have generated this prediction map seven hundred goddamned bajillion times. This one is 600 dpi. Hooray. 

The reminders of the long and despairing stretch of dissertation completion are also of course reminders of my general state of being at that time. It's good to note that I am "doing better" now than I was then. Marginally. The memory of sailing blind through manuscript preparation of this self-same article way back in January while staying at the old motel up in Bishop came back big time. Nine months ago. Nuts. 

The rest of today is dedicated to self care in the form of sleep, groceries, and a hair cut if I can fit it in. The old Persian barber down the street is probably open. Getting back into having food around rather than relying on takeout has been a real pleasure. I'm still in this daily feeling of being a few steps behind every goddamned thing though.