I Found Fossils. Lost Myself.

I used to think the biggest discoveries were hiding in remote deserts, buried under millions of years of sediment. Turns out, the thing I couldn't uncover was why I still cared. Every failed dig site felt personal. Every grant rejection made me question if I was looking in the wrong places—or if I was just the wrong person looking. The ground-penetrating radar could find fossils six feet down, but it couldn't detect the moment I stopped believing in my own research. I'd stare at core samples and think about how rare fossilization is. How everything has to align perfectly for something to survive that long. Maybe I wasn't built for preservation. Maybe I was meant to disappear into the sediment layers of academia, another casualty of the process. The giants weren't the only things that stayed hidden. #Science #LabBurnout #ImposterInTheRoom