Chemical Romance

Growing up, I had no idea what I wanted to be.  But I did know what I didn't want to do--anything remotely related to the sciences.  I'm not entirely sure why I thought that way.  In middle school, I had an Earth Science class with a funny teacher.  That was 7th grade....the following year, I was his TA for a class period.  Fine, great, good--a way to get credits without actually taking another class.
In high school, science credits were harder to come by--if I took Chemistry, I'd be dealing with a douchebag.  No one, and I mean no one, wanted to be in the Chemistry teacher's class.  Most students took his class only because they needed the credits.
The option I took was an Earth Science class--again--but this time it was a class in which almost everyone thought the credits were easy to get.  I was never happier than the day I finished that class and knew that I wouldn't have any more science-related credits to try for. I could concentrate on my favorite classes:  art, history and band.

That was 13 years ago.
Since then, I've attended college, discovered my passion (in a science field), and become something of a devoted science fan.  In my free time, if I'm not reading, I like to watch the Science Channel, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, etc.   I'm glad to peruse the latest copy of National Geographic, or learn from something David Quammen wrote, if I'm not inhaling other novels.
Now I love science.  I'm a fan of I Fucking Love Science on Facebook.  There's always at least one new thing to discover every day.
Not quite sure how it happened, but contrary to my 18-year-old self's beliefs, I've found that science is just fucking awesome.
I'm fascinated by things as small as the synapses in the human brain, and as infinitely enormous as the universe.
Chemistry is still a foreign language to me, but I can't help but be thankful for it;  I'd probably be in a straight jacket right now if not for the wonderful power of chemistry.  After all, chemistry creates anti-anxiety meds.  And my life has been, for lack of a better phrase, fucked up for the past few months.  Badly enough that I've been thankful for medications.

In the day-to-day life we all live, I think we forget how unbelievable our existence is--things like bills, errands, jobs, wellness, and relationships consume our daily lives.
Our sun is a star; it's not special in any way, it's just another star among a universe full of stars.
If we counted all of the sand on the planet, every single speck of sand on Earth--it's a lot, isn't it?--it still couldn't account for all of the stars in the sky.  Seriously.

The above image is a pretty effective tool at blowing minds.  I know it's pretty famous.  It was taken in 1990, which is the middle of my anti-science focus, so I'm sure it had no impact on me.

It kind of looks like a science experiment dealing with rays of light.  There's reddish, greenish, and orange-tinged rays.  Maybe lasers?  Maybe it's a fuzzy picture of some kind of DNA with a single anomaly--the dot--that will finally unlock some long-time mystery.  Or it could be something else entirely, it could be an infrared image of Bigfoot walking on black top.  But it's something far simpler than that.

It's Earth.
It's Earth from the edge of our solar system.  That minuscule pixel is us, from almost 4 billion miles away.  Our planet is a Pale Blue Dot.  A speck of dust in an unimaginably vast emptiness.
How's that for perspective?