I think about mental health a lot—especially mental health at work.

Most of us were never taught how to manage the invisible stuff. Not in school. Not in research. Not even in our families. It’s only in the last 20–30 years that people even started talking about mental health outside of medical journals. And even now, most of what we see is snapshots. Clean. Marketable. Sanitized.

But life doesn’t feel like a snapshot.

It feels like managing thoughts late at night.

Trying to nudge yourself from the bottom quartile to feeling just okay.

Wrestling with who you are when everything looks fine on paper.

Doing all the tricks—music, walking, not oversharing, trying not to fall apart.

I talk about this stuff not because I have answers. But because I’ve lived it.

Because I think we need more real, human-generated data—not just survey stats.

Because this is what research life actually feels like.

Take care. And if you’re struggling, you’re not broken.

You’re just alive.