I must be close

So I've been involved in doing research for awhile now. And I've noticed a trend for when I am on the verge of completing a project. (Holds true for conference presentations, papers, or any of the three theses I've written.) The trend is this: right before I finish it, there's a moment of total crisis when it seems like all of my results are completely falling apart. (Sometimes the crisis lasts for days, sometimes it lasts for hours.) Nothing makes sense and nothing seems to come together. It makes me worry that my presentation/paper/thesis will be delayed or worse, wrong. And that I'm the worst astronomer ever.

I've almost come to expect this crisis moment. In fact, it's sort of like a signpost that the end must be near. But in that moment, I always feel like "this time" things won't work out. "This time" the crisis will result in me being crowned the worst astronomer ever.

Okay, so that said, I've been working on this one "side" project for the past year and a half. This is longer than my boss and I expected it to take. But I feel like I've taken a project that was a pretty straight forward paper and turned it into something more interesting than just a data dump paper. ("Look! Data!" is now "Look! Science!")

So I've been waiting on some collaborators to get me some things I need to really knock it out of the park. But we're getting impatient. (Because we can still hit a home run without it.) My boss is getting anxious for me to get it out the door so I can work on other things. (And I am too.)

The deadline I set for the collaborators is tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to submit it, with or without the extra frosting on the cake.

Though, as it turns out, I'm not entirely finished with it.... Last week I was polishing it a bit and re-checking/refining some of my more important calculations. None of them were working! "How did I get those numbers before?! Why can't I reproduce what I *thought* I got before! I updated a few things, so I need the new numbers, but they shouldn't be *that* different than the old ones!"

I ran the calculations a bunch of times. They kept coming out way off. This was the moment for this paper when it looked like everything was falling apart. I felt slightly panicky. "Sure, things worked out in the past...but THIS moment of crisis...how am I EVER going to salvage this mess in time?!"

This was especially nerve wracking since I've committed to submit the paper tomorrow. So I'm up late tonight making sure everything is ready. I looked at those numbers again. The numbers that were making everything fall apart earlier this week.

Lo and behold. I found my mistake. Everything is working again.

This is a relief!

It must mean that the paper is ready to go.

But seriously. The trend continues to holds up. Why can't I just do everything perfect every time? That would be nice!