How to enjoy your research?

Or how to enjoy your academic research?
Does anybody know the answer to this question?


Personally I googled it, and unlike the usual google wasn't able to give me an answer!!! This never happened before! However, I am not totally surprised that there are no answers to this question. There are certainly many tips on how to enjoy your job and work and those can be used for academic research but they are common sense tips and motivators that do not simply respond to the question!


I know my today's post topic goes back to the recurrent topic of my life.. my research and my PhD. I feel particularly sad today. After a lot of effort and time spent to get some results, there are things that simply don't work..This is, as one can imagine, very frustrating, when you plan everything, spend hours putting a lot of effort, work after hours and over the weekends and in the end there is no result meaning that all that effort was in vain.. No one cares about negative results, that cannot be published and cannot figure in a PhD thesis, so upon failure one feels that has to catch up with the time "lost" which was the time spent working a lot but resulting in nothing, and the story repeats over and over again. I cannot enjoy this! How to enjoy this?


When I left the lab today I roamed through the corridors got to the lift then went back to the lab again to check on my cells (I am a bit worried with a cell line I bought yesterday, costed almost £600 and I am afraid to death they die before I freeze them). Then I left the lab again and again roamed towards the lifts and, as usual, stared a bit at the scientific posters on the walls.. Some of them aren't good or pretty or promising or interesting but regardless of that I always wonder how much time and effort (and money) was spent to do the research that's presented there..

The fact is I just can't see the light right now, or there's no shine in the dark for me now when it comes to research (or perhaps there should be). One day there is one thing that works just fine sooner followed by a set of frustrations... and that's the vicious cycle of research, I cannot see any amusement there!
Not to mention that (quite obviously actually) , there are people that, possibly under despair, fabricate data and publish fake results in order to move on, get funded and successful, and I don't know, but I guess sometimes it must be really complicated...


I guess I was just not born for this. I am a very hard worker and I usually enjoy working a lot, having results, achieving something, I like getting compliments for my effort and so on and so on.. With research I just feel that I am in a battle with myself everyday, testing how many hours I can work in a row without collapsing in order to compensate for the frustrations. I end up doing several additional less relevant experiments that I know they work fine mixed in between the tricky ones to cope with the disappointment  (its like giving myself a carrot, although I already know that..).. And if in the end I would at least offer something great to the world... but no, I know that my contribution to the universal knowledge is smaller than a sand grain. It is sad but it is just a purely academic dissertation about a very academic topic with inexistent applicability to the humanity..

However, if you know the answer for my question, please tell me, I can't hold it much longer...