B3M0

Did 5 months off really set your career back that much? Or is it a mental thing?

I feel like this is exactly what Ragnar would say

It might be a situation where the ionization states of an element go in discreet steps from prohibitively unstable to prohibitively stable. You might have to just find an element/compound with an ionization state that works out of the box, so to speak. Of course, that's like 2% of the battle.