Permission to Tread the Primrose Path

Well, I got there in the end and submitted (with surprisingly little angst in the end) virtually 10,000 words to my supervisor. Attending the supervisory yeasterday, I was relieved and pleased that he seemed to like what I'd written. Furthermore, a secret fear that I'd been harbouring for a while that my work was spiralling away from the original brief was put to rest when it was suggested that I state that my approach 'could not be seen in isolation and was part of a wider exegetical toolbox'. Massive relief, because I thought that I might be heading off too far down the etymological primrose path, but as my supervisor said "You can do anything as long as you state in advance that you're going to do it." To be honest, I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders, and this lightening has seen me today at my desk, humming happily, and setting to with a renewed sense of enthusiasm.

Bleeurrgh!

Boy, my mind is just not working today: I've been sitting at my desk since before 8 this morning and still haven't cracked the 8,000 word barrier.
It's like - I don't know - stringing sand today (I can't even think of a decent simile!). I find I'm struggling to keep all the words under control, forgetting stuff I wrote, forgetting references, keep finding myself slack-jawed and staring vacantly with my mind skittering off to some random unrelated track.
I'm blaming the fact I woke up at 4am this morning, heart pounding (we had a splendid family meal out yesterday with a fair - though hardly excessive - amount of red wine) and feeling deeply anxious, worrying about my thesis and where it's going and generally being plagued by those bodily aches and pains thar make one imagine all sorts of terminal scenarios. I didn't get back to sleep, but that's not unusual.
I think I'm a bit stressed, though why I'm feeling it now when I'm just about getting on top of my word-count I don't know.
Could be because I got an email about the mandatory progress review form and, looking at the box titled 'doctoral development'realised I've done chuff-all in the way of the stupid little courses they just lurve to see on such things. I hardly going to travel all the way to campus for two hours on Powerpoint presentations: my 11 year-old told me all I needed to know on that score.
Could be because I have now realised (thanks Prof. Brian Cox) that I am just a bag of atoms sailing on the way to the heat-death of our universe.
Could be because I have been reading Seneca's Moral Epistles, which tell me I have to accept such things with equanimity. Great.
I'm going to take a break now and get some lunch - my blood sugar does feel quite low - and possibly walk the dog.
Hopefully, I feel a bit more enthused and positive and a bit less moronic and jaded when I return.

Smokin' Mouse Zombie

I've had to put in some solid desk-work since my trip to the Ancient Languages Taster Day at Liverpool a couple of weeks ago. To tell the truth, I've been procrastinating a bit since my last supervisory meeting at the end of January - not deliberately, but I had to spend some time preparing my presentation for the off-campus Study Day, and then I'd had two days away the week following that. I wanted to get into some good exercise habits since I've been paying a hefty wad of money for gym membership since the beginning of January, so I've been making the effort to get down there first thing in the morning, when the kids leave for school at around half-seven. Eight weeks on, it's pretty much part of the morning routine: I get my swimsuit on under my training clothes and pack my dry stuff, towels, shower gel etc. into a big bag and walk to the sports centre. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (when I go with the Husband in the afternoon) I spend about half-an-hour in the gym itself working on a split training routine (chest/triceps, shoulders/biceps, back and abs) and then swim for twenty minutes followed by ten minutes in the sauna or steam room. Mondays, Wednesdays, occasionally Fridays and Sundays, I'll swim for forty minutes. Then I'll shower and walk home, via the shop to pick up any supplies we need. Usually I am sitting down at my desk by 9.30-45, feeling pretty good (all those endorphins!) and ready to put in some good study time. The times I've not been able to swim first thing I've spent the rest of the day feeling a bit seedy. I guess it's addictive. Pleasingly, I feel a lot more energetic, and my jeans are getting pretty baggy round the middle.
Anyhoo - when I was last down on campus for my supervisory meeting I'd blithely promised 10,000 words of work for the next meeting which was, in retrospect a bit optimistic. I'd not really factored in my days away, or the fact that one of the weeks was half term. Now the two youngest (11 and 13) are really good and don't mind amusing themselves while I work away in my satellite study in the bedroom upstairs, but by Wednesday afternoon I was feeling a bit sorry for the Bright-Eyed Boy who, unlike his sister who has her rowing to go to and a boyfriend(!), was spending unconscionable amounts of time on XBox live shooting the legs of zombies.
Even HE was bored of it! So I downed mouse and took him into town for a browse and a hot chocolate. Twice. In two days, so I sort of lost the impetus and the 714 words I'd had to commit to writing per day (I can't remember the sum it was 10,000 divided by the number of days available to do it, minus some stuff I'd written already) failed to materialise. I know that isn't a particularly high target word-wise, but it's NOT the writing-up that takes the time as any PhD student kno: it's the reading, assembling and reviewing of arguments, the cross-referencing, quotations, sourcing out-of-print books and articles and deciphering cryptic references in Victorian commentaries that takes the time!
It makes you break out into a cold sweat when you get to three in the afternoon and you've only put a couple of hundred words down BUT YOU'VE ACTUALLY BEEN BUSY EVERY MINUTE! I've had a couple of nights waking up at four or five am with some anxiety issues, sweating, heart pounding and certain that, come my viva, I'll be unmasked as a charlatan and a fraud.
Of course once you fail to make one day's word-count, the deficit is shunted over to be divided up and added to the remaining days' allotment....and of course it's a compound daily deficit, so every day I have a higher target and...o well, you get the idea! Now that the new half-term has started, I'm making a big push with the chapter and I am managing....just....to keep my head above water, and I may not submit exactly the 10,000 I airily promised but -hey! - I AM trying my hardest!