I do being sick really badly.

At LiveJournal, I have an icon that says “I’m sure I’d feel much worse if I weren’t under such heavy sedation.” I picked it because of the general sentiment it relays, but for the first time since I’ve had it, I think it’s also actually descriptive of my physical state. The things that 550 milligram of naproxennatrium can do for you, mm?

The bad thing about this cold is that once you feel that you’ve overcome one of the symptoms, it’s replaced by another. I started with a sore throat and no brain capacity, so I battled the sore throat (mostly with medicine and sleep) and somehow managed to regain some brain capacity, but then got tackled by a tickling cough that’s kept me up half the night, which doesn’t do much for either brain or body. (Too tired to get up, coughing too much to get back to sleep.)

So there’s that, and I haven’t eaten in two days (can’t count marmalade on toast and some soup, really), and I’m sort of but not really hungry for the steak that I got Wednesday evening for Thursday’s dinner, which I never ate either. Plus I’m bored, but I don’t have it in me to either read or do anything else.

Woe is me. :(

Yours for the Taking

For The Disciplines song quoted in the title, check their MySpace page. I’m making it my theme song.
What it’s getting down to is that it’s nice to get patted on the head for laying out your love-life to your friends. Which still makes me an idiot, but a relatively content one. Possessing ties and cufflinks, no less.

I thought I was approaching the upwards inspirational curve early this year (but then I had an extremely bad start) because my word count (thesis word count, no less) increased, but apparently the part of my brain I need for reading rapidly evaporated as well. (Which means I'm more or less screwed, and not in the good way.) Then again, I’m not writing much at the moment, but that’s probably from London and too much shopping. (Though I wrote on the train home just now.) I’m putting my money on tomorrow and hoping things’ll sort themselves out before works starts again. (And surprisingly, I'll be so glad when it does...)

What is good is that I've been finding notes to myself about writing things that I have (by this time) already written. It's good to find out the brain is doing what it intended to do six months ago. What's scary that I'm not entirely conscious of the process. I am told that the slow descent into hell is just part of the thesis-writing process. (I'm lying, of course, because I'm actually having loads of fun. To admit that is to jinx. Which probably means I'm screwed any which way you look at it.) We keep calm and carry on.

I have a bet: thesis finished by March 2010. I get a punt to Granchester over the Cam (with picknick!) if I make that, and I owe two people a dinner at the Sherlock Holmes Pub if I don’t. Either way, I win, it looks to me.

Brightness decays brilliantly. Madness is the most shining way.

I love how life can box your ears and make you reassess things you've just started worrying about and makes you realise you can stop worrying, because it's about people, and you can't control people. Terrible realisations over the weekend remain terrible realisations over the weekend, but at least I can live with the notion that perhaps the best state for a writer is one of frustration. Frustration makes you do things. Satisfaction, most of the time, does not.

That said, I should get incredible amounts of work done, the next few weeks, months, etc.
I could do with less of the hyperactiveness of it, though.

Or it might just all be caffeine deprivation.

The way I set goals you'd think I liked new years

I've looked back at 2008 elsewhere, but I think it can be summarised as a year in which many unimportant goals were reached, and the important ones are still pretty much where they were in 2007.

So, 2009 will be the year in which real progress will be made. (Haha!)

The year starts off well: I have (it's still officially unconfirmed: people who teach teaching courses apparently don't have to reply to emails or confirm receipt) passed my didactic course, which means I am now (or should be) fit to teach in higher education. (The ceremony's Monday.) Suffices to say it's a relief, because it was starting to turn into a black hole sucking in all my spare time.

Today is the last day of teaching this semester: next week will have resits, and exams the week after that, at which point we will have arrived at a brand new semester. Time flies. Two terms until I can spend the summer in Cambridge.

I suspect I won't be as blindly busy with teaching as I was last year, but together with clearing out all the stuff on the work harddisk, and in the email and desk drawers that belongs to last semester (and tidying my room), the coming two weeks (if there's time, between checking exams and seminar days) the brain deserves some tidying as well. Review, reassess, and replan all the goals. Sort things out before it's Februari.

I like the idea of 2009 as the year I'll actually have something to show for my effort.

a period in life with no goals is an illusion (for me at least)

As said elsewhere and before, lots of milestones the last couple of weeks/month. September tenth made it a year since I graduated, and October tenth a year ago was my first day physically in front of a classroom, no funny business. November 3rd was the day on which some indefensible behaviour got me unto the track of writing a doctoral thesis. It makes me feel like I should take a moment to let this all sink in, because I really haven’t had anything like that for a while now.

Did I? Will I? (Right, not bloody likely.)

Emotionally, psychologically, academically, I’ve grown more this past year than I think I did while still in university, which is very possibly just proof that the student world is a safe one, and a student’s view narrow. Shame on me.

So I’m approaching the one-year-anniversary of my attempt at a doctoral thesis and have admittedly very little to show for it. (An introduction and a first chapter.)

With November and National Novel Writing Month approaching, I got an October word challenge writing for the thesis. I said yes, because that’s how my brain approaches challenges. The goal for this month was officially to finish a chapter for the thesis (I wasn’t going to reveal the word count that I was actually aiming for for fear of sounding naïve, but I’ll risk it and admit I’m 3000 words short of my 25000 word goal). I probably won’t make that 25K before the month ends, but I do have a chapter. I’m not completely happy with it, and November is going to be NaNoReMo for me, besides just NaNoWriMo, but it’s nice to get some work done. The introduction had value because it helped me figure out what I was writing about and where my boundaries were. The chapter has value because it gives me something to show for my work, which is a psychological necessity.

Because 25000 words on an academic subject is insane if you have to do it besides a fulltime day job, next target is a more careful one: chapter 2 by mid January (I’m not saying the end of December, but I’m aiming for it).

At which point I’ll admit I’d be really annoyed with me if I were my student.

Am I enjoying myself? Weirdly enough, I am.
Am I going to crash? I’ve been able to avoid it since I got tackled by a cold last month, but knock on wood.

When you think of me, this November, think of me reading. You’re not going to be too far off. (I have the new KJ Parker waiting. :P) If you see me scribbling fiction, ignore it. I'm not aiming for 50K. At all.

Rapidly approaching deadlines are good for getting to goals.

Putting some pictures up from the company trip yesterday made me get to developing some things for the website that I hadn't gotten to previously. (That's priorities and lack of time mostly, as ever. Do notice I didn't do it during the holiday either. :P) Anyway, the photography part of the site is more or less up (mostly less), and I suppose I'll just put a link for the teaching stuff when I'm sure about the link on Monday and sort out the About page tomorrow.

After that I'll probably go for a redesign again, but oh well.

Did the more necessary things, like vacuuming the inside of my parents' computer and putting in a working DVD-writer. I'm backing their stuff up and doing a clean reinstall over the weekend, because the damned thing is getting slower by the hour. I'll probably put some additional memory in there as well and see how that works. (More memory and clean reinstal should equal super-speed.)

Tonight is dedicated to getting that damned thesis introduction into shape though. If I can't pour all the stuff dancing around out of my brain into a word document I'll not be responsible for the consequences.

Also, need sleep.

Why this sudden urge to get things sorted? Certainly teaching starting this week has nothing to do with it?

Work, in its many shapes and forms.

I talked about reaching the end of the inspirational curve in my last post, I believe, not quite realising how true that prediction would turn out to be. My word counts over May and June have been atrocious (or they feel like they have been), and only July seems to be making up for that slightly. As a student, my writing tended to take precedence over my schoolwork (especially phonetics suffered grievously), and I've always been the first to admit my priorities were very wrong back then.

These days I've got even more priorities (or goals, anyway), so even more of a chance of side-stepping them, and, in effect, responsibilities. Except I don't.

Life may not start after graduation, but it changes, God, it changes. And even if I try to tell my students that studying and doing homework is not that different from work and doing the assignments your boss gives you, I can't pretend it isn't different for me now. I can't show up in front of a class unprepared. (Somehow it's easier to show up prepared and do other things though, maybe because the back-up plan is still in place.) As a student, failure just results in not passing a certain course or class. After graduation, failure has as a possible consequence that you get fired. So first and foremost (and this is probably insecurity as well), I make sure my classes are prepared. The only reason for this to maybe suffer a teeny-tiny bit is when I have a deadline coming up for my doctoral thesis, which apparently ranks higher in my brain of priorities. Fiction-writing, as stated before, suffers.

But today is the first day of my holiday, and between packing and wrapping things up (we’re moving offices after the holiday), last week wasn't as busy as the weeks before (which suddenly turned into unexpected hell), which gave the brain a chance to relax. I'll wrap up some last work-related things this weekend, put all my work-stuff I took home in a bag, and leave it in the corner of the library. I don't think I've ever experienced a holiday in which I could physically, psychologically, put a goal/priority away in a corner. It feels wonderful.

As a result, that inspirational curve? I'm in the steep part of it that goes up. :D

I think I’ve figured out the main (methodological) topics of my thesis, and I have high hopes of having a finished introduction and approach by the end of this month, if not the next, with a chapter 1 that’s more finished than in progress by September. And that’s taking into account my slacking abilities, not even a best-case-scenario.

Fiction-wise, big steps. I’ve got the basic plot for part one pretty much figured out and written, which leaves filling the gaps before I dare and try and expand any subplot. I did a run-through of the entire text for part 1 (108.000 words, thankyouverymuch) last week and think that even if much of it still needs work, there’s two parts in there that are really, really good. Small steps should get me a good way towards a finished first draft. Going to Cambridge is going to really help towards getting part two fleshed out. (Though seriously, it’s research for sequels.)

Yeah, I know, don’t tell me. Too much sleep is bad for me. :P