I've got to admit it's getting better / A little better all the time

I began clinging to planning and schedule earlier this week, which is usually a sign I’m heading for some kind of disaster. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s taking things easier, but I seem to have avoided disaster and managed to sort things out again. Yesterday was all right, today is better, probably also because it’s quiet. (Though that’s a relative thing, here at the Kralingse Zoom.)

And I’m writing. Good things and bad things but most of all things that are helping me get other things out of my system. Let’s hope that this time I won’t jinx the mood and actually get some work done. April was going to be the month in which I finish another chapter, but that was a decision I made in early March, and March was the month in which Sadly Nothing Got Done.

Reset the goals, let go all the things that don’t matter, and let’s get going.
A redesign of the website might be a nice place to start. (When I need a break from the writing.) Getting out with my camera would be an essential part of that, and the weather might make that a grateful mission.

Despite its peace and quiet, I’m very quickly developing a rather deep and dark hatred of Thursdays though. They’re interminably boring, and I bear boring quite badly.

Probably should have gone to Groningen this weekend after all.

That time of year again.

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.