Le Guilt

Ahhhh...Le Guilt.

Hello again old friend, you've been shadowing my steps closely of late.

I've been working at the thesis for so long, carried the pressure to perform and achieve, do more, be more for three years now, such that when I take a moment or a series of moments for myself, Le Guilt pops up to nag me into returning my shoulder to the wheel.

I couldn't do it today. I couldn't face that 90 page, 16,000 word beasty. Just did not have the mental capacity. Couldn't face another day of coefficients, significance levels, *** things and probability odds ratio tables.

The sun was out. It was really really out. The wind was warm. The ocean smelled amazing. The sun sparkled off the waves.

Tomorrow you will have me trapped in the wheel again, Le Guilt, but today my brain and my soma are all mine.

I'll just be guilty tomorrow, to the power of pi.

Small Victories & Owls

At this point in my journey up the ivory tower, I'm ready to pull out hair over even the smallest hiccup and there have been several, including the notorious latte-laptop mashup and the SPSS 17.0 install fail.

Sometimes the journey up the ivory tower feels someone has most definitely smeared it with butter and is sitting at the top watching me grapple for a finger hold. Bastards.

But then there are days when a wee small victory opens up the horizon and the ivory tower gleams just a little less buttery in the sun.

I figured out how to make all of my results tables and graphs show up in their own tables of contents. Yes, I beat down that formatting wolf at the door.

Take THAT little red riding hood!

Then there's the sleep...well...the in-between sleep sleep. The kind where you have been woken out of your slumber by the sound of a mated pair of Northern Spotted Owls at dawn. Every morning at just before 5am the owls call to each other for a few minutes.

I'm being awoken by Athena's animal totem.

I'm going to use that to my advantage.

Look out, I'm named after Athena...goddess of warfare and wisdom (thus the owl) and now the owls have come to wake me up every morning. I'm sure Athena's arrow is next.

I'll save the arrow for someone really deserving (politicians beware).

Paranoid Academiosis

I have truly become the embodiment of a paranoid academic.

This morning my whole world stopped. I mean stopped. I think I may have stopped breathing. I certainly didn't stop sweating. That might have been the heart palpitations though...

I never leave the house without my flash drives. Upon those magical flash drives are my thesis draft and all the notes, data output and graphs, tables, journal articles you could imagine make up the gigantic recipe of thesis success.

I couldn't find them.

I couldn't find my bright red pencil case in which they rested either.

Nowhere.

Thesis vanished. 3 years of work and stress and insanity vanished.

The parrot just watched me lose my marbles.

Wanna know where my flash drives (and thus thesis ingredients) were? They were in my gym bag. Because at some point I decided to go to the gym and take my flash drives with me, just in case calamity struck while I was working out. You know, in case the place burned down or Thor hit it with a thunderbolt. I somehow figured taking my thesis to the gym was a good idea.

But then I left the flash drives in the gym bag. In the car.

I had a paranoid academiosis breakdown this morning in front of the parrot.

He's judging me, I just know it.

I hope this is all worth it. My mind can't decide and my body just thinks I'm coo-coo.