Yippee!!

Full moon hike tonight! Can't wait. And I might even have earned it. I didn't do much in terms of word count, but I think I have written a nice 3 paragraph summary of my methods and findings to go in the first chapter that makes it clear the ground I am staking out AND avoids inflamatory language.

2:59

Measurable progress is being made. Though slow and scary, since I am trying to say what I actually mean.

2:14

Still no measurable progress.

Thursday 11:00

Events since my last post, in no particular order:

1. I slept until 9:00 am! I am a lazy-ass.
2. There is still no diet snapple in the cafeteria.
3. I talked with ET yesterday (!) and he signed my prospectus sheet and faxed it in (!) was pretty happy(!) with the changes I made in May due to his comments, though one of the things he wanted me to add I had already done (which means he hasn't read my work very carefully). I don't think he will be terribly obstructive going forward, though I will need to spend more time on my model than I would like...
4. I got an email from my outside reader with some preliminary impressions and questions, and it is clear that he is going to be supportive of my work.
5. I had a really nice dinner with MS yesterday evening. She, unlike ET, has been a rock star on my committee and it was really nice to get her support. The conversation wasn't overly substantive, but I feel like I know much more of where I am headed.
6. I think I am going to give my final seminar on the 19th. In my program, you aren't necessarily done at the seminar, but it is still a marker of imminent finishing.

1:20 Wednesday

Count-down time is back, and, once again, I am having a really hard time getting to work.

One thing I have learned about myself in this whole dissertation thingy is that this reluctance to get down to work is not just because I'm a lazy ass. (Though one could credibly argue that lazy-assedness is not entirely absent from my character.) I have, shudder, a "creative process" that can't be short circuited, though perhaps it can be put into fast-forward.

There are two parts of that process that manifest themselves in many hours spent surfing the web and fantasizing about a world without George Bush. The first is allowing ideas to formulate and articulate to that I can touch and taste them. The second is fighting all of the insecurity demons that are trying to get me to give up on my ideas.

Mostly in my life, insecurity is a bad thing. But I think that to a degree it is an important part of this process, though a part that is painful. Because my ideas do battle with my insecurities, and, as they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. My ideas have sharper elbows and stronger heads and faster feet than they would otherwise. They become the opposite of fuzzy, which, in a world of dangerous fuzzy-thinking, is a good thing.

But I also wonder what life would be like if I could turn down the strength of my insecurity a notch or two and let my ideas do battle in the real world a little more. Because I think I kill off a few (ritual sacrifice?) to appease the gods of insecurity that really deserve to live, though perhaps their puberty will be longer and more painful than some of the ideas that survive in the current regime inside my head.

Gulp

Looks like I have some work to do:

Dear committee,
I want to keep you all up to date with the various scheduling issues I am facing to get this dissertation done before I have to cough up more tuition. The calendar:

--I hope to have the majority of my responses to comments already received done by Monday, Sept. 11.

--I am supposed to get comments from the external reader by Sept 15.

--The windows available for my final seminar (according to what I know so far of my and others' travel schedules) are: Sept 11-13, 18-20. and 25-27. If it slips past the 27th it will be much harder for me to get by without paying more tuition unless it is clearly someone else's fault that the timeline slipped.

Would you all please send your availability for those days?

And fast, too.

Well I'll be hornswaggled

Hi Abby

I just got back from a trip. I have feedback and signatures (though I thought I sent in the signed sig page. I'll double check).

Free to chat tomorrow afternoon?

ET

Oh yes.

But a far more important problem than all those spelled out below is that the cafeteria is currently out of diet peach snapple. They don't even have any of my fall-back favorite of diet rasberry snapple. They don't have any diet snapple. And before anyone lectures me on the evils of fake sugar, I have medical reasons for choosing diet drinks.

Fortunately, they do serve caffiene-free diet coke in the fountain service, along with regular diet coke, which I can mix to mimick the mild caffiene fix that I need given my dependance on snapple. But it just ain't the same...

What am I doing?

I'm not sure what I am trying to do today. I didn't plan things very well. I wanted to work on my dissertation today (see below post). But the materials I need to do that properly are at home. I am at the office. I am at the office to keep my eye on the moving in of my office mate, to ensure that she doesn't, say, throw away all of my most important files (not that she would or anything, but I am paranoid). But that is happening in dribs and drabs all day (the first load of her stuff just arrived).

I am also here to monitor developments of contact with ET. Which, of course, there are none (to date). And to worry about scheduling my dissertation seminar (waiting on an email on that one as well). And perhaps to talk with the dean about ET. Which I haven't done yet (sort of waiting to hear if there is word from JH first).

And then there is the issue of job in London. I need to talk with RL about the project he is (hopefully) hiring me for. I'm not sure it is a good fit. But I'm not looking forward to the conversation, and not sure how to approach it. But I have received no word from him today and it is late enough that it is unlikely I will. But I need to decide whether I want to initiate contact, probably by email, which has the advantage of letting me write my thoughts rather than blurt them out. But then the question is how much to say...

Yerggh.

A little closer

...to being organized. Now all the loose articles that were in huge piles around my office are in manilla folders in piles around my office. I think the exercise was mildly valuable, even though it took longer than I expected.

Still to go are the articles that made their way, in earlier attempts at organization, into binders. I need to blend the two collections...

I think I need to turn back to my actual writing tomorrow for a while. I think the office is in decent enough shape for my new office mate to move in tomorrow.

Labor Day weekend is for work

I read my dissertation cover-to-cover (well, not the appendices) yesterday for the first time. As hoped, it has gotten the juices flowing again. I can see where MS and JH's comments are coming from, and I am planning a significant reorganization to tighten the argument.

I am going to a frue-frue ladies brunch in Malibu today, though, so I'm not sure I'll get much done.