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The all-thesis all-the-time channel
Aug. 24th, 2013 01:11 amSometime in the past while - definitely in the past month - I've turned into that boring person who spends all their time either talking about work, or complaining about it.
In part, that's my own fault. I may be a little over-committed as a writer of book reviews and of weekly columns, but I need the money. The scholarship has been great, but the vagaries of the last year have left me without savings (because among other things, I went a little wild on the spending side once I had money to spend - NEW CLOTHES! POTS AND PANS! SLOW COOKER! BOOOOOOKS!) and if the scholarship is continued, that's something I need to rectify, since I can't rely on finding a job after I finish, always granted I finish on time.
This project is, in its way, one of the loneliest experiences of my life. How much that is to do with the thesis itself, and how much, over the past year, with the family matters going on in the background - my grandmother's slow continued dying, my mother's ongoing medical leave - is an open question. I believe it would be lonely and difficult even absent those external pressures. With them - well, in emotional terms, this year has been the hardest fucking year of my life to date, even counting the year of my nervous breakdown, and it's not over yet. I'm, quite frankly, a little surprised that I'm still on my feet and moving forward. Since my first year of college, since that nervous breakdown, I've always seen myself as brittle. For so long it has taken very little to shake my emotional equilibrium, after all.
But I can't afford to have a nervous breakdown right now: all the physically-present hands that have caught me and held me up in the past have too much else on their plates to hold me up now. (The virtual hands: I am grateful beyond words.)
And I have too much invested in this to let myself fall.
The last year has eaten my ability to write poetry or fiction, or to maintain any but the most cursory of contacts with people who don't initiate emails or chat. It has screwed with my sleep patterns and filled me with grief and apprehension and semi-regular despair. It has seen reading turn from an exercise of fun into something frequently laborious, and my desire to go interact with people drop to all-time-lows.
But I'm still here. And come hell or high water, I'm going to carry on being here.
And I'm still trying to keep the whining to a minimum.
In part, that's my own fault. I may be a little over-committed as a writer of book reviews and of weekly columns, but I need the money. The scholarship has been great, but the vagaries of the last year have left me without savings (because among other things, I went a little wild on the spending side once I had money to spend - NEW CLOTHES! POTS AND PANS! SLOW COOKER! BOOOOOOKS!) and if the scholarship is continued, that's something I need to rectify, since I can't rely on finding a job after I finish, always granted I finish on time.
This project is, in its way, one of the loneliest experiences of my life. How much that is to do with the thesis itself, and how much, over the past year, with the family matters going on in the background - my grandmother's slow continued dying, my mother's ongoing medical leave - is an open question. I believe it would be lonely and difficult even absent those external pressures. With them - well, in emotional terms, this year has been the hardest fucking year of my life to date, even counting the year of my nervous breakdown, and it's not over yet. I'm, quite frankly, a little surprised that I'm still on my feet and moving forward. Since my first year of college, since that nervous breakdown, I've always seen myself as brittle. For so long it has taken very little to shake my emotional equilibrium, after all.
But I can't afford to have a nervous breakdown right now: all the physically-present hands that have caught me and held me up in the past have too much else on their plates to hold me up now. (The virtual hands: I am grateful beyond words.)
And I have too much invested in this to let myself fall.
The last year has eaten my ability to write poetry or fiction, or to maintain any but the most cursory of contacts with people who don't initiate emails or chat. It has screwed with my sleep patterns and filled me with grief and apprehension and semi-regular despair. It has seen reading turn from an exercise of fun into something frequently laborious, and my desire to go interact with people drop to all-time-lows.
But I'm still here. And come hell or high water, I'm going to carry on being here.
And I'm still trying to keep the whining to a minimum.
