hawkwing_lb (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hawkwing_lb) wrote2014-02-23 04:59 pm
hawkwing_lb) wrote2014-02-23 04:59 pm
Press button. Get treat. Run around rat maze. Press button. Get treat.
I made a decision to take yesterday off from mental labour - and such is rare for me, since normally the decision is made for me by my thinking parts going STOP NO CANNOT BRAIN.
I did mean to go to bed early like a sane person who intends to fix her sleep patterns, but when I wandered off last night to play videogames, I rather lost track. It turns out that real-time strategy games are the perfect kind of non-threateningly absorbing to occupy the majority of my attention without requiring my emotional investment. I may have mentioned this before. The absence of narrative means it's interesting, like a puzzle, without feeling like work.
But I got distracted by the push-button-get-reward nature of play, and ended up not going to bed until after 0500. I should really put myself on some kind of timer, I suppose...
Stressful things have grown a little less stressful. I had an abstract accepted for a June conference, which makes me feel better about my work. If I can keep on track, it is possible I can have the first thesis complete draft - with all the chapters, although none of them very good - done by the end of April. And I still have a paper on submission with Foundation: it hasn't been rejected yet, and as long as that state of things continues, I can feel a little optimistic.
I've decided I'm going to let a lot of things slide until the first thesis draft is done. Screw exercise and healthy-eating goals: as long as I don't become a complete sloth nor make myself ill from eating wrong, sod it all. I have to prioritise, and I don't have the mental capacity right now to address the habits of anxiety from the last several months.
As for finances, it's all right as long as I don't think too hard. We'll be paying the funeral parlour fifty quid a month for the next two years, and on top of the existing debts, it's enough to make a person fair despair. We can keep going like this for a while, mind, but we're surely making nearly no progress in ever being free of debt, and when that's the situation it's hard not to say, "Well, what's another twenty quid down the hole, then? At least we'll get some fun of it."
Mind you, the only reason my optimism's not completely cracked yet is if I can get a couple of papers accepted before I graduate, I stand a solid chance of succeeding in an application for a postdoctoral fellowship. Which isn't a longterm gig, but it's still more money in a year than fill my wildest dreams doing anything else. (Call it a one-in-five chance, rather than a one-in-fifteen or one-in-thirty.)
And yeah, these calculations occupy my thoughts a great deal when I let them.
Anyway. That's life.
I did mean to go to bed early like a sane person who intends to fix her sleep patterns, but when I wandered off last night to play videogames, I rather lost track. It turns out that real-time strategy games are the perfect kind of non-threateningly absorbing to occupy the majority of my attention without requiring my emotional investment. I may have mentioned this before. The absence of narrative means it's interesting, like a puzzle, without feeling like work.
But I got distracted by the push-button-get-reward nature of play, and ended up not going to bed until after 0500. I should really put myself on some kind of timer, I suppose...
Stressful things have grown a little less stressful. I had an abstract accepted for a June conference, which makes me feel better about my work. If I can keep on track, it is possible I can have the first thesis complete draft - with all the chapters, although none of them very good - done by the end of April. And I still have a paper on submission with Foundation: it hasn't been rejected yet, and as long as that state of things continues, I can feel a little optimistic.
I've decided I'm going to let a lot of things slide until the first thesis draft is done. Screw exercise and healthy-eating goals: as long as I don't become a complete sloth nor make myself ill from eating wrong, sod it all. I have to prioritise, and I don't have the mental capacity right now to address the habits of anxiety from the last several months.
As for finances, it's all right as long as I don't think too hard. We'll be paying the funeral parlour fifty quid a month for the next two years, and on top of the existing debts, it's enough to make a person fair despair. We can keep going like this for a while, mind, but we're surely making nearly no progress in ever being free of debt, and when that's the situation it's hard not to say, "Well, what's another twenty quid down the hole, then? At least we'll get some fun of it."
Mind you, the only reason my optimism's not completely cracked yet is if I can get a couple of papers accepted before I graduate, I stand a solid chance of succeeding in an application for a postdoctoral fellowship. Which isn't a longterm gig, but it's still more money in a year than fill my wildest dreams doing anything else. (Call it a one-in-five chance, rather than a one-in-fifteen or one-in-thirty.)
And yeah, these calculations occupy my thoughts a great deal when I let them.
Anyway. That's life.