#hist696

I accomplished everything I set out to do aside from writing this thesis literally at all. However, my attitude about it is positive now, so I’m going to count that as pretty significant progress. I’ve basically discovered that I can do 99% of things tired: working, going to class, taking tests, reading, etc. The singular thing that I can’t do tired is write. Thus, the four days of the week where I get almost no sleep have rendered progress impossible. Oh well. 

In my defense, this week was midterm elections, so I had something high stakes that I had to stay up for. To my shock and excitement, Laura Kelley became the governor of Kansas, so maybe there are good things coming. There were also a lot of women from a lot of states that got elected, and it’s still a long way off from equal representation, but it felt good to see. 

I finally feel like I’m looking at the downhill slope on my mountain of stress, even if I still have a long hike left. 

My daily encouragement: let yourself blast Christmas music even if you’re surrounded by a bunch of grumps trying to fight your holiday spirit. 

Song of Now: 

4 Non-Blondes, “What’s Up?” 

[Twenty-five years and my life is still Trying to get up that great big hill of hope For a destination / 

And I try, oh my god do I try I try all the time, in this institution /  And I pray, oh my god do I pray I pray every single day For a revolution] 

If you get bogged down this week, remember the advice my professor gave me (quoted to the best of my memory): 

“I think that working on something like this is difficult because it’s easy to feel alone and see people not doing as challenging things and perceive that no one appreciates the work that you are doing. However, it’s important to remind yourself that there are lots of people you cannot see also working tirelessly on their projects and running into struggles and setbacks like you are. You really are not alone. They all appreciate the work that you put in everyday; all those little baby steps of progress do mean something to them even if it does not feel like it because you cannot see all of them.” 

Thanks for hanging in there. 

I appreciate the work that you do. 

Best,

So, I accomplished all of the goals I set out to do last time I wrote, but if you remember, I set the bar pretty low as I wanted to write somewhere between one and a million pages of my thesis. I was closer to the one side than the million. I am trying not to be disappointed with myself, but it is a process. 

I had a major setback this weekend as the stress really really really got to me and I got kind of depressed and just cried a lot in bed. For a couple days. I literally have more collectively to do right now than at any point in my life so far which did not seem possible because my life has been crazy. I had two midterms last week and was not even nervous for them because they are so low on my list of things to stress about. On a side note: why do they say that we can’t end sentences on prepositions? I love to end sentences on prepositions and so do most people who speak English, so fuck whomever is making that rule. On. About. Of. After. Near.  

Today, I made myself coffee and took way too long getting motivated to write and then remembered advice from my professor that when you get bored and hate the thing you’re writing about to just think about what made you interested in that topic in the first place. So, I did the thing you’re not supposed to do and wrote the introduction because the most interesting part of this story for me is at the beginning, and maybe by starting there, where I am, I can build the rest. So far, its worked, and I once again don’t entirely hate this thesis. It now seems like a bad strategy to have tried to skip the beginning. 

My goals for the next 24 hours: 

Write a Page More

Study French

Get Sleep 

Ace Midterm

Do Outline

Write as Much as I can

Make French Outline and Submit  

Song of Now: 

“Glorious” -Macklemore 

[You know I'm back like I never left (I never left) Another sprint, another step (another step) Another day, another breath (another breath) Been chasing dreams, but I never slept (I never slept)] 

Hey, maybe the last two months of the year are for a really great plot twist- you don’t know. I don’t know, but I can hope. 

Talk Later,

I have hit a new roadblock to writing my thesis: I am literally too tired to write. Regardless of how much sleep I get, after a full load of classes and work, I literally cannot stay awake long enough to write anything. I know what you’re thinking, “Just drink some coffee!” but let me inform you dear friends that I am drinking an excessive amount of coffee already and that is how I manage to function long enough to go to class in the first place. Today, I’m going to take a caffeine pill after work just to try to stay up a couple of hours to get a few pages done. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

The last time that I was talking to my professor about the writing process, she shared wisdom from a book called, “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” by Anne Lamot. When Anne was having trouble writing one of her books, she looked up at a one inch picture frame she had and realized that she merely had to write one inch of text to make some progress. Often, when she told herself this, she ended up writing much more, so it was really a mechanism to help her get started and overcome all those negative thoughts blocking the creativity from flowing. When I first heard this story, I didn’t love it because the idea of only writing an inch does not seem like progress at all to me when I have many, many, many inches of unwritten story ahead of me. However, I have recently found myself opening my google doc, taking a deep breath, and saying in my head, “Just write one inch and you can close this.” It is so hard to be kind to yourself when you are not making any progress (or at least it seems like it), so maybe this will help me forgive myself and be positive in the coming weeks. 

On a side note, I have developed what I theorize to be stress induced hiccups and they’re super weird and stressing me out more which is fortifying the continuation of having stress hiccups, so that’s a minor issue in my life too. 

Yesterday at work, there was a Halloween bakesale, and a guy that I work with said, “I’m about to roll up in the bake sale like Harry Potter on the train to hogwarts like, ‘I’LL TAKE THE WHOLE LOT.’” I laughed so hard I cried. I realize that finding time for humor is vital to the writing process, now, too. So to others who are out there struggling right now with their research, don’t lose yourself in the writing. 

There are no songs of now because I haven’t had time to listen to music in the last couple days, but maybe that’s because the song of now is really the Harry Potter movies or something. 

Goals for today: 

Ace my Econometrics Midterm 

Stay Awake 

Write Somewhere Between one and Million Pages for my Thesis 

I’ll check back in later. 

Best, 

I accomplished all the things that I set out to do in my last post! Unfortunately, I’ve got approximately 3,000 more things to do now. The other things in my life are stressing me out more than this thesis, so I’ll probably start actually working on this in order to avoid dealing with those other things. 

I went to talk to my professors to get advice on enrollment and future careers, and for every helpful piece of advice that they gave me, they made me panic so much more than I was before. They’re talking about networking, and sending e-mails to important people that I admire, asking questions to people who have recently graduated from my program, taking high level graduate classes, and even potentially staying another year at the university just to beef up my resume. I just can’t help but feel that no one I talk to understands what I want next. It’s true that I want a challenging, fulfilling, and successful career which might take moving or getting more education, but I also just want to come home to a family and my cats at the end of long day. I want all the cooking for thanksgiving, coffee and relaxing on Sundays, and getting caught up in the Christmas season. I want to be able to travel to national parks in the summer and just explore. I want to be able to pay off my debts and not feel like I’m continually making choices out of necessity rather than choice. No one at the University seems to understand wanting the joys that accompany a just- average life. Maybe I just need to stop letting people tell me what I want and follow my gut. 

Okay, time to pull it together and get stuff done. My goals right now are the following 

Complete a French Pre-Write

Comb through research (books)

Get further on Econometrics

Je vais essayer.

I will let you know when things get better or when I figure out the secret to life.