stresssed!

And a bit excited?!  Emotional anyway.

Today I have to sort out our travel stuff - passports, tickets, insurance docs and puit them somewhere safe so I know that is sorted.  I have to collect together our wedding stuff.  And start gathering together bits and bobs as I see them  we need to take on holiday.

Tomorrow I shall pack properly and probably won't get much work done (if any) but today I hope to finish the intro to this chapter and send it off to my sup to see what he thinks, seeing as this chapter didn't exist a few weeks ago.

Am stressed about getting everything together for the wedding, and for the holiday and getting work done so I can relax.  Am also super keen to sit outside and take deep breaths but the chappie who mows our lawn (c/o landlord, not us!) is here, mowing away and small talk with him will only add to the stress.  Worryingly I think he is here for a long while so guess am housebound for now!

x J

back again

It is 8am and I am working until 9.30.  Then I shall have some 'saturday' time with my family before DB has to head out and get his suit for us weddin'.

Am pretty pleased with myself for getting on with work.  I hope DB doesn't mind but I really do have to plug away and I think if I was to have a lie in (I was asked if I wanted one - I declined in favour of work OMG) then by the time I am showered etc it would probably still be that time when I get downstairs.

Better get on.  Am hating having to sort this intro out, I don't know what is going on at all!

x J

Getting serious now!

look at me.  It is friday night and I am working!

I decided earlier that I would work when DB got home, otherwise I knew I would be stressed and thinking about it all day and not be a very good momma.  So I am working until 7.30 - I started at 6 and then I shall go downstairs and eat curry and watch tv and have a nice friday night. 

I will also work tomorrow and sunday, though I am not sure when yet.  I have decided to work every day except one.  Normally I expect that would be friday but as I am not boozy tonight it may well be tomorrow as I doubt I will be able to be away from Bean - DB has wedding stuff to do (er get his suit).

anyway, better get on with writing this intro - the time is flying by!

x J

The worst possible thing

has happened.  the nightmare of every PhD student.

I have found a PhD thesis online that was submitted a couple of months ago that is almost exactly on my topic.  It misses a couple of key concepts that my thesis uses (only by not naming them though, the author talks about the processes, just not the label that we have in UK IR academia) and isn't as strong a post-modern analysis but...  it is too close for comfort.  The empirical work is just down the road from mine and targets the same issues, same subset of people and talks about the same processes.  But it is MUCH better than mine (the author is from India so...).  The wording is more chatty than mine will be, but also hits its target quicker than mine does at the mo.

I am crying and crying!  Can you IMAGINE?!  Shit tits bugger.  I shall send it to my sup later when I have read the intro good and proper and then try and work out how they are different.  if they really, really aren't then I shall have to send it to my sup and arrange some kind of emergency meeting.

I think there is enough scope for them to be different, but along the same lines.  Which is good - if there is a swelling of dissension and critique like mine then hurray.  But selfishly of course, I want my PhD to be new!  And having another thesis out there written better than mine as well.

Am off to lick my wounds and try and cheer myself up in time for lunch with my friend.  I am just going to bawl.  And we are going to sit outside in the sun and it is a festival at my hometown.  jeeez.

x J

cool man

Ooh I am pleased!

I have sorted my wedding outfit this morning so don't need to take any time off tomorrow to do it, excellent.  I also have free space in my mind to work better now!

I have spent today sorting out the references that need to go in this chapter (putting them into endnote, which still isn't working completely but will do for now) and have found 1000 words in my discussion chapter that are excellent for this new chapter I have got.  This is brill because obviously it ups my word count with a wee cut and paste (hehe, small pleasures), is great analysis (and well written, I could write so much better in the old days!) and shows that my PhD is coming on if a while ago I thought that that analysis should be in the discussion.  The discussion has moved up a notch in sophistication hurrah!

I am never going to get this chapter down before next week.  I will however be able to have it planned and have a good part of it written.  I am still sorting out the intro but that is coming along - I really look forward to having down properly what I want to say!  My intros always take aaaaaages.

Anyway, only a small amount but significant.  Oh, I also found a reference that I thought was long lost but is vital to one of my arguments and this is EXCELLENT. 

I have to go now and pick up my little boy.  I am in such a good mood!  I have a wedding outfit i look half decent in, I have been busy exercising, I am eating well and work is coming on.

Thank goodness.

I hope to get an hour in later on.  Just an hour, see how it goes.

x J

Stepping up to the plate

RIGHT.  no more shit arse moi.  I am serious now!

I did hardly any work today.  Instead I had a haircut (for mah weddin'), got stressed (about my weddin'), locked myself out of the house and had to hunt out spare keys, drank coffee, read the paper (did actually have a long article relevant to work in it.  The rest er, didn't), wrote a sentence, faffed and then had the pleasure of a very rare phone call from my best mate who has just reached her 37th week of pregnancy. 

So didn't do much.  This has actually pissed me off.  Tonight I went to my triathlon swimming club (arf I am *tired* I forgot how evil it is - and it was an easy session!) and met up with a woman who works with the VC at uni and has her PhD.  Since i found out this I have become rather awestuck and felt like such a worm when she asked me how my PhD was going.  I said it was ok.  It isn't!  I haven't done anything!  I just wanted to hug her legs and ask how she did it and survived and ask her if I will do it too.  She said it was worse than giving birth because it is so protracted and that doing a PhD is EVIL.  I think people with PhDs are intense and amazing people.  But I am definitely NOT.  I am a fraud! 

Doing a PhD IS EVIL people.  We really have let ourselves in for something that is ENORMOUS and EVIL.  And, as such, we must work hard to achieve it.  Will we finish?  YES!  But I will only finish if I stop eating mini cheddars and making cups of tea instead of typing typing typing.

I must be unhappy.  I must TYPE.  EVERY DAY.

x J

Tense

I am so tense!  So very tense and worried and nervy.

Why?  I think I know why.  I am really worried because my bank account seems to have £100 to much in it and I am merrily spending it and can't understand why it is there.  hehe.  Silly, I have thought and thought about what payment I might have missed but there is none.  When I am tense though I do fret about my bank account.  I am also very tense about the wedding!  I keep getting butterflies whenever I think about it!  I am worried about what to wear and keep deciding just to go in jeans.  I am also tense about WORK!  As in, I can't do any!  I had no time at all over the weekend which I didn't plan on, though I did try and do some for an hour here and there.  I want to work tonight and keep thinking it will be ok to work when Bean is being put to bed, but for some reason (er, house chores?  bean needing me after 10 mins with his daddy cause he is mega clingy at the mo?!) and I can't work after nine as I am a zombie. 

Oh well, tomorrow is a proper work day.  I did hope to have the intro planned by tomorrow but I don't.  I shall do my best.  Am running out of time and so don't want to be a loser and not have this done for wedding time.

I think maybe I could do with exercising!  I just realised.  Maybe I should go for a run tonight and loosen up a bit, get rid of some of this nervous energy.

In so many ways I will be relieved to come back from wedding/holiday and know that that is alllll done and I don't have to think about it any more - just need to concentrate on work and beanie.  I would love to come back hacing done this chapter and hopefully an email from Sup saying it is good.  i don't know how this can happen - I have to pull my finger out innit.  maybe get into evening work.

And mine is a shotgun wedding!  what normal peeps go through i can't imagine (don't want to, hence not doing it!)

My friend is coming over in a min and I am sure she will set me straight.  Probably coupd do with a gooooood chat.  I made fairy cakes but they are rank.  Who makes rank fairy cakes?!

x J

Got a concluding argument!

Ooh I have been working out this chapter, then working out how it will flow into the next chapter which will be the discussion - BIG chapter - and out of that I got my concluding argument!  Is really exciting!

It is one of those things that starts to make me feel that there IS an end to this process - if I have found the conclusion - the main point underlining everything else I am writing, then *that* is the end - it is the full stop, the final sentence, the whole goddamn point...  and my job now is to fill in all the gaps that lead to that point. 

before it was such an open-ended piece of work.  But I can see the light!

Just two hours thinking and that's what happens. 

I did type an intro of sorts to the new chapter, but it is rubbish - garbled.  But I need some space to write it properly, I anm all too aware that bean and DB will be hoome any minute and then my time will be up (Bean is going through a big mama phase!  I can't hide!).  Tonight, until 8.15 (when x factor is on then Jonathan Ross, then bed - my saturday night!) I shall try to write out what I can from my PhD notebook - I have about three pages of scribbling that all ended up creating this chapter.  I need to remind myself of where I am coming from and this will help with my intro.  I then need to write the intro out really really clearly and carefully.  I hope to do this before I start work proper on Tuesday, then on tues/weds/thurs I can get some serious words down.  I only have next week and two days of the following week of proper work time before I get wed!  Eek!

Speaking of which, we got the rings sorted today and tomorrow I am going looking for the dress I am getting married in.  When I have that (and shoes and hair stuff) I will be alllll ready to go!  WOWOWOWOWWW!

Right will do that work in a min - am also cooking dinner now.  Such is the life of the PhD housewife/mother/dogsbody ;0)

x J 

weekend working

Am working again!

My PhD friends are all writing up fiercely now, and keep puttiing on FB encouraging stuff wishing all us writers 1000 words...  and that we can do it.  Is so naff but really it is inspiring and cheers me up because I feel I am in it with other people instead of being alone.  Yesterday was tough though because I had Bean and couldn't work so I just felt like such a slacker!  No 1000 words for me.  I endeavoured to work during the hour and a half it would have taken for DB to see to bean's bedtime then I could have a glass of wine and celebrate lovely Friday-ness with a clear conscience but DB didn't come home!  He stayed out boozing with workmates instead.  And by the time I had got bean sorted it was gone half eight and I was so tired I just couldn't face opening my work - mostly because I am at the beginning of a chapter which means i have a lot of organising and thinking to do to get it up and running.  So I had wine and watched outnumbered and went to bed early. 

I am working now though instead!  DB has had to pick up his car from work and is ordering our wedding rings on the way (!!) with Bean so am home alone for a couple of hours.  Excellent!  I am sat on the floor of my lovely big 'office' (spare room) and have lots of paper all around me and a hand written explanation of where this chapter is going that I plan to type out to remind me where I am headed with it.  It is rather disconcerting having a whole new chapter materialise from nowhere, I am so very familiar with the other chapters and the thesis layout that this one feels like an alien.  I am not altogether sure it will work either but am going to give it a go because even if it doesn't form a new chapter, the info will go somewhere.

So I better get on with it.  I wish you all 1000 words!  We can do it!

x J

still working!

Am back at work again...

I did take 20 mins earlier before picking bean up (at the right time today!) to lie down and try and nap - I was absolutely shattered!  Sort of worked, bought me a few hours ;0)  Between 3.30 and 5.30 I just turn into a zombie.

Am awake now tho!  Have been with bean but have been sorting work out in my head and think I have worked out how to put my empirical work into two chapters.  I shall write out the introductions/structures for these two chapters tonight while sneakily looking at where to stay the night before our wedding, just to cheer mesen up.  Really feel like am on a work/mum/wedding organising treadmill at the moment and am just worn out - and this is just the beginning!  I really want to have these two chapters sussed before we get wed and go away on the 22nd, then come back and write the discussion chapter.  My fieldwork is very poor, it is definitely the weak part of the PhD but is only part of the research thank goodness.  I really need to go back to India and ask a lot of peeps a lot of questions on the focus of it (have only worked that out today!  Talk about being late!) but obviously that is unrealistic.

Better get on  with it, I want to try and get to bed early tonight.  well, I want to go to sleep when I get to bed instead of being in bed with my mind just whirring!

x J

online shopping

just bought some winter necessities online.  Doing something wonderfully fun and frivolous has sparked up my energy levels and enthusiasm!  Off now to pay the last installment of mah wedding venue, then make a coffee then start planning this new chapter!  today is speeeeeding by!

Gosh I feel so much better for doing something non-wedding/family ruckus/PhD/baby related ;0)

x J

Brain ache

Oof my brain actually hurts.  I can't really think any more but I have to!

I have been working as much as I can - yesterday I picked bean up and did reading while he watched tele (he wasn't impressed and actually nor was I but it had to be done!) and when he went to bed I worked in front of the tv.  was ok work, just reading my fieldwork diaries and interviews and noting all the themes - trying desperately to find something original...  Which is why I have brainache.

Today I have been reading al the clippings I got from indian newspapers while I was away, sorting my notes, reading interviews and am now trying to work out my unique focus.  On such a heavily documented and evaluated aid-effort it is pretty hard to find anything new, a lot of my fieldwork just re-iterates what has already been said :0(  Saying that though I think I might have found a focus but am not sure.  I will have to think about it and try and see if I can plan a chapter out of it...  this is what I shall do this afternoon.  Hopefully I shan't zip off an hour early to pick bean up like i did yesterday!  I turned up at the childminders to pick him up and it was only when she said she was off to get her kiddies from school that I twigged I might be an hour early!  i was so embarrassed!  I picked him up at 3 instead of 4, what a twonk.  Obviously working is taking up too much brain space and normal daily life is been severely compromised.  Today I feel more on the ball but got home from picking him up to realise that I had been walking around with only one earring in.  oh dear.

Better get on with the work then.  Am really very tired.  Working is keeping my brain super active and I can't sleep, then as I relax bean wakes bla bla bla.

x J

crikey

I am on a short fuse today!  just totally freaked myself by shouting at the lady on the phone from Next.  Although it was my fourth phone call to them this morning just tying to get the free returns they promised me with this stupid online account they set up for me.  I have to shut that account as soon as my returns are sent.

Anyway.  Apart from that I have been working hard today.  I have been re reading my fieldwork journals and trying to create a unique perspective on my 'data' so I can present something that was worth going all the way to india for.  it is hard!  I suppose i don't realise any more what it was I didn't know when i went out, it all seems very obvious to me now.  Oh dear.

And I worked last night and I expect I shall work tonight.

Anyway I am still snarky, am off for a cuppa tea and to do some more work - today is flying by!

x J

Working working

Arg it is raining so hard here today!

is quite nice though because I have pushed the coffee table in the sitting room against the big window facing my front garden and can watch the rain and wind and be all cosy ;0)  Not in the mood for shutting myself away in my room today - it's too messy!  And I need to think, minus laptop (I turned it on reluctantly to remind myself of my research question) so this is dandy.

Wedding plans are coming apace!  We sorted out our rings on Saturday, am so excited.  they are being handmade so we have to wait a few days for the designs.  And I am waiting in this morning for a dress I have ordered that is just so lovely and I hope it looks good on.  It isn't white but is very very lovely.  Heard from my Ma and sis over the weekend and they wish me a nice day but have decided I shouldn't contact them again.  Massive overreaction, my mum is clearly throwing her toys out of the pram because she is missing her society wedding, and my sis is a mini-ma so dutifully following suit, sending me strange uber-formal texts.  I wish she could just chill and be my sister instead of this pompous old get, but hey ho, she's old enough now for me to have to just deal with it rather than try and sway her in any way.  I knew my mum would be sad and disappointed, even a bit hurt that we hare having a private ceremony.  But she won't even let me explain, preferring to put the phone down on me which I think is mighty unfair.  I have explained anyway but she won't listen, and that is absolutely her choice and right.  If she wants to not see us again then I guess I just have to deal with it.  I am mostly angry and irritated but it isn't changing my mind in any way - we have a soemtimse frought relationship anyway and if it means I can have a bit of time away from the stresses and childishness that is my family (too many bored people whispering poison in each others ears to shit-stir for fun) this is no bad thing.  I think I am mostly cross that she would rather split the family up than hide her bad feeling, wish me well and let other family members make their own mind up.  Instead she is stirring it up and seems to think that punishing me by kicking me, Bean and future grandchildren out of her life is a move forward which is so bizarre and self-centered when we are, we must remember, talking about *my* wedding day, not hers.  And I can only sit and watch the car crash unfold.  Oh well, if that's how it is, that's how it is.  I am fine about it, but really, it is pathetic.  RANT OVER!  Sorry to let rip, but I can't talk to anyone about it - my mate is on holiday and DB is so angry with my mum that if I start whining he goes off on one which is just as pointless.

And work is going well!  Slow which is really stressful because it is now september and I have so much to do.  but I have worked in the evenings and when Bean was napping and have planned out the discussion chapter by accident.  I am trying to fit the empirical chapter into two chapters which is why I need the research question.  Today I hope to plan this new chapter and start editing my old chapter.  It needs to be argument driven, which I have planned out now, instead of subject driven and needs tightening up.

So much to do but I am moving forward!

x J

punishment

So, for a punishment and to appease my guilty conscience I made myself sit with my work out last night (didn't do much but the fact it was there ruined my evening) and am now working on it while bean naps.  No down time for me!

That's all really.  I have to get a lot done before we go away in three weeks so I can relax.  Am working out how my empirical chapter actually fits into two chapters and think I have got it - I need one chapter on what other people have said, and one about what the actual aid-recipients said.  In fact I have realised that a years old version of a chapter may fit the bill but sadly I can't find it.  I expect I overwrote it.  I am sure it is on a disc somewhere but were that is I know now.  Anyway, thinking about it I reckon it was actually split into two chapters in the end. 

Now I am going to think about whether I really want to split it up, and if so plan a bit more copy and pasting over the weekend ;0)

It's crazy but in town the weather was so blazing hot I felt sick and thought I would definitely be getting the paddling pool out this afternoon, but 3 miles away at home it is gloomy and very windy!  chuh.

bean will wake soon and make me stop which is a pain but hey.  And then later I look forward to a BIG glass of wine and some pizza.  hurray!

x J

Great work!

I am working!  I am doing good work!

I am editing my (10,000 words long) empirical chapter and already can see so many errors.  The intro is all wrong and failed to explain the argument of the chapter from the off.  It also fails to explain how the chapter links to the the preceding or following chapters, and to the thesis as a whole.  These are fundamental!  It is also evidence-led, rather than argument led.  So I need to go through and completely change the structure so it is following my argument - what I have interpreted from the information - rather than simply being descriptive (so and so said this, which shows this...)  I have yet to sort out what my argument is, and am worried that this may take some time.

This should provide a much more grown up copy.  I think, as well, I may be close to working out why it needs to be two chapters.  This would be, like, awesome.

Phew-wee!

x J

procrastination queen

Ok I have to come clean.

Today so far I have had my work within arms reach, with a pen all ready to edit.  Instead I have actually:

Bought a dress for my wedding after much perusing and second checking.

Bought some bikini bottoms

Signed up to lovefilm and added titles to my rental account

Smoked two cigarettes with two hot drinks (not in a row!).

Read the paper online

Checked all my emails numerous times

Checked and commented on facebook.

Took a quizz at a piccie of an old schoolmate on facebook.

Checked my phone for messages.

Blogged

Started work in front of the tv but decided I was too hungry to concentrate.

Made a lovely salad.

Hung up washing.

Ate salad in front of tv.

Got out work and *started it*, realised I actually needed to edit pretty heavily so should get back on the computer.

Decided to finish watching programme first.

Went to kitchen to get things and decided that I really could do with making some cookies.

Hunted round for ingredients, realised I didn't have enough sugar and berated self for terrible time wasting.

Turned on computer, checked emails, facebook, newspaper.

Blogged.

Am now thinking about a cup of coffee to help ease me into work.

In fact, I will get said coffee and then come up and WORK.  I am so ashamed.  Sooooo ashamed!  We pay tens of pounds a week so bean can be in childcare so I can work.  Bean was a bit off this morning, I think because he has had enough of childcare and wanted to be at home - not awfully, but a bit and that is enough to set me off.

But at least we are signed up to lovefilm!

x J

ok ok

Today I am getting back on track.  It is a beautiful day and I have quite a spring in my step.  Despite the fact it is SEPTEMBER.  WTF?!

We booked our honeymoon last night :0)  Our first family holiday, and the first ever beach holiday for DB and me!  normally we do something worthy like volunteering in guatemala because vulture tourism makes us feel ill and I work in development so it makes sense.  And we love learning languages (how naff does that sound.  But it's true!)  However, bean will not take kindly to that, nor to the usual bouts of montezumas revenge/delhi belly that we pick up!  So we are off to greece to chill by a beach having paid a ridiculous sum of money to a tour operator.  However, we are within walking distance of the town and ferries to other islands so hope to get some culture too!  I have never been to greece and am mighty looking forward to it.  three weeks to go!  We leave in the afternoon after our chamnpagne lunch which comes after our wedding!

Today I am going to buy a wedding dress (not actually a wedding dress, but a dress for mah weddin') I have seen on tinternet, and then I am going to shut down the distraction that is my laptop and go and sit in the sun and read my chapter then work out where the heck I am going with it.

x J