Ho and Hum

Well...  I learnt about endnote.  As much as I can before actually using it on the job.

I ordered birthday cards for my peeps (big weight off my mind).

I did internet shopping - for the first time and it is pretty cool.  I have been really stressed about having to go and do a big shop with Bean in his pushchair as he hates shopping!  And we have no cupboard food, no detergent etc so cannot keep going and spending all my money at the local coop, so a superstore visit is in order.  DB normally does the shopping but not he has a full time job this is not possible as he doesn't get in till gone 6 and it isn't really fair.  Long day for him.  So I thought hang on!  I can do it online!  And I have, and it wasn't more expensive, and it was quicker and will be delivered tomorrow morning.  Hurrah for that.  Not having any food in is such a pain!  Especially with a wean as obviously he has to be fed - can't just get a takeaway lol.

And I have started revising my 'synopsis' and turning it into a proper piece of work.  I honestly think that a combination of needing to be less wordy anyway and my last piece of 'proper' work being for a conference I did about 18 months ago led me to think that I needed to be ultra concise, and it is hard to write that way.  Much easier just to blurt on.  Just trying to write it out as a proper piece of work has felt more natural and like I am actually back to work again.  I know - for the first time since I had the Bean.  Scary isn't it, that was many moons ago.  Anyway, I would say it has taken 'this long' but also say that doing a PhD is always a process of ups and downs and learning about yourself and facing adversity...  and overcoming these challenges and hopefully, hopefully, I am finally on my way.  I would love to have a few thousand words down.  As a 'synopsis' this intro is already 1000 words so with more detail, explanation and thorough referecncing (ug I have been so lazy so far) it should turn into something I can send to my Sup.  Even if it is not strictly for the intro, but ends up being a mix of intro and lit review it is at least writing.  You can't edit nothing.

So I feel bad I haven't worked more, but pleased I have sorted out my little jobs ad got some headspace.  And am feeling happier so can be a better mama.

Am going to ask the childminder if she can start looking after him until 4pm from, well, tomorrow I hope.  I need the extra time and it would be good for Bean I think as I am *rubbish* with him between 3-6 as I just cannot concentrate on him - my mind is on work and how little I got done, I can't cope with his demands for attention and am just not much fun.  He will get good lovin' with the childminder while I get some blinkin work done.  I was going to have to extend the hours in September anyway.

I feel quietly excited.  I would be so happy to get some writing flow going...  To know what was coming next and feel that I could get on with it, rather than constantly wondering what the heck to do (which is very demoralising).

DB and I are going out together tonight for dinner!  No reason but we haven't been out together just the two of us since March.  If then!

Off to get the little dude.

Quietly excited!

x J

Aha!

Arf I am so tired.  My head feels completely fugged.

Today I have to learn how to use endnote.  This is a real disappointment as it is looking all complicated and like it will take all my lovely time today :0(

Am gutted because I had an epiphany with my work yesterday when I realised that I have been working *really* hard over the past, ahem, few months, to write as concisely and unadulterated as possible, trying to get in as much info per sentence...  and then I realised that this isn't a 2,000 word essay it is a PhD thesis!  I am *meant* to write a lot!  In fact, the more the better!  I am very wordy by nature and so have tried to hone my skillz and not blather on over the past few years.  But this *is* a skill to me, and one that I am certain I have lost.  Instead I am writing nonsense when if I wrote a few thousand words instead of trying to write 500 what I am trying to say would make total sense.  It would be coherent and thorough.  And anyway, at this stage any writing is good even if it is blather.  Infact, my Sup doesn't want 500 words, he *wants* thousands of words!  Obviously best not to write in a gazillion words what could be said in three, but really - this is a complicated and loooong piece of work, thereofre it stands to reason that it should be long!  I am so dumb :0(  I think I just got it into my head that I wanted a neat abstract or synopsis to work with, to show my ideas in a tight and sophisticated manner.  In fact, I need to write it all out, to *explain* where the chuff I am coming from so people can understand me.  Then, from this I can whittle it down to an abstract and then the all-important sentence (I heard that in a VIVA you are often asked to describe your thesis in a sentence...).  So there we go.  I was very excited about this as I know what I want to say and can just wibble on about what my thesis is about and this will start to form my introduction.  But instead I need to add references - start doing this thing properly instead of half-assed, and this means gettign to grips with endnote.  How DULL and unrewarding.

x J

eh?

Lordy I don't know what I am doing!

I am in such a funny mood today.  I feel really blue and can't believe that I have a PhD tod o.  Am not feeling up to it at all :0(

I have sort of fallen out with my family.  This is depressing and about something that someone has done to me so I can't even fix it - it's up to them.  So I sit and wait and feel sad. 

The wedding cancellation is continuing though we still have to cancel the caterers and the marquee.  I shall do the marquee in a minute.

DB said a couple of things to me over the weekend that for some reason I have totally blown up into a severe criticism of all I try and do well as a wifey and mother and worker.  This is depressing and am finding it hard to come back from it.  Instead I just want to read my book, eat chocolate and smoke and hide.  And maybe have a wee cry.

Bean was up all last night so I slept in his bed with him but he just kicked and wriggled all night which is *really* irritating.  Being kicked by someone you are trying to help is just so demoralising.  (he doesn't know he is being annoying which means it can't be helped, he just has to fidget and I am in the way!)

I can't go swimming tonight and let off any steam because DB has a meeting.

So I am stuck and feeling blue today.  All stuff that will hopefully have eased by tomorrow.  The worry is compounded by the fact that I am watching the clock tick my precious working time away while I mope and can't get my head to focus.  I think I am just really tired.  Tired from lack of sleep, tired from being stupid me and tired of work.

I am so whiny.

RIGHT what shall I do to salvage the day and get some kind of control back.  I shall cancel the marquee, that is one big job done.  I shall also tackle the jumbled paragraph that I wrote for the new synopsis.  I don't feel that I will understand a single thing.  After I have done that I might go and have another smoke (I gave up yesterday then DB pissed me off and I had to go outside and er, fume... fnar).    Then I expect I shall have to read something!  And understand it and bla bla.

One thing that was interesting and did make me feel a bit better about the PhD is that my friend who came to stay for the weekend was staying in the room I work in and she said that my desk, with all the notes that I have so far for my lit review on it, looked frightening.  So I must be doing some work, and that works frightens people.  So that it frightens me is quite understandable!

Oh and I have a friend who is a proof reader (for science stuff mainly) has said she takes on more arts PhD theses now and would be happy to do mine for mates rates.  She has 10 years experience and is really very good so I shall definitely use her.  She said that she is doing a thesis at the mo which is 90,000 words long and quoted £1000 for that.  Which is great but shit me, that is so much money!  but at the end of the day, it has to be proof read and it would be lovely to hand in something all smart and completely done you know - rather than my half arsed attempt at writing ;0)

laters y'all

x J

arf

I did work yesterday!  Not much in quantity but good quality...  I think.  I have been way off a few times of late, as we know, so am not counting any chickens!

I did work out a sort of flow chart spider diagram thing where I worked out how all my 'buzzwords' or keywords fit together.  All the words that I most definitely have to have in my PhD and how they link together and therefore, create the thesis.  I realised that doing this turned my previous synopsis on its head, literally, as I worked it from the opposite way my thesis seems stronger and more, ahem, scholarly.  Looking at my old synopsis of only three weeks ago it seems weak and childish.  We shall see... Today I aim to revisit that (I wrote it out very badly and in a great hurry yesterday before rushing to get the wean) and neaten it and see as objectively as possible where it might take me.  Is it intelligent?  Is it new knowledge?  Is it remotely interesting?  I also need to consider whether one of my chapters should be removed...  Am not sure. 

I also need to write a letter of complaint to my wedding venue as we tried to cancel with them yesterday and they got Very Angry and want our points in writing so they can counteract them.  It is horrible.  So far cancelling has made a lot of people cry and the whole thing is just crumbling, cumbling around my and DBs nonplussed ears.  I mean, it is only a wedding.  I would look daft in a wedding dress and the whole affair of being 'given' to my husband to keep and then do dancing to a song we don't actually have and bla bla just is so not me.  And we have a *baby* I mean, surely that is more than a wedding?!

Arf.  I don't get it but do love other people's love of weddings!  Just don't fancy a biggun mesel'.  And if I do, can't we just renew our vows and do the whole shebang then? 

x J

halfway there

I have 44,000 words!

Hurray!

I think.

The limit is preferably 80,000 but you can go up to 100,000.  I reckon I have about 37,000 of second draft work.  And of course none of it is worth anything until it makes the final edit - I might need to re-write everything!  (well,m I won't but that is always the worry isn't it?!)

Is great seeing it in one document and getting a feeling for (gulp) how small it really is!  I mean, in one chunk it becomes reduced to a series of chapters that tell a story - no more, no less.  It loses some of its mystique and becomes far, far less intimidating.  It just *is*.

Now, I must write the rest!  Although actually I am going to procrastinate by having a cup of tea, planning what I will do tomorrow, and then it will be time to go and get my wean.  I hope he is ok after being away from me for the first time in yonks!  We are just going to come home and chill :0)

x J

endnote

£70?  Really? 

jeeeeez.

3 weeks later...

And the childminder has my baby and I am back to work!  well trying to be, bvut it is offputting with DB coughing and sneezing his way round the house.

In truth I want him to go so I can nip outside for a cheeky fag.  no, I haven't stopped smoking though I have cut down.  Well, I only smoke two a day tops anyway ;0)  I am dieting though and that is going really well.  Although I should admit I only started yesterday. 

Workwise I have done NOTHING for three weeks.  I have been moving house and settling in and looking after the little bubs full time.  He is very much a toddler now, running hither and thither and does not appreciate being left to it.  Playing quietly at my feet while I do two hours concentrated work is not something that happens in Real Life - I definitely am ordered to join in!  I can read, but I can't actually read without taking notes or it all falls out of my brain and if I take notes Bean wants to draw on them too.  No, not on his *own* piece of paper, don't be silly, most definitely on *my* paper - it is obviously the best paper!  Anyway, time off has been lovely and am back with vengeance and am full of plans.

Plans... 

Today I am buying endnote.  I give in.  My references are starting to make me wake in the night in a cold sweat.  I need to start ordering them and, well, I need somewhere to keep them and where I can conjure them at will.  So bye-bye £50.  I am also *drum roll* collating together all my up-to-date chapters and scribblings into a semblence of the final thesis.  At the mo everything is in seperate chapters but I want to start to see what they look like all together, get the chiapters aligned so I can scroll from one to another and see the signposting (lack of) and references and read it as if it is one.  This is exciting!  Although quite nervewracking as I am very scared to see how naff my finished chapters are, and how little my total word count adds up to...

Personally, I have come clean to important peeps about our non-wedding and generally er, one person is really pleased for us.  Everyone else is really shocked (more conservative friends) or sad (mum).  I don't get it.  We have a baby, we are a family already, why the fuss and money on a big silly wedding I have no time to organise (hold in check more like while suppliers run away ordering all sorts with our money) and my mum has admitted she can't afford?!  Stupid people, come on.  Not to mention the people that can't make or won't be able to make it because they will have newborn babies.  I am surrounded by fecundity this summer, I tell thee.  I also want a baby!

And so this is my other plan:  I am not allowed to think about having another baby until I have practically finished my first proper draft.  This is about christmas time if I apply myself.  This is a good incentive!  Much better than thinking maybe next year I will hand in a vast maniscript or three that at the moment I cannot believe I will ever achieve...  When my Sup has run off and my department has completely changed and my friends have scarpered/finished and my personal confidence is not just on the floor but buried far, far below the earth and smothered in concrete for good measure.  It means that whenever I sit and write I am plodding my way closer to being able to grow my wee family and in the end, sit with a newborn and my toddler and be happy in being a stay at home mommy with the horror that is these final months of the PhD far behind me.  'Cause, you see, my DB has gone and been offered a fabulous full time job - his dream job in fact - and has taken it!  With a tidy salary that means I can stay at home and breed once I have my PhD for a while.  It also means I can take on jobs I *want* rather than jobs I have to have for the money.  This is a very privileged position and one I am very proud of my Boy for creating. 

I have to say, moving house has been the making of us.  We are like normal people again!  In the old house we argued a *lot* and I was desperate - but then we all slept in the same room and downstairs was like one big room we all ate, worked, played and relaxed in.  Not.  Good!

Anyway, I am off to get endnote (how, where) then will be time for a break and then back to make my whole PhD fit together and so I can see clearly where the gaps are (more gaps than writing methinks!).  At least it will make me feel that bit closer to the end.  For now.

x J