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