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