Why is it never easy?!

Arf, doing a PhD takes so LONG!

I started re-reading what I have already for my chapter, reading some of my fieldwork journals and just getting to grips with how I want the chapter to go... and it turns out the writing I have so far is *ok* but not great; I need to re-read the source material to tighten it up. Great, that will take weeks. BUT, I also need to FIND this source material! I have the references, and are all reports from the internet. This is fine, but where are the notes I would have written on these 40 page+ reports?! I would have definitely written notes! And I have none. So do I re-read and re-write the notes, or stare around my room trying to work out where the hell the notes are?! I am loathe to start from scratch :0( It took me aaaaages before, and I remember by the end I was *sick* of reading these reports. They are so long I have to read them on my comp too which means they can't be annotated easily but I have to write out quotes etc in longhand. UG! There are LOADS of notes missing. Practically a whole chapter's worth. Which means they *must* be somewhere. But where? I have moved them into storage and into a new house since I last saw them :0( . Starting again would be a blessing in the way that I could do with getting to grips with this all from scratch, with my new knowledge and am just better at my job so the notes would also be better. (I wasn't very critical of the reports before, as they were 'local' so I assumed they were benign and less political than international reporting. This is naive though.) BUT, but, but. The reports are sooooooo long, detailed and boring!

I am going to go and have a think. SO yes, I have lost the notes (idiot), but the fact I need them anyway to read again from the start is quite a shocker - though how I didn't anticipate this I don't know. Then I have more reading to do from sources I found in India, and then I have my research to feed in. All of a sudden, instead of being a quick recap of a chapter it is turning into having a write a full chapter from scratch.

Now, I can either do this, or I can not. I really, really want to have the discussion chapter done before going on maternity leave. If I do this chapter in detail then there is no way I will have time for both. But, then again, how can I write a good discussion chapter without, er, the meat for the discussion fully researched?!

D'oh. I have to do this properly don't I? Pain in the BUM!

Where are those notes?!!

Right, am off for a think about how to do this.

I am so tired!

x J