Thursday, 10 May 2012

haha, I am not alone :)

http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/the-valley-of-shit/

this is the best article I have read in ages!  Thanks B for drawing it to my attention.  It is so apt it made me cry (doesn't take much these days).

I am in the valley of shit.  I do think I must be fortunate because I think I have only been here, properly, once (now)...  I have been pissed off before but this PhD depression is profound and, as the post says, stinks, is oppressive, no-one else gets it because they must have faith in me and just think I should just get it finished - how bad can it be?

However, the solution proposed is to just keep on working.  But I can't do this because I have literally 3 weeks to finish my lit review, write my methodology and do my intro and conclusion.  If I had time I would work, I would have worked today, but because the weight of the deadlines is on my shoulders, bitching in my ear, all I can do is hide and procrastinate and feel very frightened.  Every minute that ticks by is anothe rminute closer to an impossible deadline.  I will never make it.

And yet, if I had more time would I use it - or waste it?  I don't want to tell Uni or my Sup about my inability to work because I want it to come to nought... and am embarrassed by it all - by the whining, the lack of positivity, the lack of ability and the lack of gumption.  I don't know if I had time whether I would gently get back into work and up to speed, or whether I would just work brilliantly in a couple of days anyway.  Am I just wallowing and being lazy or am I a bit depressed, seeing what has happened.  I don't want more time, I want it finished.

I think maybe I have to get to an appropriate level of stress and then it will galvanise me.  Only problem is all the work and notes around me all seem like gobbledegook!  like I wrote it all in a state of mania and hyper-alertness and none of it makes any actual sense.  It is like it belongs to a different me.

I shall have to think this evening about whether to go to the GP tomorrow and see what they say.  I expect they will tell me to come home and get on with my life and stop procrastinating.  That would be embarrassing.  I just want two weeks grace to get back into work gently and without the extreme pressure of writing 1,000 excellent (no time to edit) words a day, but my last chapter shows that the pressure does not good work create :(

I wish I was strong and capable!  I wish I just got on with things like a crazy robot person!  DB is fed up of my lack of productivity so this is really the only place I feel I can be myself.  A whiny loser git person.

This isn't like me!  I am whiny yes, but largely positive?  I try and get on, usually?  Fecking doldrums.

Valley of shit indeed.

x J

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