Frustration

I've had most of the day for writing (even though I have plenty of other work that needs to get done) and I selfishly have designated today a writing day.

But I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.

Part of it is the material - I'm having trouble seeing where I want each section to go and how that fits into the overall goals of the chapter. I don't think there's an actual problem with the chapter - I wrote some really good stuff on Thursday. I just am stuck on this particular part of it. And no, there isn't really another part that I can write instead because I have to figure this part out in order to know how to approach the other sections.

Part of it is because this is the toughest chapter to write. I already blogged about how unusual this chapter is, and how I thought it was really doing some neat stuff no one else has really done.

Problem is, if no one else has really done anything like this before, I don't have any models to follow, and mapping out the argument is a bit tougher because I've never tried to create an argument like this.

But part of the problem is this lingering doubt. I just can't shake it. All the self-talk in the world isn't making it go away. Hearing other people tell me I can do it is really, really lovely, and I believe them. I do. But even that isn't helping. Don't get me wrong, I know I can do this. I know I will do this. I just am not moving forward right now, and that's frustrating.

What's happened is that I've gotten over my doubts about this dissertation. I think it's a damn worthy dissertation, and I think once it's all done it's worthy of a PhD. But now I'm losing faith about the process after that.

The deteriorating job market isn't helping my enthusiasm. I'm not looking at postings and I'm not going out to look for things, but I'm hearing from my blogroll and elsewhere that searches are being cancelled and positions pulled. And then the more I hear about the general economy going down the tubes, the more I wonder if next year will be any better. And then I wonder what the whole point of this whole thing is if I get this dissertation finished and there's nothing out there to apply for anyway. And then I think "I'm not getting any younger" which doesn't help matters. I realize a lot of this has nothing to do with my scholarship, but I'm having difficulty compartmentalizing it.

So it all feels just a bit pointless. No. Not pointless. I'm enjoying the research I'm doing, and even when I have a bad writing day like today, I'm enjoying doing the writing. Self-indulgent might be a better word. I'm doing something I like with what looks like little hope of it paying off, short of giving me another expensive piece of paper to hang on the wall. A bit depressing when you think of it that way.

Despite my best efforts at organizing

I cannot find a book I know I own.

I know I own it, because it's listed on Library Thing, and I only very rarely lend books out. So I know it's in my house... somewhere.

Problem is, I can't find it.

That probably means I own too many books, or don't have a good system for organizing them. I've been thinking I could include Library Thing tags that indicate what shelf the book is on, but the thing is, the location of my books changes periodically, depending on what I'm working on at the time.

Most of my books are kept in the spare room/library. That's always the first place to look, and everything is arranged by genre or topic, and then alphabetically. So, for example, all the literary theory is together, all the medieval lit, and then all the novels are arranged by author in alphabetical order. So I usually only spend a moment locating a given text.

There is also a bookshelf in the living room, but those books don't change much. I've also got a shelf on my night-table filled with books, but those are almost always fiction and usually consist of books I want to read soon.

Then there's the office/study. There are a few shelves here, and these are the books that most often change, because I bring things up from the spare room as I need them for whatever project I'm working on. Because of this, they tend to only be loosely arranged by genre or topic, so I have to spend a little time looking through these shelves. Luckily they're small enough it doesn't take long.

Thing is, there's this book I really want to check out for the chapter I'm writing right now, but I've been through my office shelves twice and can't find it. I purchased it specifically for the dissertation, so it should be here. But it's not.

I know it's in my house. I just need to figure out where! Then maybe I need a new system...

RBOC: end of semester version

Because I've started about 20 blog posts in my head over the last week, none of which feel like a full post, I give you bullets instead...

• Students are starting to panic - big time - and I'm finding myself fairly unsympathetic. I feel like I've given them every opportunity to get with the program, and some of them just haven't.
• I've been doing the voiceover work for one of our elearning projects. It's been an interesting learning experience about my own "reading voice" and it is very strange to hear your own voice as you review every file to make sure it's complete.
• We've decided that there must be an unwritten rule that at every Science Cafe, someone has to ask a question about pseudoscience (last night's was about crystals and auras at a neurology lecture). Amusing, and I have to admire the speakers' ability not to laugh at the questions.
• I've heard back on one of those things I was waiting on - whoppee!
• I hate daylight savings. Especially when it means the sun is down before school is out. How does this save us money??
• I went to a bar with "dueling pianos" over the weekend. I've been to piano bars before. But this was something very, very different. And a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The audience interaction was fun and entertaining, especially the two stagettes...

Told you none of it was terribly interesting.

For me, hell will be a waiting room

I am waiting.

I am waiting to hear back from my advisor about meeting.

I am waiting to hear from my other committee members about submitted chapters.

I am waiting to receive files for my online work so I can finish one project.

I am waiting to hear back about a conference paper and article proposal. (I have all but given up waiting on the other proposal that's floating around out there)

I am waiting to find out what office I will be in at work since the woman whose desk I'm sitting at returns next semester.

And yet, despite all this waiting, I still have so many other tasks that have yet to be accomplished. The problem with this situation, is that I'm not a terribly patient person. I don't like waiting. Especially when it's something that I'm anxious about, and I've been especially anxious about my scholarly output in the last few months. So I wait, but it would be a mistake to say I wait patiently.

Inspired by PhD Mamas... who speak so much more eloquently about their waiting than I.

When Worlds Collide

Organizers and non-organizers (free spirits?) should never mix. It just seems to breed irritation on both sides.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm an organizer. I like knowing how my day will unfold. I don't think I'm obsessive. I can go on a vacation and wake up every morning without a plan. But when I need to be working i.e. not on vacation, I like to know what my day will hold. Not every little detail. But I like knowing what blocks of time are committed to interactions with other people, which ones I can spend in front of the computer, which ones are dedicated to teaching, or meetings, or other things that I need to attend.

Right now, with my online work, part of what I need to do is to produce content with an outside contractor. I get along very well with this contractor... when we meet.

Planning ahead to meet is really, really tough though. It may have something to do with our different industries. Education usually has semesters, deadlines, objectives, goals etc. That's me. Suits me very nicely. I actually like having my semester all planned out ahead of time, and my schedules very rarely change because I'm comfortable with planning months ahead.

Creative types, like the contractor, tend to operate more fluidly, working when the urge hits. Thing is, it's hard to plan for urges to hit, right? So in collaborating, I don't know at the beginning of a day whether we'll collaborate that day. And creative types tend to be night owls. So I can't even call to find out if we can collaborate that day until the afternoon.

Drives me nuts.

The problem is really only becoming apparent during this project, because it's so huge that we need to collaborate over multiple sessions. Before, we'd always met over one or two sessions at the most, which made it easier to plan (or at least minimized the non-planning to small snippets that were manageable).

We'll be shopping for a new contractor for the next project I think, particularly if it's a large project again. But right now? We need at least another two collaboration sessions. *sigh* I have absolutely no idea when they'll take place. A horrendous way to work as far as I'm concerned.

There's a saying...

... what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.


And I suppose in a lot of cases, the saying is right on. But why is it those things that don't kill you have to do so much damage before they make you stronger? Hmmm?

I suspect this setback will make me stronger. I know already it's made me feel simultaneously less and more reliant on my committee members. In a weird way, both seem like a good thing. But this second guessing myself all the time is really starting to get tiring. I've resumed working - which is good - but I'm not moving forward.

You'll notice the dissertation meter really hasn't moved in the last month.

Part of that is because I'm doing a lot of revision - which is good because I like what I'm changing. But part of it is because I'm stuck on the new material. I feel like the writing strategy I've been employing for the chapters to date must be flawed. Which means I need a new strategy. I just am not finding it.

I'm trying to begin a new chapter, but I'm afraid to commit words to paper. I feel like if I put something down that isn't right, I'll get stuck in a bad writing mode and produce a bad chapter that will have to be entirely re-written anyway. It's making me freeze up when I try to write. I've never had that problem before.

I've had tough writing patches - who hasn't? But I've always been able to devise a work-around that gets me back to the writing, whether that's a change in pace, format, attention, audience, you name it. Nothing's working now.

As you can tell by this post, I'm scattered and random in my thinking about this chapter.

Worse, my attitude toward it is changing too. At first, I thought this chapter would be interesting, a revolutionary way of looking at the material. At weaker moments, I had grandiose ideas about its revolutionary nature, but in my more sober moments, I could still see how it would be interesting - the kind of thing that crossed genres and techniques in a really productive and interesting way. I was cautious about putting it into the prospectus, because I felt like it would be a challenge and would propose some rather unusual things, but I worked through what I thought was a reasonable argument for why it should be undertaken and felt confident proposing it as a chapter.

And I must have had something there because the committee approved the prospectus after all, right?

Thing is, now all I can see is disaster. Instead of a novel approach to genre and content, it now just feels silly. As much as I'm trying not to let my committee's lack of faith in me affect me, it is, and now I don't know if I can pull off this chapter.

I know what you're thinking. If I'm stuck in contemplating this chapter, why not write a different chapter instead? And that would be good advice. I have given myself that advice as well. Thing is, the other chapter that needs to be written, the one that I've been looking forward to, thinking it was the culmination and glory of the whole dissertation - yeah, that one - I'm starting to think looks like crap too.

Yeah.

Depressing thought, isn't it?

I have faith that this will all work out and I'll get my writing feet back under me. But right now, it's not happening. I'll continue to struggle, and it will make me stronger, but I sure do wish I could just struggle under the writing, not the writing AND the self-doubt.

Today my office mate shared this newspaper article with me.

All I can say?

holy spimoni.

I hate to sound old, but things have most definitely changed.

The one that gets me?

Percentage of students agreeing with the statement:

A professor should be willing to meet with me at a time that works best for me, even if inconvenient for the professor - 11.2%

I hate Mondays

I usually don't hate Mondays. I'm not really one of those people who is so in love with the weekend (or so in hate with their workplace) that they hate the thought of the weekend ending.

But this term I've grown to dislike Mondays. Today, that dislike is threatening to escalate.

See, Mondays I teach at two places and have to travel during rush hour (through downtown) to get from one to the other. So the traveling isn't fun.

The first class is okay, but it's always hard to not feel resentment at having to go all the way to school just for a two hour class - somehow it's always easier if there are other things that need to get done as well. The second class is starting to get rough. Students are starting to grade grub and there is one who is starting to challenge me every class - not on the material - that I could handle - but on my pedagogy, which annoys me to no end. Slapping hir down has not seemed to stem the tide, and I'm getting frustrated at the continued attempt. Now that the midterm is over, I suspect the challenging will stop, or morph, so I'll be interested to see what tonight brings.

And today I have to track down someone for the online work who is notoriously bad for responding to messages. I may have to actually squeeze in a stop at his house and bang on his door between classes to get the answer I want. So unprofessional - ugh!

Part of the problem is that I don't teach till the afternoon, so in the morning, I've got between 3 and 4 hours to do something. It's not a full day, and it's not an hour here or there, so it feels hard to slot something into it. I feel like the work I do either needs one hour time slots, or full days. I know, I know. I could just slot three - one hour tasks in, right? But that feels so terribly schizophrenic as I jump from one topic to another, it makes it hard to really concentrate.

Mostly I dislike Mondays because there's a lot of work crammed into it, but it also involves a lot of paper pushing, driving, and generally dealing with a schedule that is less than exciting.

At least tonight after class, I am meeting a friend for a drink. It's what will get me through the day, even if it's not for another twelve hours!

Organizing and getting back on track

Okay, so November is the month of NaNoWriMo and InaDWriMo. As regular readers might know, I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2006 and was successful in reaching the goal!

I've missed the boat on starting InaDWriMo (International Dissertation Writing Month) since I was feeling to disoriented by the no-longer-on-the-job-market episode. I have re-started work, so that's good. And I'm to the point where I can listen to other people's job searches with only the mildest of regrets.

But I still am avoiding thinking about it too much.

So. I've got lots to do. Especially since now I need to recover the time spent on the false job-start. And my online work has gotten the green light on two projects that have been sitting on the back burner for months and now need to be completed ASAP. So in the spirit of InaDWriMo, I'm setting the following (dissertation and non-dissertation) goals for November:

• complete edits on chapter 2 based on October feedback
• evaluate and re-vise online content sample for academic client
• re-insert edited writing sample back into chapter 3 and finish edits
• draft theory and _Satanic Verses_ sections of chapter 4
• finish audio recording, pdfs, and graphic generation of content for online trade client
• expand theory section of the paper I was invited to submit to (respectable) journal after receiving positive feedback during last conference presentation
• draft content for online social service client so that it's ready for audio, video, and graphics production in December

Given that it's already the 7th and I still have lots of teaching to do this month, the list might be unrealistic. But I do have most of my prep complete, and none of the big marking assignments will come in until the end of the term, so I'm hoping that the teaching won't feel overwhelming.

It's a big list. I know. I may not make it through all of it. But I'm hoping to get very close. I'll report my progress as the month unfolds.

Thanks!

A big thanks to everyone who commented, called or sent a message over the last week. Although I'm still a bit bruised by the affair, I think I've at least got to the point where I'm able to let it go and focus on the future instead. I'm still a bit shaken, but I'm hopeful that it will pass and I will get my feet under me again.

So thanks everyone! Your notes and messages really helped me put the whole episode in perspective and got me back on track. You know who you are, and I just want you to know what wonderful things I think of you!

Recovering

I did manage to re-start writing on the dissertation over the weekend. It's still hard going because I feel like I'm second guessing myself constantly, but I'm producing words, and right now, at least that's a first step.

Wish me luck salvaging this thing in time to get back on track!