Deadlines

All year long, I tell myself ‘I want to be finished by (December/ March/ June/[insert month at random]). I set myself doable deadlines (with the help of friends and lovers who are good at seeing how long a thing will take). I miss all the  deadlines; a chapter which was meant to be finished on a Tuesday has not even been opened by that day, because another chapter took far longer than I’d hoped. I’m not surprised by this, nor am I even upset. It is as though my brain has given up before we have even started, and told me ‘You know, you are not going to make this deadline, so I may as well not even bother’. This week – absolute final deadline – ‘you know, you can’t miss this deadline, this is it’ (to quote the Lover) – and I have missed it. Today and tomorrow I am supposed to be working on chapter 5; I am on chapter 3.  I am running out of days. The knowledge that I am running out of days slows me down on those few days still available to me.

Somewhere along the line, a long time ago, I made commitments to friends and family for this time of year (important weddings and birthdays, mainly). I never thought, not once in a million years, that I would still be doing this PhD now; nor did I imagine that there would still be quite so much to do (because all these chapters make no sense and need rewriting, and inspiration has only just condescended to arrive). So I try to keep these commitments to family and friends, for what are, after all, momentous and important occasions in their lives. Seeing as I am supposed to be sharing in their joy, I try to be ‘joyous’; I go in there, nicely dressed and smiling, and I try and act carefree, I laugh and talk and thank them for inviting me, I tell them that it actually helps me, this, having a few days off my PhD, it’s the best thing in the world for me, I’m so thankful to them for dragging me away. I big this up so that they don’t feel bad. (because if I am spending all that time away from my PhD, we might as well all enjoy ourselves, non?...). And I find myself almost believing it. Maybe it is true, and maybe one day I will look back and will be grateful that I went and enjoyed these happy times, and that I did not make all these people upset for the sake of having a few days’ extra time to work on my mediocre PhD (days which, knowing me, I would probably waste anyway, on making coffee after coffee, and fantasizing about cleaning the floor).

When I actually look at how many ‘long weekends’ I have pledged away, and how many mid-week escapades have also been planned, the number of working days available to me shrinks drastically. And my mind goes into panic mode, wondering how on earth I am going to produce a draft of Chapter 3 at all, given that it still needs rethinking, and that ‘thinking’ has been replaced by ‘panic’. (I can’t think when there’s packing and planning and booking trains to do. I can’t do it.) And so the few days that I’ve actually got also slip by, somehow, without a great deal of work being done. Every time I almost get going I have to interrupt myself again, close the computer, and go off to another rendezvous, memories of what would have been bits of my chapter fading away in my head.

I tell myself that it’s good for me, these weekends away, it’s good because it’s ‘restorative’, I will end up reenergized and truly ‘re-created’ (this is a Procrastination Bible sort of word). But of course this only works if you actually manage to work on the other days, and get stuff done. I read somewhere that Kafka used to fantasize, in letters to his lover, about the possibility of dwelling in a cave, with meals delivered to its door, but otherwise being left alone in there for weeks on end. What fantastic, uninterrupted writing he would then produce!... And boy, do I understand what he was feeling!... Indeed, a cave of one’s own would be nice. A room of one’s own is not enough.

What happens, though, if you set yourself deadlines, and you want to make them, but you just keep missing them? what happens when you get to a point when there is no more time to push deadlines further and further forward? What do I do then? Will I have to spend stupid sleepless nights, again, on producing rubbish that I am too tired to actually make good? … What is the point of all this work, if that's all it will come down to in the end?... Will this ridiculousness ever stop?...

Will Cloud Nine ever finish her PhD?... Join us next week for our next episode of ‘I Hate My PhD’.

Autonomy

On the self-help book front: I have read a beautiful quote about 'having autonomy' today. it went something like this: in any job you do, you need to have Autonomy. 

what is autonomy? - I hear you thinking.

not having autonomy means, for example, saying things like: 'my supervisor/ teacher/ boss is going to like/ not like this report/ this work/ this chapter'; 'my family approve/ don't approve of what I do'; 'I can't stand to do things that don't interest me'. 

if you have autonomy, instead you say things like: I like/ don't like how well I wrote this chapter; if my family doesn't like my job that's their problem; everything i don't already know interests me. 

(the 'autonomy' line i copied word for word from the self-help book; the 'non-autonomy' bit I paraphrased freestyle. i guess this is because i am a lot better at saying non-autonomous propaganda to myself. just practice, i guess...)

alarming conclusion: I have not a shred of autonomy. I must start practising it.

Here is what the author suggests (note: i am unlikely to actually do this, but I will engrave it upon my brain and try and at least think about doing it...)

'Keep a notebook. Call it 'Autonomy Notes'. [...] On the left-hand pages write down things you felt and did that were not autonomous: 'I got hurt when my boss didn't appreciate my work', or 'I got resentful and deliberately dragged my heels on the filing job'. On all the right-hand pages, collect thoughts that will help you remember what autonomy is, like 'Knowledge belongs to me' and 'My life is bigger than any job', and so on. (Try looking up quotes in a book of aphorisms from your local bookstore.)

Now, each time you write about a nonautonomous feeling on the left-hand page, search for an encouraging thought [...] for the right-hand side.

[...] Autonomy means you're in business for yourself, no matter who you're working for. 

(from Barbara Sher, 'I could do anything if I only knew what it was')

I Wanted to be a Writer

i bumped into my Lover in the kitchen, as i went in for a glass of water. he had likewise just gone in there and I found him rattling pans in a grumpy way.

'baby, [the subject of your thesis] is so BORING', complained the Lover. 'next time, please pick something more interesting.'  (I had asked him to proofread a chapter and 'make suggestions'.)

i made a sympathetic/ grateful face and i said 'i know. i'm getting bored of it too.'

now: the subject on which i am writing my thesis is not boring. not to everyone's taste, maybe, but my thesis is (or could be) actually quite racy. academics sound excited by it at conferences. non-academics (normal people) get very interested when i start telling the story. you can even make it sound plausible, like it's something the world might actually want to read and be interested in, and like it's something you can tell someone about at a dinner party (and still get invited back). there seems to be only one thing left to conclude, and it ain't a happy conclusion: by writing it all down, by assembling it on a page as best i can, i am making it boring. i am; i am to blame.

i had rewritten this chapter to try and take on board my supervisors' suggestions: you let the quotations do the talking too much; don't hide behind the quotes, let your own voice come through more; analyze, problematize; etc etc etc. basically they were saying: you have written a load of stuff and it tells us... not a whole lot. they were sitting there with me, during the January progress review, staring at my 40 pages of printed writing; writing which had cost me a lot of effort, which arose out of many struggles in the library but also many happy flights of inspiration, which cost me sleepless nights and many frustrations and tears, but which, now completed, correctly footnoted and presented, and with a conclusion to boot, sat there on the table, dead, impenetrable; as soon as my supervisors pointed out all its flaws, i too could see: these 40-odd pages don't say a whole lot. i had a go at rewriting/ cutting-and-pasting this chapter into shape, and the verdict from the lover is in. and unfortunately it isn't a good one. 

there's a big difference between the conception of a work, and its execution. most writers would probably agree that by the time you are finally limping your way towards the end, the finished product looks nothing like what it was supposed to. but in my case... surely this is a bit more extreme. to be limping towards the end marker, and people still don't actually understand what i'm banging on about in this thesis... 

i feel like i am taking beautiful books, concepts and ideas, and picking them up and attempting to put them in my thesis, but somehow i end up just walling them in, like a builder does, with a shovel and some concrete, so that, in the end, no one can actually see them. i have words, and i know what all my words mean, but then i put them together in such a way that they lose all meaning. my sentence construction is thick and impenetrable. my supervisor writes things like 'heavy ending' next to my paragraphs. ['could it be that she means 'cool'? as in, 'wow, man, that's, like, HEAVY!' - asked the Lover once, cheering me up.) indeed, i have reason to believe that she thinks I am not a native speaker of English. 'well, obviously it's probably a bit more difficult for YOU', she once said consolingly as we were sitting together and attempting to repair a particularly shitty piece of writing. (i did not contradict her, i was not upset. if i have to, i'll use this weapon in my viva. my foreign-sounding name has rarely worked in my favour; well, it might at least start now.) seriously though, it did make me smile: my writing is so bad that i don't even sound 'english'.

the sad thing is, i do have ideas, and beautiful thoughts do come to me, which, when i tell people about them, light up the room and make academics look up with shining faces, and laugh and dance with joy.* but then i go away and try and translate them into words, and I get into a tangle with all the footnotes you have to do ('has anyone else ever written about this before?...' 'i can't use this word, because that word now means something else, because this theorist has used it in his...' 'should I acknowledge X's work on Z?' - and the dreaded one: 'THIS IS TOO DESCRIPTIVE'. i can't tell you how much i have struggled with this: either it's too anecdotal and descriptive and 'fun' and not 'PhD-ey' enough, or it turns into a pile of bollocks. In my attempts to make my thoughts into a PhD, I murder their beautiful essence, and the words, as though tortured, stand empty and blank and staring. 

and every time I write something, the life gets squeezed out of me too. because there's only so many times you can watch intelligent people stare blankly at the work you have painstakingly produced, and there's only so many times you can take the words 'what is it that you want to say?' before .... well, before you don't want to, anymore.

thought of the day: i'm a bad writer. i write stuff, it bores me, i work my ass off but not really, i present my offering to a world which does not like it and turns away. i wonder if this is how a bad mother feels.

* (that last sentence clause: ) not really.

Keep Calm...

Why I hate my PhD (again)

When people told me, back in March, that I should ‘start shutting down the PhD’, ‘stop adding things’ and ‘ignoring new avenues of research’, ‘making it smaller instead of bigger’ – I’m not sure I really took that advice on board, let alone understood it. That’s what the problem was, I think: I didn’t get that advice.

There is a difference between making something better, and getting it finished. At some point you have to stop trying to make it better, in the sense that you have to stop trying to come up with something better than what you’ve already got; instead you should spread all your chapters out on the floor, and start tarting up what you have – including cutting things out, binning incomplete references instead of following them up, taking out footnotes instead of beefing them up. Just get rid of it, says the official advice.

I think when I heard ‘shut it down’, I read ‘oh yes, precisely, that’s what I need to do. Shut it down. But of course I just have to look up this reference still, and check everything that’s been written on this, and…’

I have been thinking that i really want a draft of PhD finished by next week (mini family crisis demands my presence for a few days). My PhD friend suggests: treat this like a take-home exam. set the day it's due and treat it like an exam script (quite a long one). Imagine you've been given what you have already and the task is to make it as good as possible by a certain minute of a certain hour of a certain day. Take-home exam.

This afternoon, feeling reasonably pleased with myself, i took my laptop to my favourite quiet pub and tried to find the latest, most up-to-date version of chapter 2 to work on. i was even quite excited, thinking 'i might get it finished today' (i'm a bit deluded, i know.) Yet no recently updated version was forthcoming. i searched and searched my hard drive; all i could find was some old drafts with supervisors' comments (not incorporated) dating back to December, and a 2000-word document into which i had apparently begun pasting a corrected version. i can only conclude that i have started my revisions of chapter 2, stalled, been called away by the threat of the next impending deadline, and never got around to finishing that task. come to think of it, none of my other chapters are finished either.

just for once - never mind the therapy, the happiness books, the self-help literature; never mind all their good work, let's undo it all in one fell swoop - i allowed myself to feel as unhappy as i wanted to. and so now here i am, grumpy and tired, have had a bit of a cry, and have chapter 2 (the printed version from the spring, with my cryptic corrections written on it, arrows and hieroglyphics going off in all directions) before me, waiting for me to reacquaint myself with it. i promise myself that next time i am doing a huge and impossible task, and i want to quit, i shall not turn for advice to friends and lovers, all of whom say 'no don't quit! you can do it/ it's only for one more year!' - and then go off and spend their evenings playing games on their smartphones. in the meantime, i sit here, alone in this messy room, which is filled to the rafters with PAPER, wading through piles of mess, vacillating constantly between self-imposed Zen calm, and then occasional periods of wild and utter despair. 

...I guess i'll just get back to work then.

Cutting and Sticking

I have rediscovered a surprisingly useful primary-school-level form of play: cutting and sticking.

This is for those times when you have handed in  draft of your Introduction, or whatever, and your supervisor says: OK, good, but you need to change XYZ, you need to put your research questions a LOT earlier, you need to rethink this bit... (so basically: you need to make lots of changes to the structure. Your heart sinks at the thought of injuring the already-written paragraphs; you know very well that, to make your research questions fit in earlier, you will have to change things around. You procrastinate and don't want to do it.)

Print your introduction, or chapter, or article, or whatever it is that you can no longer stand to look at (go to 'print', then 'layout', then select 'four pages per sheet', so it's really teeny and doesn't take up loads of space). Get some A4 paper from your endless supply of scrap paper (those 1001 old drafts under your desk) and stick two bits together. This will be your background. 

Get some tape (prefferably artists' masking tape - comes off easily, so you can re-arrange things) and some scissors - and start cutting and sticking paragraphs! 

This works for me beautifully because: it stops me getting fixated on the wording of some footnote or other; it gets me to look at paragraphs as finished entities and move them around, without getting obsessed with their phrasing, etc; and it's easy to flip through pages, stand back, spot things and realise where they could go, what goes with what, etc. This means that I have saved entire paragraphs from being endlessly rewritten (and thereby escaped the curse of eternal revisions...). It's also a lovely break from the computer. And then you just hop on the computer later and search for the relevant paragraphs in the document and arrange them in order - a nice mechanical task now that you have a poster-size version of your 'Introduction' on hand to follow! 

I have been dreading rereading and tweaking the chapters, because I knew I was liable to drown in details; I think this will help. 

It's also just fun to do some cutting and sticking for a change. Dust down those old-school skills and enjoy working with a different bit of the brain.

Summer days

Long, long days, long days with early starts, days filled with hours and minutes and light and warmth, hours all of which go by without anything ever being achieved. The long sessions at the computer, trying to force my eyes down and bring my mind back to an article full of long words and convoluted, BORING sentences, so I can write about it in my ‘Introduction’ (and the mind keeps wandering off hopelessly). The long intervals away from the computer, wandering around the apartment unable to remember the fact that the only reason you went to the living room was to fetch your computer keyboard to help you write; you were not there to wander round looking at things on the shelves, nor were you, under any circumstances, supposed to be watering plants or wiping away at the crusty surface of the table.

The slow suffering. I want to get on with it, but my mind screams with resistance.

The envious, sidelong glances at the sink half-full of dishes; oh, how enticing they look right now. God, I could wash dishes all day long. The temptation to scrub the kitchen floor. The almost irresistible attraction of the fridge that needs defrosting. I sweep up the crumbs off the floor half-heartedly, pretending I'm not really there.

The temptation to just sack it off, and go outside into the world and just spend the afternoon at a swimming pool. The steeling of the will and the deciding not to. The regret, afterwards: I haven’t been productive anyway, so might as well have gone out/ gone to relax in a pub garden/ sit by the pool/ gone for a walk/ gone to the shops/ ANYTHING…

Sometimes there is the odd bit of unprecedented joy, such as when the man from Sainsbury’s arrives, giving you the excuse to a) put on a shirt, b) talk nicely to a human being and be charming, and c) drop work and arrange tins of beans in the kitchen cupboard.

There are positive sides to my day, too, you know. The possibility of discarding clothes whenever it gets a bit hot. (how will I cope in an office one day, where presumably I won’t be allowed to just get my top off  every time it’s a bit hot outside?... finding seasonal work as a life model, or life guard, might have to be the solution.) The possibility of eating biscuits, or having naps, every time one is tired, or just fancies a break.

But I don’t want naps. I don’t want treats. I just want to FINISH THIS, and then get the hell out of here. I want a holiday. I bet I won’t get one at this rate, though. I bet I’ll be stuck here in front of this computer screen and working on this dismal PhD project until the cows come home. And when the cows do come home/ my final deadline passes, I will need a job. I can’t live off my savings, supplemented with a bit of teaching here and there, forever. I hate this. I hate these days of half-arsed concentration, of boredom, of never quite getting around to doing enough, of not really being productive and therefore not feeling like I should be allowed to stop. I WANT TO WORK FROM NINE TIL TWO and then get out of here and DO OTHER THINGS. Why do I seem to keep sabotaging this wonderful plan?... why?...

Too many posts today (three in one day, that’s too many), I think this means one thing: I CAN’T CONCENTRATE ANYMORE.