Ouch, My Head

It has been five months since this blog was started to try help me out of the doldrums of writing. The problem is that I’ve done very little writing since I started it. Maybe blogs = diminishing returns for a graduate student. 

I did get the big conference paper polished off, but the problem is that nothing is every really finished. I am still working on it and have decided I should focus on it until Christmas so that it is as good as possible before being published. This sounds productive, but it is also a way to avoid thinking about the larger project. I’ll be happy if the article is great by Christmas, but I’ll wake up in January and realize I have almost seven full chapters to write and that I am months and months behind. Depressing. 

I wish there was a clear answer. What’s more important – publishing or finishing? My girlfriend thinks that one killer publication is the more important goal, and then I can finish off quickly with my ducks lined up. I’d love to have a great article in the works, but I feel strange about possibly staring down my sixth year in this program. 

I was such a sanctimonious little shit when I was in my second and third years. I could never imagine being in my sixth year, still writing, still not finished. Not so fucking funny anymore, is it? Now I reserve all my scorn for those poor saps in their seventh and eight years. How pathetic!

Also, the Canadian election makes me want to kill myself. Is it too much to ask that it appears to be serious and important? Our leaders are the smallest and meanest assholes who ever lived. Laurier and King would roll in their graves. Also, Justin Trudeau should just stop and go back to teaching high school. He is Canada’s Sarah Palin, but nobody can say it because of his last name.