I believe that I have 60 days of work left on my thesis. Not 60 calendar days, but 60 eight hour work days until I’m ready to submit. I started out with a big 60 on my wall, and when I’ve worked an eight hour day I can switch it to 59. The catch is that I can’t carry forward half or quarter days. Those are bonuses, but don’t count. Is harder than it first seems.

I almost always need a trick or a system in order to make myself do anything. This is one of a dozen I have devised. But the end goal of this system is a big finish when I submit my (hopefully) 330 pages to my supervisor. I figure this will acutally take about 90 calendar days. Which is actually just getting in under the wire of where I want to be.

Errrgh. Not much else to report. Blog is lacking, I know. Hopefully thesis will be the beneficiary.

At least for a few hours. Typed out a flurry of rewrites today, only to realize with some horror that I’ll need to also state what they mean within the new boundaries of my argument. Have no clue. Terror, despair, hopelessness.

In a ridiculous regression, have taped photos of Michel Foucault and Karl Marx to my monitor to inspire me. They worked hard, why can’t I? Something along those lines. Foucault’s piercing eyes (there seems to be only about four public domain photos of him, and he looks like a ghoul in all of them) will hunt me down as I procrastinate and surf.

My new 60 days to completion plan is in effect, and I must say that it is thus far keeping me honest. I can only flip the page to count down a day when I actually do a day of work. So 60 days could take 200 if I don’t get my ass in gear. But at least I’ll know how much progress I am really making.

Am turning myself into commando mode where I tell myself that nothing in the world matters but hard work. All else is chimera. Leisure and fun are for rubes! Michel and Karl soothingly approve.

To accomplish above transition, have purchased giant post-it notes that can accommodate an entire paragraph of scribbling and they are awesome. Only wish post-it wouldn’t persist in producing such terrible hues. Maybe can order custom colours online? Something to check out later. “Unimportant” says Foucault. Agree.

Part of the problem is that you reach a plateau and think it is the summit. And as you sit there feeling satisfied, it finally dawns that there is further to go, more mountain to climb. This realization is devastating! It catapults me into depression and robs me of weeks of productivity because I just can’t fathom the idea of starting the struggle again.

But there is no solution but to set sights on the next stop and start on my way. I think I’ve had a week to mourn the fact that I’m not in the homeward stretch. There is such a long way to go and I just couldn’t face it for a while.

Post-doc applications are nearly complete, nothing now to do but what on the largess of the Canada Council to flow in my direction. Cross fingers.

As things lurch forward, I am trying desperately to keep my head down and make steady progress. I actually AM making progress, but it just doesn’t feel like it.

Coming off a brutal week where I didn’t do much of anything. Everyone needs a breather, right?

Now am forced to confront new horror of applying for jobs. Is hell! I have applied for one already that I will never get, and am almost finished on post-doc applications. Of course I’m so delusional that everything I apply for I secretly believe I will win and so I live my life in a state of prolonged disappointment.

The dissertation needs to go forward rapidly in the next 30 days. It needs to get longer by about 30 pages, and it also needs to become much cleaner and easier to read. I think I can do both. What else do I have to do!?

Will return here more often as I am trying to enforce an all-other-internet embargo on myself. Surfing has increased to a fightful extent and I need to get back on track.

In political news, even I don’t care about what’s happening in Canadian politics right now. The American situation is more troubling, but I don’t have the intellectual vigour to follow the damn health care debate. I’m having enough trouble with my own issues!

In the past three months things have started to go surprisingly well. I am motoring along on my chapters and have now submitted two to my supervisor. He is relaxing at his cottage this weekend and supposedly giving them deep consideration. He even suggested a real live phone call next week. If I thought he had read the chapters already this would terrify me, but he’s probably just trying to avoid having to type his comments.

In the middle of all this cheery progress I have been forced to stop working and look at my post-doctoral future. Do I have one? Who knows. I’m writing an application to study a whole new subject (of course logically built on my vast understanding and research) that will carry me through the next two years. Slowly putting each piece into place so that I can save my career. One of the hardest things about all of this is putting your future into the hands of a shadowy body of experts. Can only hope they see things my way and dispense the largess of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in my direction. It has happened before, and they say lightening always strikes the same spot in academe. Who knows.

Here’s to another several months in my windowless room. Getting paid to do it would make all the difference.

I just looked at my long neglected blog to realize it has been a year since I started it. Have I done a year’s worth of graduate work in this time? Difficult to tell.

I did get married and go to Disneyland. But I think my supervisor only feels contempt for these things. Can I blame him?

I need to get my shit together and start to write. A chapter a day. Or faster. Any slower and I risk turning into the biggest fucking loser I know. Ha ha! I’m just kidding, I already occupy this position.

My goal is now to finish by Christmas so my wife can take me to her Christmas party without being humiliated by the suggestion that she is my sugar mama (she is.) But I don’t need some fucking yuppie lawyers telling me that.

And so, back to work.

The election is thankfully over though the afterglow remains. No we can wait to see what “change” really means. Something better, I hope. I have no cynicism in me for Barack Obama like some of the leftys I know. Or maybe I have just lost some of my energy for it after eight years of disgust over the Bush administration.  

In the aftermath, I am left feeling small and isolated as I return to the prospect of my work without the warm comfort of being incessantly connected to the happenings of the political world. My own work seems small and insignificant in comparison. I wonder if Obama campaign staffers are going through depression right now too? 

I wouldn’t call what I am feeing depression. I am just feeling burdened by my own shortcomings. It is year five, I’m far behind, and I seem to have little fire in my belly to forge ahead. Only the thought of finishing is positive, the thought of being able to move on to something else. But on the days of my worst malaise this motivation is seldom enough. 

I feel like I need three months of solid work and concentration, but my life has changed so much that it also seems impossible to find such focus. There is so much else to do and I sort of long for the days when I lived in my college town and could be at my office for twelve hours a day without anything falling apart as I did it. Being in a couple is great, but your responsibility load goes way up and sometimes it can make me feel harried. 

And then there is the constant need to maintain my own health, or the guilt if I don’t. I had my first big CT scan last week and I sat at the hospital thinking “this is funny, I certainly don’t feel like a cancer patient.” But I don’t want to forget that this is what I’m facing either because it needs some degree of vigilance. So I go to the gym five days a week, juice my vegetables, go to the health-food store constantly. But it all takes time and a concentration that eats up focus that should be on my thesis. Everyone has told me to slow down, worry less, take things at a different pace. But the thing this misses is that I’m fucking tired of being a student and going slower doesn’t make that any better. 

Quite a lot of complaining for one day. Will soon need to find a way to actually motivate myself and move ahead decisively. My article is nearing completion for submission to the American journal I was targeting when I went to the conference in Chicago. So this is one positive thing. Five months ago this outcome seemed impossible but success is nearly upon me. I just need to cross the finish line without falling over.

The Canadian polling day is upon us. It has really been one of the ugliest campaigns ever and it can mostly be attributed to the fact that Stephen Harper is a fucking asshole. Everybody knows this, nobody is happy about the fact that he will win (except other assholes.) 

I think what is happening is that Canada is entering its own version of the American culture war with Harper leading the brigade. He’s tried his best to use wedge issue politics he learned by studying the Republican playbook of Karl Rove. In some ways it has backfired on him, robbing him of his chance for a majority and revealing him for the petty, spiteful and hateful individual that he really is. 

Harper would do well to look south and see the end result of this type of political division. It seems that McCain is the last old soldier of this type of politics, desperately sowing fear and mistrust in his pathetic attempt to become president. We are seeing it in the anger that is stirred up at McCain/Palin rallies. People are fucking pissed! And why? They can’t stand the thought of somebody different than them coming to power. They don’t want a leader who doesn’t pander to their most base fears and suspicions. I really think this could lead to real violence in the coming weeks. McCain supporters are yelling “kill him” and “sit down boy” when Obama’s name is invoked at these hate-mongering political rallies. Does McCain really want this legacy attached to his name? He will go down like Thurmond Strom, regarded as a sad relic of the past. 

The only comfort for me is that Harper will get there too. The similarities between Harper and Diefenbaker are striking. Petty, vain personalities, deeply insecure, paranoid and spiteful. The type of Prime Minister for whom we might name a boat, but never erect a statue (except in downtown Calgary.) 

Anyways, go out and vote. Try to vanquish the old culture warriors wherever they might be.