Ouch, My Head

It’s not the paragraphs that are difficult to get down on paper, it’s the transition sentences between them. I suppose this hints at the fact that I don’t know exactly where I’m going if I can’t seem to get from one section to the next. 

This is the type of honest thing I would like to say to my supervisor (if we ever talked.) I’d say “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Help me.” But I think he hates weakness and would only sort of kick my carcass with the end of his boot before stepping over me. “Keep plugging!” He would say hopelessly as he walked away. 

Why is it that I am convinced that I know exactly what I’m doing until I actually sit down and write it? Then it ends up in a pile of rubble on the floor of my word document and I am left feeling hopeless. 

I can’t believe this article is due in two months. And I can’t believe I am traveling internationally to tell people what I have discovered. 

I keep telling myself that I am coming up on a period where I will need to work myself to death just to keep up. It is not quite here, but I can feel it looming. I think it will officially start when I start to teach and realize I need to bring 40 pages of teachable material with me twice a week. 

I’ll have to sleep a lot less when this happens. Right now I am getting a solid eight hours a night and it is fantastic. I feel great, but it can’t last. 

When things were rough earlier in the year my girlfriend would open a can of Amp Energy drink at around 9:45 to power us through until our customary 2:30 a.m. bedtime. It’s like drinking sweetened batter acid, but it really keeps you up. All the sugar will make you sort of bloated looking, but its possibly a fair trade off. 

Some students in my girlfriend’s law class are taking their children’s ritalin on the sly so they can hone in on their work and really get something accomplished. It sounds like a  great idea, but getting a prescription for an adult is hard and taking actual speed would probably kill me. 

Also, a good diet and lots of exercise supposedly work wonders. Psshhhfff. 

My girlfriend knows I am having a rough time and she cooked me pure comfort food to help me through it. She does a simulated fried chicken with cutlets pan fried and it is delicious. It went with mashed potatoes, corn and gravy. She’s a genius. She should be writing a dissertation about how to be the best girlfriend in the world. 

It all left me feeling guilty for being such a mope and determined to turn things around. I took stock on my calendar after dinner and realized how badly things are piling up. Am feeling mid-to-severe panic, but I am telling myself this is not an excuse to spiral into bed and deny it is happening. Or is it? 

This is the time of the afternoon that I begin to touch bottom. I have digested all the news and editorial comment that is interesting to me. Other bloggers have stopped updating. Nothing on the internet is calling to me and I am finally faced with my work and what to do with it. 

Today I have written about 400 words on my conference paper, but they are really re-writes of earlier versions and I am no further ahead. Deep despair starts to set in and I grasp at the optimistic possibility that today is a goner and I can re-energize and recharge tomorrow. 

But this is the entire problem. If I let myself I’ll repeat this patter infinitely until I am so far behind that only a superhuman and emotionally crippling effort will save me. This becomes so horrifying that it consumes my entire life, my girlfriend’s life, and probably our pets too. 

This isn’t writers block because I have plenty of material to work with. I’m just feeling too crippled to do the work. Browsing h-net for jobs is always inspirational in a reserve way, so I’ll probably do that for a while. I always look optimistically to the top of the hour. I’ll only waste time until 3:00 and then the ideas will start flowing! Jesus. 

This is how my mind works and why I am destined to destroy myself. I was on campus this morning, actually making a little bit of progress (I had written 400 words.) Instead of pushing forward, it occurred to me that it would be a great idea if I got up, drove home, and continued working there. 

Of course, my apartment is a disaster. My home office is a hole with no windows and is full of boxes and books and general oppressiveness. Somehow while I was on campus the image of my house was warm, cozy and possibly highlighted by nice candles or inspiring music. None of this is real. 

Then I ate a disgusting lunch made up of whatever leftover lettuce I had combined with a can of horribly flavoured tuna: hot pepper and garlic. Last time I ate it it made me smell awful the next time I exercised as the disgusting flavours drained from my pores. I don’t know why I revisited this brutal meal. 

And now I have wasted an hour and wish I was back on campus where it was at least bright and not full of dirty laundry. 

If writing a blog about your troubles writing actually worked then all bloggers would probably be Booker winners by now. I know this isn’t the case. I have an ex-girlfriend who writes a pathetic blog about how badly she wants to be a writer and about writing exercizes (she spells it like that?) that she would like to do to stimulate her creativity. Finally she had a baby and now she can post pictures of it and write meaningfully about being a mother. Blogs are great for this. 

I’m a humanities grad student at a Canadian university. I’m entering year five and starting to panic that the work I have done in the past three years since my comprehensive exams is all shit and that I’ll be brutally humiliated when I finally go to my defense. Although, a defense is a distant dream at this point. I am currently bogged down in a draft of the first three chapters that my supervisor hated. Since reading them he has largely withdrawn all affectionate camaraderie that we built up over the years that I showed a lot of promise. Other students tell me this is in my head, but I tell them it doesn’t matter if it is. 

Right now I don’t have to write the dissertation, I just need to complete two conference papers I have stupidly agreed to deliver this summer. Both are based on the failed chapter drafts which makes revising and condensing them an absolutely brutal task. But I have been a student my entire twenties and pretty good at pulling things from the fire just in time to avoid disaster. Each crisis feels different though – they all feel like the final and most humiliating defeat is just around the corner. I’m about to be revealed for a total fraud. I knew this day was coming. 

But. To push it back by a few more months, I’ll try to get everything done in time. Meanwhile, my home life is starting to show cracks from the mental strain. Being a grad student, you feed on the little successes – like five dollar top-ups on the gas tank of your first car. At least this is how I feel. For now, just waiting for the next sighting of a gas station and keeping my eye on the “empty” line.