hmpf

Here's the skinny: the past three and a half weeks have been mostly exhausting and somewhat demoralising. This is not really my employer's fault. It's mostly my frelling complexes. Anyway, not terribly much fun has been had by me, so far - and what's a lot worse: I don't think I've made a terribly good impression, so far. I have two months to correct that. Hopefully.

Aside from work (which, in itself, could actually be kind of fun, if it weren't for my constant "OMG I'm so crap!!!11" complexes), I'm finding it difficult to live so far outside the city. I live so far out I actually have to take the bus to do my grocery shopping, and the shops close early, so on most days I have to hurry home after work without any detours for sightseeing in this theoretically exciting big city, to do my daily bit of shopping. (I have to go shopping frequently because I really can't store huge amounts of food here, due to lack of space, and also, fresh fruit and veggies and bread really don't store all that well for more than a couple of days. So I'm constantly running out of things, which means frequent trips to the supermarket.) Enjoying the city is further made difficult by 1.) the fact that we work very long hours, so there isn't many hours of daylight left after work, 2.) the weather has been nearly constantly very crappy since I arrived, and 3.) I really have to pick up my pace on getting out job applications, which means: at least four out of five evenings, I spend at the laptop, working on cover letters and the like. So, essentially, I have very, very little spare time that really deserves the name. Most days it's like today: I finish my work for the day just before midnight (or, often, even later), and after that hardly feel capable of doing anything but go to bed. (Of course, today "work" only means household work and job applications. I don't work weekends. Well, I do work tomorrow, but that's voluntary, and an exception.) - Anyway: the take-home lesson of *this* part of the experience is: I shouldn't ever move to the suburbs. I'm not made for that lifestyle. I kinda knew that before, but now I have confirmation.

So. What else is there to write about? John Crowley's novel "Little, Big" really is as good as they say. Got it for my birthday and read it over the last three weeks on the train to work and before going to sleep at night, and enjoyed it immensely. Now, I'm reading Paul Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl", which is also good but so far hasn't captured me as much as "Little, Big" did. I think "Little, Big" may be a book I'll put on my favourites shelf, next to my bed (well, technically, the shelf is part of my bed. And I've been meaning to post about it here, and about what's on it. Maybe when I'm back home.)

Oh, and to get to where I'll work tomorrow, I'll have to walk through this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alter_Elbtunnel?uselang=de. Kinda excited about that!

what's next?

I think nature's trying to kill me, this week.

Okay, the earthquake earlier this week wasn't so dangerous. But the heat's hell on my circulation. I get dizzy all the time... The fact that I have crazy amounts of work to do doesn't help. Not that it's really possible to work. I'm permanently sticky with sweat all over (except for those parts of my body where the sweat just *streams* like miniature waterfalls. Typing-while-sticky is *not* fun. My fingers keep sticking to the frelling keyboard. It's frelling annoying. I can handle streaming sweat - it's the stickiness I can't take. I'm seriously thinking about putting wet towels in the fridge to cool them so I can then use them to periodically cool my hands!)

I'd love to live in a flat that *didn't* tend to equalise with the ambient temperature so quickly...

Hey: one more reason to stop Global Warming: save Hmpf from circulatory collapse!

Gah. And I can't take the evening off from writing cover letters because these two applications absolutely have to be finished by tomorrow night. And it's not like I'll have tons of time for cover letters tomorrow.

(Even though I'm not even very confident if it's any use to send in an application so late that it only just scrapes by before the deadline. I never seem to manage any earlier, though.)

if I can't even bring myself to open the frelling document before it's three a.m. and I have exhausted every other possibility of entertainment? I sort of sit at the computer all day, with the thesis folder open in the task bar as if I'm *just* about to open a file, and read the Engrish blog, and Cute Overload, and boingboing, and I Can Has Cheezburger, and half a dozen eco sites, and basically every timewaster site there is on the net. I'm not even writing fic, or spamming Mikey with comments anymore, which was at least a sort-of-useful form of procrastination... I'm really just killing time - when time is the last thing I can afford to lose.

Needless to say, my sleep rhythm is completely out of whack again, too. And I'm totally panicking at the thought of next week, which is a week where I have four hour shifts instead of my usual two hours, and those four hour shifts involve a type of work that does not really allow you to write 'on the side', as the two hour shifts usually do. Basically, I'll be at work all day (or what constitutes 'all day' if your regular day is only five hours long because your sleep pattern is fucked up) and only get home at about ten in the evening, probably somewhat exhausted, and then I'll have to make dinner and stuff, and *then*, at eleven in the evening or so, I will be able to start working. If I'm still able to work then, that is.

Actually, the more I consider this, the more sense it makes to just give in to my bizarre sleep rhythm and redefine three p.m. as 'morning,' at least for the next week, and possibly for the rest of the writing phase. That way, I'd get to go to work about two hours after waking up next week, and would have the entire night 'day' left for working on my thesis. I could go to sleep at, say, eight a.m. or so? One thing that really fucks me up at the moment is trying to fight my sick sleep pattern all the time. See, normally - I mean, 'normally' for a value of 'normal' that includes my current severe sleep problem - I'd probably go to bed after posting this - i.e. at a quarter to four a.m. or so. And then I'd spend several hours in bed trying to go to sleep - probably until around eight or so in the morning. And then I'd sleep until my alarm clock would wake me up for the first time - and because I'm constantly fighting my sleep rhythm, that would probably be at eleven or so, after only three hours of sleep. So of course I'd go to sleep again after the alarm rang. And probably sleep until the early afternoon.

I may as well give up on the pretense of being able to sleep before eight if I go to bed by four, and just *work* till eight; actually get a few pages of writing done.

Oh fuck. I forgot that I actually have to work early on Tuesday and Thursday. *sigh* There goes that plan.

Though I suppose I could go to sleep *after* work on those days.

That would be at about half past eleven in the morning. So... if I get up at half past four in the afternoon to go to work, that'd still be about five hours of sleep.

Hey, why don't I just stop sleeping altogether?

*groan*

I can haz normal sleep pattern, plz? I'm not exactly the most efficient person at the best of times, but this? This is just screwing me up in so many ways, and it exacerbates the writer's block-induced inefficiency like nobody's business.

(Filename is now: Frankensteins_thesis.odt, because I've begun patching my various truncated attempts at introductions and whatnot together. So far, it's fifteen pages of fail.)

is that it's still about ten weeks till I have to register for my M.A., after which there will be another six to eight months of writing (hopefully just the six, as I desperately need those extra two months to prepare for exams)... yet I'm already consistently unable to sleep (two weeks and counting, now), and unable to find *any* time for anything except researching etc.

So... if I'm *already* unable to function in so many ways, what is it going to be like in three or, god forbid, six months?

The not sleeping thing is the worst bit, though. I can live on fast food and sandwiches wolfed down at the computer for a year if necessary, but I can't live without sleep.

What I really need (besides sleep) is someone knowledgeable about this stuff (i.e. sf and fantasy and comics studies) to have a long conversation with, to help me clarify my desperately vague muddled ideas. Alas, there is no one who can take that role.

Hungry, tired, exhausted. Not writing the paper I have to present tomorrow, and which should have been finished, oh, a week ago or so. Haven't e-mailed the prof about it, either, which I should have done, really. But what should I have told her? "Uhm, I'm still not finished, sorry!"?

Hopelessly behind on thesis research. Basically, no chance of getting there by February anymore. Which means another term of paying fees, and another half a year to add to my age when I'm finally ready to join the working population.

Depressed about writing (fic, that is). Yeah, writing-based depression is rare with me, but it still happens, occasionally. I think it's all those end-of-year memes I've been seeing in other people's journals, rarely listing less than a dozen of stories written in 2007. It's painful to be reminded repeatedly of my inability to learn faster. You learn writing by writing, and that means you have to write *lots*. But I'm still not able to write as much as I should, if I really want to improve.

And I really do want to improve. But to write as much as I would need to, I'd have to basically have several hours per day to set aside for writing, and I can't do that. Half an hour per evening or so gets me... three words, maybe a sentence on a good day. It's not enough.

The really sad truth is... I don't actually care much about uni, much of the time. I just want to write. Of course, I usually don't - the guilty conscience is efficient enough to stop me from writing. It's not enough to actually motivate me to work properly for uni, though.

Gah.

I need to eat breat with almond cream now. And possibly some chocolate.

Twelve hits for Starving... from the 'gen: dark' recs thread at lifein1973. I wonder how many of those readers liked it. Probably not too many.

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My sleep rhythm is so out of whack it's beyond ridiculous. Tonight (The fact that I'm mixing up "today" and "tonight" says it all, really.)Today I had to work at a quarter to eight in the morning. I hadn't slept. I'd spent all night staring at my frelling Ambrose Bierce paper. So I just went to work without sleep. And when I came back from work, two hours later (I could try to explain the highly irregular shifts to you, but chances are you'd just be confused; heck: I'm confused!) fell into bed and slept until five in the afternoon. Then got pizza, and proceeded to stare at my paper some more. (Interrupted by two hours of Dexter.) Of course, the day and night before weren't any better, either. And considering it's 2 a.m. and I still haven't finished the friggin' paper this one doesn't seem likely to shape up any better, either.

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Writer's block from hell. The paper's now five or six weeks overdue, and about one page and some footnotes from finished. It's been about that far from (or close to) finished for weeks now. It's not difficult, either. It's just... bleh. I don't know. I can't finish it. I sit there staring at the screen and nothing happens. Feeling incredibly stupid. And afraid of my M.A., for which I should be preparing already, if I weren't trying to write that frelling paper.

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Less than three months left before I have to start writing my thesis.

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Dexter rocks. So do fanvids.

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ETA: I've figured out the problem with my paper. It's so fucking pointless. I've never been good at coping with pointlessness.

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ETA: "Frustrated" is a bit of an understatement really. I feel like shit, actually.

I'm actually a really crappy archaeology student. I just have absolutely *no* clue what I'm doing. It's a bit sad to contemplate, really, because a) I'm not *actually* stupid, and b) I'm far too old, and far too advanced in my studies, to change subjects again.

Okay, I said I shouldn't post. Probably true. But I need to vent, because the frustration is killing me. So. I'm reading these texts. I'm supposed to draw information about the beginnings of metalworking in the eneolithic period in certain parts of Slovakia from it. The texts are short, and very dense. *Extremely* dense. The shortest is essentially a list of prehistoric cultures and cultural groups of the period in Slovakia and its adjoining countries. The geographical attribution is... vague. Especially for someone who does not have a very precise idea of Slovakian geography. There are no maps included. Of course, I have a map of Slovakia, but since a lot of the geographical attributions aren't of the kind you're going to find on a normal map, it's not much use. But even if the geography weren't as much of a mystery... Oh, I dunno, I think I'll have to give you an excerpt from my notes, although probably only tryfanstone and a certain Mystery Reader of this journal will be able to appreciate their uselessness. Anyway, here it is:

( Read more... )

So, I sit here with my notes, and I wonder: What the *hell* am I supposed to do with that stuff? In two weeks I'm supposed to *talk* about this to my fellow students, so what am I going to tell them? Is there *anything* valuable in this for them? If I just throw all those names at them - unpronounceable names they've most likely never heard before (neither have I) - they'll fall asleep or at least forget about it in less than five minutes, and I couldn't blame them - I would, too.

So what do I do? Look up every single one of those cultures and groups and whatnot, compile typical inventories, chronology, cultural connections, and drown them in details they'll quite probably never need again - or if they do, won't remember from my talk, because hearing something like that once, in passing, isn't enough *by far*?

What is the fucking use in that?

And what am I supposed to draw from this for *myself*? What do I learn from this? That Slovakian place names are a hazard to your tongue and keyboard? Thanks, but I think I suspected that already...

Whenever I try to work on this damn paper, it feels as if my internal computer is about to crash. Too much information to process, and too little of it seems to be of any use in relation to what I'm supposed to talk about.

Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious. Maybe all the above *actually* isn't relevant, and I was supposed to find something a lot more useful in those texts. Or maybe the above *is* useful and I just lack the archaeologist's eye to see it. Anyway, it's frelling frustrating, and it makes me feel like a total beginner without a clue. I wish actually asking my prof about all this wouldn't make me feel like an idiot. I wish I were back in Birmingham - there, I didn't feel like an idiot when I asked fundamental stuff like that.