(strictly speaking)…

Actually, the 3.96 GPA is meaningless either way – it just sometimes makes me happy to know I had it. It’s certainly not going to translate into gainful employment or anything.

Still bringin’ up the rear

Thanks for the kind comments on the last post. It’s mostly just venting on my part…I feel overwhelmed (so what’s new?) and buried under a mountain of things I need to get done.

I suppose I should be grateful, though, that I’m starting to get bored with messing around online. I can waste whole days doing nothing but staring blankly into the computer screen while small children raise themselves…not good for them, not good for me. But Facebook and Twitter only get you so far (I use them because they’re one of the only ways I get contact with the outside world), and everything else is kinda depressing, truth be told.

Still spinning my wheels on the current chapter, which is late, and which is making the next chapter even later, which will probably itself result in being put on academic probation. So much for the 3.96 GPA – it’s kind of meaningless if I can’t actually get the final thing done. I’m getting there, but since a lot of it involves reading/translating Japanese, it just gets very slow sometimes.

But, in the overall scheme of things, I can’t really complain. So far – knock on wood – H1N1 hasn’t found us (unless the plague we all had about a month ago was it…but I never had a fever, although the kids did, so I’m thinking it wasn’t) and I might even get them fully vaccinated (round 2) before it does…we’ll see.

Aaaaagh…another pointless post.

Motivation, or lack thereof

The dissertation work continues in fits and starts.  All the books (Write Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day!, etc.) say that the key is consistent, daily work – even just a little.  I believe this – I really do.  It’s just that there are days when the almost-2 yo is screaming and screaming and screaming, and the 4 yo is bugging and whining and bugging and whining, and the laundry is piling up higher and higher and higher, and the food…is not being prepared.

And motivation, such as it is, just up and leaves the building.

Today is one of those days.  I’m rapidly running out of time to meet my latest pushed-off deadline, and I’m fairly certain my advisor is reaching the limits of her patience with me.  There’s actually some progress on the conceptual side of things, but I hit a snag about two weeks ago (which happened to coincide with having to scramble to get the kids their (round 1) H1N1 vaccinations and deal with a serious car issue (misdiagnosed fuel line leak)), and I’m having a hard time getting back up to speed.  Or, you know, getting back up.

In the meantime, I’m still letting the TV raise the kids, still wondering how to fill all the interminable hours with them, wondering what to do with myself and my life…

I have good days – ones when I am bursting with have some energy and can actually accomplish things I set out to do – but these dull, darkish ones seem to be in the majority, even now.