Guilt

Today I went into uni rather than work (this has been planned for a while, using up some annual leave). I had a good chat with a fellow PhD writer-upper, who reminded me (this was a rehash of a regular conversation we had, but I’d not seen her for a few months) how the PhD process seems to be as infused with guilt as any religion. However much work you do, you’re convinced you haven’t done enough. However much work you do, everyone else seems to have done more. However interesting and original your research is, it’s contrived and unoriginal compared with everyone else. “Good enough” is never good enough. No wonder it’s stressful.

In other, utterly unrelated news, after only a few days off the chocolate and alcohol I have so many zits I look horrific! If you see someone driving round Glasgow tomorrow with a paper bag over their head, you’ll know who it is.

This week I shall mostly be …

* marking OU essays, and
* writing a thesis chapter, and
* working full time, while
* trying not to cough up any more of my lungs (a fine image for a professional health promoter, no?).

No wonder I’m knackered.

But, excitingly, today HD and I booked our first proper holiday since our honeymoon almost 2 years ago. We are off adventuring in February, I can’t wait!

Balance

I’m a week and a half into my new job, and I’m terrified about getting behind on my thesis. I’m not sure how to make more time for it – my concern is really that I can’t give it much quality time. Even though my hours at work are pretty good and I’m home at a reasonably early time, I’m finding I do need a bit of “vegging out time” in order to wind down and get any of the emotion from the day out of my system (and dealing with people in their raw, everyday lives is very emotional, I’d forgotten just how much). I had planned on coming home and doing an hour or so thesis work before cooking/eating, but I’m struggling a bit with that. Partly because of the need to veg out for a bit first, and partly because I’m being really really good at not eating between meals or snacking on junk while I’m at work, but this means that I come home really really hungry so I’m having to cook earlier than I had planned. And once I’ve eaten, the last thing I want to do is fire up the old brain cells. I’m not really sure how to balance these demands on my time and on my brain and on my emotions.

I’m also missing the intellectual stimulation of university. Today as I drove around I spotted the spire of the university’s main building in the distance, and felt a little twinge of, well, not sadness exactly, but just a feeling of missing out a bit. The distance has been good for me, it (along with my current job) has given me a lot of clarity about where I think I want to go with life and career (such as it is/will be – I’ll never be the ultra-ambitious type). But I feel like I’m losing my touch very quickly, and that’s a bit scary. I have a couple of small things to do (an abstract for a conference talk I’m giving next summer, and updating my biographical details for the book anthology I’ll hopefully be part of) as well as my current thesis chapter, and they both feel like the intellectual equivalent of climbing Mount Everest (especially the abstract – you’d think after all the talks I’ve given I’d be fine with writing a mere 200 words, but they’re nearly as hard to write as the full paper!). I think I’m going to give them a go now, and then dig out someone else’s thesis (in a sort-of-similar vein to mine) to remind myself what I’m aspiring to. (I know that last sentence has terrible grammar, but I’m tired).

Good day, bad day

Good: my thesis extension was granted, with no conditions. Hooray!

Bad: after yesterday’s close encounter of the 8-legged kind (discussed at great length on my facebook profile – basically I got up, was having a wee, turned my head and saw an ENORMOUS spider in the sink), today there was one (similar size) in my office. That’s never happened before. I was just about to leave to go home anyway, and it scuttled across the floor, so I have left it there and will have to brace myself to dare to open the door on Monday morning (where no doubt it will have either extensively reproduced and there’ll be a million of them in there, or it will have covered everything in a webby cocoon. Or with any luck will have found its way into somebody else’s office). The reason I was about to leave, earlier than usual, was another evil headache. I’m getting fed up of this now. I’m seriously thinking about buying an eye patch, as it’s nearly always (like, 95% of the time) on the same side of my head, just over and all round my left eye) and if I close the eye it’s so much more bearable, but keeping one eye open and one eye closed takes surprisingly large amounts of concentration, I’ve discovered. And then my friend sent me a photo by text, and it has completely buggered up my phone, so I now can’t send or receive texts or access my inbox, as it keeps going straight to the MMS template box instead expecting me to send pictures, AND I keep getting messages saying the memory is full, even though I’ve deleted tons of things as it’s far too complicated anyway and I just want another crappy Nokia half-brick as they do all I want and more and I know where I am with them. Needless to say I had a little cry at the bus-stop, it all just got a bit much

But – we have a shipmeet tomorrow (four of us have had birthdays ending in -0 this year, making a total of 150, so we are celebrating our 150th which has a nice pleasing ring to it – we won’t discuss who is the most ancient of this select band) (*weep*) so it will be fab to see people again. And hopefully the horse pills will have knocked the headache on the head (pun unintended) by then.

HD starts his new temp job on Monday. So is leaving here on Sunday, and we’ll be weekends-only for a while. Having very mixed feelings about that – happy he’ll have work, happy he’ll have money, happy he won’t have to deal with the Jobseekers’ Allowance lot for a while. Unhappy he’ll be a 5 hour drive away and only here for a couple of days a week, mildly unhappy that I’ll have to do a lot more cooking (!), unhappy that I’ll have to deal with any other 8 legged intruders by myself, but mostly unhappy that he’ll not be here. Sigh – just desperately wanting a decent employer (anywhere) to notice just what an asset he’d be and give him a full-time permanent job so we can settle at last (and I can have a good excuse to not be a health visitor for any longer than I have to – not that I am any closer to knowing when I start, never mind when I can stop!).

More frustrations

So now NVivo is on my laptop, but it keeps closing of its own accord before I can start working with it. I think there must be something in my laptop settings, as I’m having no problems with it at work, and never did on the laptop either before until I recently had to reinstall Windows. I could just leave it all for work, but the whole point of having it here was so that I could be productive but not have to be chained to my desk. Grrrrrr. And bah for that matter.

I can’t be doing with this. Sorry for the whinge, but I’m really cheesed off. [please don't anyone point out that HD is techie, that wouldn't be helpful right now, as I don't want to treat him like my own personal tech support, plus it's software he doesn't know so I can't just take him for granted that he'll fix it] I just want to do a bit of not-particularly-demanding work, so I can do the demanding stuff in my office during the day, but it’s just not happening. V. fed up right now.

Dreams

The other night I dreamt that I was so desperate to finish my chapter that I started to copy and paste large chunks of Tractor Girl’s blog and prayed fervently that my supervisors wouldn’t notice.

I think I need to get this chapter out of my system and start something different

In other news, HD has a job interview tomorrow morning, here in the city. It’s not a great job, but it will do. All prayers, candles, good vibes, etc appreciated.

The Exorcist

Some friends already know this, but anyway: a bit of a laptop disaster over the weekend when, just as I was about to get down to a bit of work on Saturday morning, my laptop decided to open lots of windows. LOTS of windows. As fast as I closed them more seemed to be appearing, it was like it was possessed. Fortunately I have my own personal exorcist, but even Mr Techie HD said “Ooh, I’ve never seen that happen before”, which is a bit concerning. Nothing has been lost (as far as I can tell) and most important things (thesis, photos) are copied elsewhere, but we are looking at copying over what we can to another machine and then restoring factory settings and hopefully the evilz will have gone by then. If not then we will take it to someone who knows what they’re doing – HD could take it to bits, but as he himself said, when he does that he usually finds bits left over when he’s put it back together again. So yesterday involved copious handwriting of the CCD (current chapter of doom) and no playing on the internet which was a pain but funnily enough I got loads done (strange, that). I haven’t finished the chapter, but my supervisors were fine with me typing up what I’ve done so far and sending that to them today so we have something to talk about in supervision, and I’ll go back to the chapter next week. For the rest of this week I shall mostly be editing my (hopeful, if they are happy with my changes) book chapter as the deadline for that is next Monday.

After the laptop possession incident, we ran away to eastern Scotland (there be dragons) on Saturday for Derf’s manse-warming barbecue. I am now suffering an acute case of house-envy (especially garden-envy).

In other news, I’m wondering if my office window is near a wasps’ nest. Have had to eject several today (although I suppose I could have just ejected one particularly persistent and stupid one several times, as once I got cross and killed it rather than help it fly away I haven’t been bothered by any others).

Online applications and other minor irritants

I do apologise that this blog is a bit whingey – I guess I’m just going through a phase where there’s quite a lot to whinge about!

Today I completed another online job application form. I did one a few weeks ago (for the job I didn’t get shortlisted for) which I found very frustrating, especially the education section where every last O’level ended up having to be picked from a drop-down menu, and it felt like it would have been quicker to sit all of the exams again. Maybe that’s why I was so peeved at not being shortlisted, having spent what felt like hours of my life ploughing through the form. Anyway. Today’s is for a temp job, 6 months full-time but with the potential to be part-time possibly, for a place that’s sort of part of the uni and sort of separate (without giving too much away). It’s a job that I’d really enjoy – doing research, in my broad area of interest, but mainly doing the fun bits of research without the hassle of applying for funding and all that, so it would be a good thing to do whilst finishing my writing up, and would be good experience of working in a field that is related to what I do but isn’t area studies (which I’m finding is a bit restricting when I’m looking for non-area studies work) which will be good for future more senior/serious applications. But the FORM! Argh! Again it was the education bit that particularly wound me up. Rather than have a page for each educational establishment, it was a page for each qualification. Which is fine for a place where I got a degree, but for my school, where I got 3 A’levels and 9 O’levels it would have been so much better to have only had to put the name of the school, place, and dates of starting and leaving once, and then just added each individual exam result. Instead I had to fill out all of those details 12 times, I was getting a bit sweary by the end of it I can tell you. And then as if that wasn’t bad enough, the degrees were part of a drop-down menu, and although they had “undergraduate degree” as a category, they didn’t have “masters degree”, but did have MA and MBA. So, my Masters is an MSc, and I ended up putting it under “other” (which looks really great, not) – if I’d been applying in England I might have put MA, but here in Scotland where undergraduate degrees are 4 years not 3, you get awarded an MA as an undergraduate degree so if I’d put MA they might think I meant an undergraduate rather than a postgraduate qualification. And having whinged about the O’levels, they didn’t have O’level as a category so I had to put “GCSE” and I made sure that I wrote “O’level” in the description because I was being pedantic. This is so not good for my blood pressure!

Yesterday I encountered further frustrations, first in the form of the Benefits Office, who wrote to me randomly over the weekend (having told HD already that he probably wasn’t entitled to this particular benefit) to ask me for a load of information I’d already given them over a month ago. The guy I was talking to agreed that the letter wasn’t clear and asked me to clarify the income stuff. I started talking about my PhD stipend, he asked for more detail and I started saying “Well, it’s £X per month” and he said “No, I mean, what actually is a stipend?” Argh! And especially as we’ve been told we’re probably not entitled anyway, why don’t they just go away and be numpties to someone else?!

As well as that, I also had to deal with the university payroll office, who had got a decimal point in the wrong place and paid me for 15 hours of tutoring instead of the 1.5 hours I had claimed, meaning that I now owe them nearly £200. Argh!

It’s not all bad though. HD has an interview down south at the end of the week, and another one at the beginning of next week, and in between we are going to see friends for the weekend and have a walk around some nice countryside. So maybe the end of all the numptiness will be round the next corner (how many times have I thought that this year?!).

Brief update

I’ve just written a very long entry about my interview and the ins and outs of it all, but decided that there was such a lot of soul-searching and gut-spilling that I didn’t really want public that I have kept it but made it a for-my-eyes-only thing, and I’m afraid I’m just going to write a shorter entry here for general consumption.

So, in short: I had an interview yesterday for a health visiting job in an exciting place (am a bit tired and emotional so photos will have to happen another time). I loved the place, but also am more sure now that I don’t want to spend my life as a health visitor, plus the particular place is quite remote and there wouldn’t be that many opportunities for HD, or many for me other than as a health visitor. So I found myself hoping they didn’t offer me the job, so I wouldn’t have to make a decision! Unfortunately, they didn’t play along and went and offered me the job, much to my surprise (having been out of practice for so long and having not ever lived or worked in that type of environment, and having fluffed a couple of the interview questions). A pretty sleepless and troubled night followed, and once I got home today and talked things over with HD I made the decision to turn down the job offer. I really hope I’ve done the right thing. After months of HD trying and neither of us having anything else on the horizon, turning down the job looks on paper like a reckless thing to do. But I had hardly slept for a week worrying about it, and ultimately, amazing though the location was (and it really really was), there were too many cons along with the pros for me to be entirely happy to accept it.

Our current situation is basically as it was. I have a job application at the university, which I will hopefully hear about soon. There are some health visiting jobs in Glasgow I will apply for as a stop-gap (as although I don’t want to do that long-term, it will be fine as something to tide us over if we don’t also have to worry about a big move, getting the Stately Pile in a fit state to rent out, etc). One (preferably both) of us needs something really quite soon though.

Thanks to Auntie Doris, who has just been on the receiving end of an enormous whingeing screed of streams of consciousness from me, the rest of you don’t need to read me whining and moaning. She does have her uses, you know!

What else to tell you? The temperature in my office got up to 30° today, so I gave up and went to the gym instead – I thought if I’m getting sweaty and bad-tempered I may as well be sweaty and bad-tempered whilst actually achieving something, as I’m not convinced my brain ever got out of 1st gear. While I was there I watched the final set of the Williams-Dementieva Wimbledon semi-final (hooray for machines with TV), what a fantastic match that was. I’m glad I’d finished by the second semi though (Williams-Safina) which sounded from the scoreline like it was so one-sided as to be utterly uncompetitive. I predict a Williams winner

I’m having another thesis-related existential crisis (it seems to happen every chapter), though having managed to draw a couple of spider diagrams today I have (for now) decided I know what my thesis is about. This is today though, tomorrow is an entirely different day and I may well have forgotten the point of it by then. I’m getting quite frustrated with it – the stuff I’m writing for journals etc feels like it’s so much better than the stuff I’m writing for the thesis. It’ll be good when it’s all over! By the way, if anyone is in a praying/good vibes/candle-lighting/etc mood, next week a decision will be made about whether or not I can have an extension. I’m working on the assumption that it shouldn’t be a problem (according to my department) but until I hear for sure I will remain a bit anxious about it. If I don’t get it I am, to put it mildly, screwed. If I do get it, then I will feel much less stressed about taking time out to apply for jobs (I’ve got a few applications which need to be in in the next week or so).

Ooh, good (ish) news – I have an interview in a couple of weeks for one of the Open Uni courses I applied to tutor on. As I understand it it’s pretty competitive, but it would be good experience if I could get it. I’ve also (at last) completed my nursing study hours (did I tell you that already, I can’t remember. Actually I think I probably did) so am just waiting for my friend to send the reference back and then I can see about getting some nursing work. Unfortunately I discovered the other day that the nurse bank for Greater Glasgow isn’t recruiting for community nurses at all, but just for certain acute specialities (that I don’t have any experience in, or any desire to work in), which got me a bit despondent, but I’m thinking instead about applying to NHS24 (the Scotland equivalent of NHS Direct south of the border – it’s a nurse-led phone service). Not that I’m desperate to do that either, but it could be something to keep me going for a while till something more suitable turns up.

Tomorrow we are treating ourselves, as what with poorly cars and writers’ block and no jobs etc we could do with a treat, and are going to the Dr Who exhibition at the Kelvingrove Museum. Can’t wait! (will take photos, unsurprisingly).