Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 December 2004 16:41:46
I woke up this morning at some unearthly hour, wide awake, and (as is often the case at stupid o'clock when you're awake but not thinking straight) I managed to get myself a bit worked up. Firstly because I'd dreamt about work - I've always said, and mostly stuck to this, that when I start dreaming about a job it's time to leave. It's one thing occupying my waking thoughts, but when it invades my sleep that's too much. This was the first time I've dreamt about this particular job, and although as I'm planning to leave next year anyway I'm not going to do anything drastic like hand in my notice this week, it has kind of drummed into me (as if I needed it) that it really is time for me to move on in the coming months.
And then I started thinking more about moving on. And I looked at the four walls of my room in the gloom, and I suddenly thought that this house is so familiar, and mine, and putting it on the market is such a scary and unknown thing to do, and leaving all that I'm familiar with and know so well for something that is uncertain and different and makes me feel quite exposed emotionally, that I got myself into a bit of a state. To be honest, I don't think it would be half so bad if I wasn't doing all those things and more by myself. Not that I'm not capable of doing them by myself, I can and will as I always have before, and it will work out like it always does, but I'm just tired of making these huge decisions alone and not having anyone to share the responsibility and the scariness and the unknown-ness of it all. I know I'm just feeling sorry for myself, and I know there are plenty of people around (including people here on the wibsite) with much more serious responsibilities and decisions to make by themselves not just for themselves but also for other dependents, and I know that I'm not really alone because God is with me always etc etc etc, but lying alone in bed in the early hours really didn't help me to find that very comforting. Gah. I don't like feeling scared on my own. I'm excited about the prospect of change and a new direction - but I'm also scared. Really really scared.
I'm also feeling ever so bogged down by my research proposal. I'm finding my background reading really interesting, but I can't get my head round fitting my relatively specialised research idea into the wider context without getting distracted by that context. There are so many potential interesting roads to go down with my topic, and so many different potential ways of researching it, that at the moment I can't see the woods for the trees. I'm going to try to get something reasonably coherent down on paper (after my weeks of random scribblings and throwing round ideas) and then contact the tutor, to see if she can help me identify a way through the fog.
And only 2 days to go till the degree result. Eek. If it's good I'll get a real burst of enthusiasm for it all and probably have a big burst of energy and creativeness. If it's not I'll probably be a bit deflated, which is not really what I need right now. We'll see.
In other news, this afternoon I had my half-day Christmas shopping, and I've managed to get all of the presents I hadn't got so far (i.e. virtually all of them). I'm particularly pleased with the books I bought my oldest godson (who's nearly 8). It's the first two in a series of cartoon/story books about a couple of schoolkids who invent a character called Captain Underpants who comes to life and rescues them from all sorts of strange happenings including mad dinner ladies and talking toilets. And it even included some free pants. One of the books I didn't get featured a page at the end previewing the next book in the series, which basically involves a character called Professor Pippy P Poopypants who is laughed out of every university in the world because of his name, despite being a scientific genius, and what happens when he turns bad after getting laughed at one too many times. I must admit I was laughing my head off at this in the shop, and then suddenly realised the slight cognitive dissonance between sniggering at a character called Professor Pippy P Poopypants and applying to do a PhD. I'm really a bit embarrassed about that - but I bet I wouldn't be the only one laughing at it.