Day 14: The "groove" escapes me

Every morning I wake up with a sense of dread of what awaits me during the day. Is what I'm doing worth it? Is my sanity worth it? Every day feels like an endless fight with a twelve year old to "shut up, sit down, and do your homework!". This is very frustrating. I have so much self-doubt as I go through this every. single. day. And, no matter what, it doesn't ease up. It's there. Always in the back of my head.

The worst part of this ordeal is my inability to focus. Not because I have attention problems (which I do), but because I am resisting what lays ahead. Every fiber of my being feels like it's resisting the task at hand. This is most unpleasant.

What I'm going through is a little difficult to articulate. What is it that's scaring me so much? What is it that's so painful that I refuse to do it consciously, and especially, subconsciously? Is it the fear of success or the fear of failure? Am I afraid of my sheer brilliance, or my sheer ignorance? The more I know, the less I know. The more I do, the more I feel like I haven't even begone to scratch the surface. And, I have no guidance to do it at all. I feel like I'm completely doing this on my own. That's it. No guidance. No mentorship. Nada.

No wonder I feel so bad about the whole thing! I am worried that my committee will spring something on me at the last second, and I will be unable to address it. Because they're getting my dissertation a month before they're expected to be at my defense, I'm worried that they have so many changes that I did not get the chance to address beforehand. I'm especially worried about one of the committee members. She was supposed to have been helping me all along, and because of various problems, she just withdrew. I don't expect much from her. But, I especially hope she doesn't freak out at the last minute, and ask for insane changes.

Part of this is based on previous experiences. While she hasn't failed anyone that I know of, I know she can be quite brutal in exams. In fact, she can be quite a killer in defenses. At this point, I think (hope?) that all my committee is concerned about is for me to finish. Just finish the darned thing, and get it over with. They all want to move on, and I know they care enough about me to want me to get out of there ASAP! I, then, have to do my part, so they can do theirs.

That's all I need to be focusing on. Doing my part. Whether I do it well or not is not the question. This is not a masterpiece, and I don't expect it to be as such. It just has to be over and done with. Everything else is irrelevant.

All that said, I think there are three things that are going in my head:

1. I have plenty of time to get this done (which I don't, really).
2. I don't want to do it (which in a way, I do).
3. I trust myself too much (or enough to know that I can do it)

The time factor is always elusive for me. I always think I have more time than I really do, which ultimately puts me in a bind, because I leave myself two days to do a monumental. BUT... and this is a HUGE but... I almost always come through... IF I know that the deadline is absolutely firm and non-negotiable. When HS was my drill sargent, her deadlines was absolutely non-negotiable, and I actually really liked that. Because, I didn't have room to budge, and I could not negotiate with myself. But, as she slipped, and her deadlines started slipping, and she began to show signs of frailty, I started being able to negotiate with myself, and that led to just not my being on top of things.

Again, part of this is the fact that I don't feel like there are consequences for not meeting my deadlines. If I don't finish things on time, then I can always do things the next time around. I feel like I can always push and negotiate.

Hmm... Maybe the issue was not only HS's deadlines. But, I was worried that if I did not meet her deadlines, then I would lose her as a mentor. And so, I always wanted to try harder to "please" her. In a way, she was almost like a motherly figure to me. A very stern, yet compassionate, motherly figure to me. That's what I need. I don't feel like I can take that role with myself. I don't have that stern-ness anymore. Even with C, while she tries to be stern, she's really sweet about it, and she's busy all the time that I don't feel all that accountable to her.

So... here are the combinations of what I'm dealing with:

1. I don't feel like I am accountable to anyone (which explains why I'm always so determined to get my teaching/grading done on time).
2. I....

Hmm... I think that's the source of my problems. I don't feel like I'm accountable to anyone. Even the mini-deadlines I set for myself along the way, that I post on boards and everything, really ultimately, don't mean a thing. There are no immediate and tangible consequences for what I'm failing to do.

In other words, if I don't get my teaching prep done on time, I don't have anything to lecture about in class. And that would lead to the students hating me, bad evaluations, my chair finds out, and then I get "disciplined".

But, if I don't write this section NOW... I can always stay up next week and finish it then. And if I don't finish it then, well, then I just won't graduate on time, and is that really bad?

This is a terrible bind to be in. I think I need to raise the stakes somehow. But how? I have no strict deadlines for the mini-tasks, no one to feel accountable to for the mini-tasks. All of that adds up to my not feeling any sense of urgency to get things done.nd so, I go back from where I started.

1. I have plenty of time to get this done (which I don't, really).
2. I don't want to do it (which in a way, I do).
3. I trust myself too much (or enough to know that I can do it)

I had not realized how important and significant this accountability issue was for me. And now that I do, what do I do about it? How can I raise the stakes so I can feel like I'm getting something done? That's what I need to figure out.

I don't know what the best way to tackle this is. I can send C a daily email about what I'm doing, but I don't think that'll go over very well, especially since she's traveling, and might not be able to access her emails, or would want to wade through her emails.

I can send her a link to an accountability page, and have her see it whenever she likes... But, that still leaves me a way out.

Damn it. NO idea what to do!

She did give me a task of sending her a weekly update on what I've been up to. Maybe I can include a daily run-down of my tasks just so she knows that I'm working on it. And, if there's a day when I didn't work, she could ask me about it. Maybe that would be a good idea.

This turned out to be a much longer post that I anticipated. But, I had set my timer for 25 minutes, and here I am twenty five minutes later. And, just for the record, after I copied and pasted this in Word, it was 2.5 pages single spaces long. If I can write in stream of consciousness like this, I could be finished in no time!

Hah! That's funny. If it takes me 25 minutes to write 2.5 pages, and I need to write 100 single space pages, then that should take me 18.33 hours of non-stop writing to get the entire thing written. Of course, there are breaks, and sometimes it takes me longer to write a paragraph or a page, but, essentially, this is all it takes.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could do that in one run, and then go back to it and write what I need in there, and edit, etc? Like my SFD to be like that? Yeah...

Yikes!