Remember sitting in the back of the station wagon on the annual family road trip? I remember going to my best friends’ holiday home (ok it was a trailer and the kids had to sleep in a tent outside) every summer. Her parents would sit up front and she, her brother and I would sit in the back bench seat with mounds of gear piled up in the back. There was always a lot of pre-drive excitement. We would pack and talk about all of the fun things we would do. Wonder if the fishing dock was still there and if we would see the same kids at the pool. There was also a little anxiety about the friends we were leaving behind (a week is a long time for a kid!).
Finally, we would get in the car and take off down the highway. Usually about an hour into the drive after we had exhausted all of the driving games (“I spy with my little eye”, “I see a Nebraska license plate – has anyone seen Alaska or Hawaii yet?”, “Row, row, row your boat”, etc…) my friend and her little brother would start fighting. It would start by him looking at her, poking her, or repeating everything she said – typical stuff for little brothers. She would then hit him (hard too – I sat between them and could feel the impact). He would cry. She would say that she didn’t want to go on this “stupid” holiday anyway and it wouldn’t be any fun. At some point her dad would pull over on the side of the road, turn around and say “We are going on vacation and everybody is going to have fun (G**damnit) or else!”
Well there you go. I am right in the middle of my masters and it doesn’t feel very fun right now. But I am half way there, so I’d better keep going and have fun (G**damnit) or else!”
Alternatively, this could have been untitled, “Name your dysfunction” or “Please like me, I am pathetic”. You can tell from the rant that I must be writing again, because all I hear when I write from the little voice in my head is “I can’t believe you just wrote that!”, “What does that mean?” or my favourite “This certainly isn’t up to PhD standards”.
I would like to believe that I have a unique dysfunction for self-criticism, but I am afraid there are probably many out there like me who are riddled with self-doubt. I have a pleaser personality. I want/need people to like me so I am very critical of myself when they don’t. This has gotten me into all sorts of trouble over the years because I am unable to say no.
Now a normal pleaser (I assume) would always say yes and be happy about it – not me. I also suffer from martyrdom, so I say yes knowing full well that it will make me unhappy. I have taken on work, favours, errands, burdens and other people’s problems because of this behaviour.
But now it is new year and I am getting older, so I have decided to stop caring what other people think of me. I am no longer going to bend over backwards with the meager hope that I will be better liked for having done it. I will do what I think is right and that will have to suffice. Ah, it is nice to be a year older and a year wiser. Ok little voice – shut up – I have got some writing to do…
I have been struggling for the last 2 months (or more!) with writer’s block and just haven’t gotten much written for my thesis. Luckily, the blog has given me a pretty safe outlet to jot down ideas and keep going even though I was not making any formal progress with the thesis. Now that I am back writing I am very thankful that the blog was there for me when otherwise I would have been lost.
I think I made it through my entire MBA without pulling an all-nighter. There were plenty of very late nights and several very early mornings, but I don’t recall ever having to stay up all night. Here I am in the first few months of my MCom and I have let a deadline get the best of me. I have done all the procrastinating, whining, begging that I can and now there is nothing left to do except for write the thing. So I have got a full pot of coffee and my notes spread out ritualistically around me and I am going to write until the sun rises. I don’t know if I’ll be done by morning, but I am going to give it a go. Wish me luck….
UPDATE: You never really want to see this, but especially at 3.30 am. Why am I researching technology when I actually hate it?! I am going to bed…
Just a few short weeks ago, life was easy. My blog had one reader – me – and I could really write about anything that tickled my fancy. Blogging was such a free way to express myself, without any of the pressures of academic writing (i.e. “when are you submitting that chapter?”). Now it is feeling a wee more like work – how’d that happen?
Don’t get me wrong, it is still fun. I love being able to write a paragraph without EndNote flashing and reminding me about citations. I love using links to interesting sites. I love using – wait for it – dashes, which for some reason are the very epitome of informal writing to me.
However, now that I have a few more readers, I feel the twin pressures of good topics and daily blogging. I now have a list that I keep of suitable topics, most of which require a little more preparation than just getting up, turning on my laptop and having a cuppa. This morning I perused the list and nothing jumped out as – write about me, I am fast and easy. So I am going with an ol’ standard blog post….
Nothing much happened today, see you tomorrow.
I have just discovered my new favourite form of procrastination, searching for a quote for my blog post. I actually spent a half hour trying to find this one:
I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films — these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the f**kin’ truth
Rob Gordon, High Fidelity
And by the time I found it – I couldn’t remember anything about the actual quote except for “what you like” which is hard to google for – I couldn’t remember how it tied into the blog. I wasn’t even actually supposed to be blogging, I was supposed to be writing my methodology chapter which is/has been due for ages now, but thought if I could just write another post, I’d get back into writing. It is amazing how easily I fall out of the habit of writing and need to constantly be reminded how to do it.
In the spirit of High Fidelity, my top 5 favourite blog-related procrastination techniques are:
- Quote searching
- Reading other people’s blogs (not technically goofing-off, but not exactly work either)
- Blog stats – nuff said on that subject (see http://famartinniemi.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/blog-stats-cyber-navel-gazing/)
- Making lists of future blog topics (again, not really a bad habit, but not really helping my chapter get written either)
- Talking, chatting, emailing, Facebook status commenting, and generally annoying/boring my friends with endless talk about blogging, my blog, blog research, etc…
After a good night’s sleep, I decided that I am neither chic nor (completely) geeky, but fall somewhere in between. At first I thought I was definitely Carrie (see http://famartinniemi.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/sometimes-you-feel-like-a-nut-sometimes-you-dont/), the way she starts every article as a question, searching for answers about love and life. But no – she actually has the answers and is just too cool to share them with you until the end (very clever). And yet, I can’t see myself as the moralising child-doctor either.
The more I read and discover my taste in other people’s blogs, I realise what and how I’d like to voice my own thoughts. Funny. Poignant. Interesting. Personal, but also universal. Finding my voice is crucial to this blog’s success. Maybe all blogging requires a well-defined voice? Not sure. I have lots of questions and would like to use this forum as a means for the (re)search. My voice is evolving, but not just from inside, it changes and takes shape from participation in the blogging community, as reader and author. Hmmm….
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