I feel like writing a blog entry again. It's been a while.
So last week, you might have gathered that I had a bad meeting with my supervisory team. It feels like ages ago now, which is a good sign that I have gotten over my initial frustration with it. The problem with my supervision meetings is often that how something is said can badly affect what is said. What was said was important, very important for my project. How it was said was not great, owing to a number of different factors, none of which I should get into here. When, however, I was able to come down a little, I realised that, first, what was said was right, second, most of what I had written was good, it was just a mess, and third, my overall process was okay and will serve me well.
Basically, I have a draft of my thesis at this point: a collection of all the writings I have done so far, organised, before our last meeting anyway, in a coherent way. I didn't, at any point, think this was it, I thought it was a draft, an early draft, that would give me something to work off of. And that's what it is turning out to be because I can now take my supervisors comments on the chapter they looked at and apply them across the board, saving all of us a lot of time and energy and letting me draft and draft and draft again. I think if I were to do this in a way that I worked on one chapter until it was done and moved on to the next, the chance of getting stuck would be higher. I had done my main analysis for all three chapters, I might was well have written them up.
So this is how I approach my thesis. And the comments made by my supervisors, all great and very helpful, now get applied across the thesis. And when I come to turn in my next chapter for notes, it should be much better to read.
That's how I'm doing it. That's how I will continue to do it. And I will submit in July of next year. That's the plan.
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Otherwise, things have been going... well, going. My weight went up a bit when my parents came, which has been incredibly frustrating as I haven’t been eating (nor did I) eat more than normal. Things are settling back down finally, I think I need to relax and let my body work out it’s own cycle then trying to stay below 72 kgs at all times (which has been my goal), especially when I am working out. I think I only have the energy right now to watch what I eat and not eat too much, not try to stay at a particular, artificial weight.
It was weird though: I woke up today and just ate and ate and ate: like 1,100 kCals and thought, crap this is going to blow my day: I’m going to be miserable all afternoon. Well, I got to work (with my simple 300 kCal lunch) and at about 11, I had the urge to drink a bunch of water and then I felt fine. Great, actually, like I wasn’t hungry. I had my lunch and don’t have any urge to snack now at 14:10. Great news, I hope this keeps up. I need to listen carefully to my body. Very, very carefully.
I know nobody cares about this, but I do.
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The one upside of being miserable with my thesis was suddenly I was aware of how great it was to have my family. The kids, the wife: they are solid. Everyday I go home and it’s the same. And I realised that even if everything else in my life falls apart, they will still be there. If we move, we will move. All of us. This is an incredible bit of stability. I’m tired, it’s hard, Mia is crying, but still. We are all there, all together. It’s a beautiful thing, really.
Back to work? Back to work.