I think I've forgotten how to blog

I can manage serious pre-planned posting like the wedding story (albeit intermittently) but I've not done regular off the top of my head blogging and thoughts for ages. Little things that occur to me go usually turn into tweets. Big philosophical/anxiety/depressed thoughts go into emails to my husband (mostly) and are too painful to share publicly. (Mostly they're momentary panics which I don't necessarily want to be on the interwebs for the rest of time. :) So that leaves, er, not sure.

I do have things to say sometimes. I think I could do with the discipline of writing more. If only to get in practice for the dissertation writing that IS GOING TO HAPPEN this year. So I thought I'd try.

It occurs to me that different places/means of writing have different psychological weight or depth of meaning to me. I'm supposed to be writing a list of things I want to talk about at a meeting with my supervisor on Friday (hence the procrastination of blogging). I could write this however I want. However. Typing into a Word document (well, the Open Office equivalent, I am a Mac person, after all) is too definite for notes. I have to mean what I say on a properly laid out page. Writing on paper is less scary, especially in biro. It's a scribbled note, noone expects it to look finished and the words are therefore less final, more tentative. I can be tentative in biro. Probably more so in pencil. The computerised equivalent is TextEdit. I find myself using TextEdit a lot to make notes on papers I'm reading, or to-do lists, or notes to myself. My desktop is littered with them. They're the computer equivalent of the reams of scribbled notes that are the precursor to a first draft - some complete sentences, mostly scraps, nagging questions, instructions to myself. It intrigues me that I find the scribbled note, in hard or soft form, easier to write than the finished paragraph, or at least anything that gives the appearance of a finished piece.

I think it's about confidence. If I don't have confidence it what I'm writing, I'm reluctant to commit it to something that looks finished. So, if you find me writing on newspaper in wax crayon, then I've lost it completely and have no confidence in my work. Although, at least I'd be writing. So maybe, even if it's a displacement activity, blogging is a good sign.

it's done now

Despite all the obstacles, the essay's done, printed and handed in. Phew!

And I've been watching Dr Who. Don't even blink! Brilliant!

displacement

I have an essay which is due in tomorrow. It needs work. I've already had one deadline extension (just as well, I had no brain from Tuesday to Friday or thereabouts). I really need to get it mostly finished tonight so I can tidy it up in the morning.

So naturally, I'm blogging.

Hmm.

a little more time

I asked, I got an extension 'til Monday. I've been in bed all day, too woozy to read, so knitting. I hope an early night tonight will help too and I'll be able to do a bit of work tomorrow.

Hmm, this is a really boring blog at the moment, isn't it? Sorry.

fuzzy fuzzy clouds

If you're well enough to write coherent sentences but not well enough to structure an argument, are you ill enough to get a deadline extension?

If I don't feel better by tomorrow morning, I think I shall ask.

bye bye work, hello uni

Today's been a weird day, for good reasons. I had my official last day at work and my first contact with the other students and the lecturers for my new course. Leaving work for the last time, having said goodbye to everybody (and eaten a delicious, if rather large lunch) was odd. I'm both happy and sad to be leaving, which I suppose is a good position in which to be. I did spend quite a lot of the afternoon trying to cram all the contents of my brain into the brain of the person who's replacing me, which was a bit much, both for her and for me. We didn't quite cover everything, I've promised to write her some more notes. It's only when I had to explain all the things I did in my job that I realised quite how complicated it all was and how much I just do without thinking.

And now I'm a student. Not just that, but I'm an ARTS student for the first time in my life. All those jokes we used to make about lazy arts students with two lectures a week who never got out of bed before noon are now coming back to haunt me. I'm definitely the only person on my course with a Physics degree. Everyone else has come from English or History or other Humanities subjects. And so far there are no men. Some are apparently enrolled on the course, but none of them turned up tonight. It's a long way from those lecture hall and demonstration labs where my lab partner and I were distinctly outnumbered by male physicists.* It's all different. But different is exciting and I'm very very excited and happy to be finally starting!

*Who don't all conform to the geeky stereotype. But many do.