Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Great White Northern Funk and its Effects on Mental Gymnastics: a Thesis Submitted for No Particular Reason

Well, I've had a bit of a setback over the last couple of days. I think that, while we were up in Canada visiting the family, I picked up some of the "funk" that seemed to be circulating. I like to think that I had built up something of an immunity to the Southern Funk that has been making the rounds down here for some time now, but apparently I wasn't prepared for the Northern variant! I have been absolutely out of commission for three days with a rumbling cough, sinus pain, persistent fever, and spectacular lethargy! My sweet husband, fortunately, was off work for the last two days, so he curled up beside me on the couch and tended to me while we knitted/crocheted together and watched our "stories." But he's back to work today, so I figured I should attempt to get back at it myself.

How am I progressing, I hear you ask? NOT WELL. It is surprisingly hard to do the mental gymnastics required to explain the ins-and-outs of the Organization of Technology when your head is full of cobwebs and your body kind of feels like it's floating and sinking at the same time. Apparently I'm not quite over this bug yet!

Sitting here, trying to write while feeling a bit detached from my own brain, I began to get rather frustrated until I heard a little voice in the back of my head. That voice belongs to my advisor who, in addition to being something of a character sometimes, is also a very wise man. I frequently hear him in the recesses of my mind saying "Great is good. Done is better." Those are words to live by, I do believe! In the end, producing something...anything...is better than being so stuck on the end product being perfect that you never actually manage to produce that end product. So, I am just ploughing on ahead, writing what I can. It won't be Shakespeare, and it likely will require a lot of "post-funk" editing, but at least I will have something down on paper. I am, in fact, being so relaxed about my work today that I am frequently just writing down detached pieces of thoughts or partial sentences and using my favorite tool -- the MS Word "highlighter" -- to remind myself that I need to return to that section at a later time to make it coherent!

I think a nice warm drink might be in order for the next incoherent burst of writing. If I wasn't worried that they might not get the joke, I'd almost be tempted to send this highlighted piece of nonsense off to my committee and say "Look what I wrote all by myself! Whaddaya think?"

1 comment:

  1. You'd better be better soon or I will have to come down there and "take care of things". I DO hope this buzzes off toot sweet! Meantime , just lie low, take care and work as much as you are able. A little is better than none. Oh, and BTW_ I know that your "done" will be better than good ;-)

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