Back to work?

Here's the issue: I like my life right now, and I don't like my life when I'm working on the thesis.  Why would I want to ruin my life?

When I decided to write a thesis, I looked at all the senior thesis-writers around me.  I thought to myself "Most of these people are miserable.  They are doing real academic work on a subject of their own choosing, so they should be happy.  When I do my thesis, I won't be one of them.  I will relish the opportunity to engage in original thought under the guidance of my truly wonderful adviser."  Obviously, this didn't work.  It should have worked. What stopped it from working?

I've certainly blamed my unproductivity on my inability to keep a reasonable sleep schedule.  I've probably used a lot of scapegoats, but the actual culprit is anxiety.  Anxiety stopped my plan from working.  I used to think that I was good at handling anxiety.  In fact, I am just good at anxiety avoidance.  I am the type of person who can sleep soundly at night, even if the paper due at noon the next day doesn't have a coherent point, and is only half as long as it should be.  In fact, I am the kind of person who can oversleep in this situation.  If I wake up too late, I'll just sigh, and turn the paper in late.  In general, I can get away with this without too much harm.  Obviously, though, it won't work on the thesis.

Anyway, it seems I need a routine.  So I'm getting one.  Starting...now!

Freedom from fear

I have been working slowly but steadily on the thesis for hours and hours now, and I am experiencing no fear.  The material that I am turning out is subpar at best, but it can be improved.  I've got months to do it, and a wonderful and brilliant advisor who can tell me exactly where I am being foolish (which at this point is nearly everywhere).

The pace of this work is really incredibly slow, despite the fact that literally my only distraction is writing on this blog.  I am not a fast writer, and a huge amount of my time is going to be taken up with writing in the coming months.  Fortunately, the time I spend writing is inversely proportional to the time I spend fretting.

I also have hit upon the realisation that I have a huge amount of reading to do.  This is wonderful.  I am good at reading, or at least pretty okay at it.  Now that the framework of my thesis is sketched out, every new article I read has the potential to yield a new insight which I can make immediate concrete use of.  Basically, this sounds awesome to me.  I'm not sure whether it will be awesome, but I bet all you readers will find out eventually.

A life-changing realisation

I have just had a very productive three hours, and I feel wide awake and alert.  Today, I woke up at 1 pm after a little less than 7.5 hours of sleep, feeling wide awake and alert.  I have been considering the past year or so of my life, and I realise that I can only be productive when everyone else is asleep.  Furthermore, my body's natural wake-up time is 1 pm.

I hate waking up late, and I hate missing breakfast, and I hate staying up late.  And I really hate missing breakfast.  I consider waking up early to be a moral good, and I view those who wake up late as degenerates.  For some reason, my brain chemistry has decreed that I should be a degenerate.  I cannot fight this any longer; I will now listen to my inner alarm clock, no matter how stupid it is.

Another wasted day-time

It turns out that I really can't work on this thesis before about 11:30 at night.  I have no speculations on why this should be, but it seems to hold true.

If I were allowed to become nocturnal, I would be pretty productive on my thesis, I sense.  Unfortunately, I have Russian class at 10/11 throughout reading period, so I won't be allowed to sleep 5:00-1:00.

Anyway, here's what my thesis looks like right now.

My advisor has given up

I promised my advisor that I would send her a draft of my first couple thesis chapters on Friday.  I just sent it in.  I checked my inbox, and she hadn't even sent me an email to inquire about the whereabouts of the draft.  She has given up trying to get me to do any work.  This is bad.

A cool fact about Polish

In Polish, relative clauses with resumption are archaic.  My informant constantly protests that she "would never talk that way."  Also, clitic pronouns are losing their clitic-like properties and falling together with the tonic series.  Are these facts related?  The possibility is tantalising.

Random thoughts

In the Ellen Prince 1990 paper, she gives a lot of examples that she or someone else has observed in speech.  When she cites these examples, she writes "(AK: Dave Jones)."  What could this AK possibly stand for?

I just realised that I was padding my pitifully short document with blank lines.  I'm removing them.