Thanks...giving

Today is exactly 3 months after JB and I moved in to this new place in Washington. I'm so glad he's living up here with  me. We get to do fun stuff on the weekends. He helped me through the last push of school (which I still haven't heard OFFICIAL word back from, but I'm no longer doing work for it) and I am so happy to have him back in my life. I'm thankful I have gotten to spend so much time with him this year, since around July of this year. I felt an immense sadness without him in my life.

I'm thankful for the view I have in this apartment. I love looking out at the horizon and Puget Sound every day. I love seeing the seagulls flying outside. I love seeing Mount Rainier in the mornings, looming over everything.

I'm thankful to be done with school. I'm REALLY thankful to be done with school. I still haven't quite adjusted to the new schedule (i.e., lack of constant work 24-7), but I feel like I'm finally getting there. I've only had 5 weekends "free" after finishing everything for the PhD.

• The first weekend was also right after I went back to work, so I was really just doing errands and catching up on everything to get ready for work and stuff. 
• The next weekend I went to the beach and had an awesome 3-day weekend in an oceanfront room. I pretty much did nothing except write my book, go on long walks on the beach, and have parties with JB. He said he hoped our room would have a mini bar so he could have all the snacks he wanted, so before we went down there I put together a mini bar for him - chips, bean dip, multiple kinds of pop, pringles, sour gummy worms, peanut butter M&Ms, etc. I made him his own mini bar and he LOVED it :).
• The third and fourth free weekends I spent just been trying to recover. I was cleaning and organizing the house, trying to catch up on bills and budgeting, getting back into exercising regularly, spending more time cooking and eating well.
• Last weekend (Thanksgiving break) I went to Portland and spent 2 days with the family. We went to 2 movies in the theater in one day (hah!), Gravity and Thor 2. Both were high quality and really entertaining. I also played on my parents' piano when I was there and it made me so happy. I'm going to start that up again soon as JB brought up the keyboard that we bought when we lived in OH. Today I feel like I've FINALLY started to come back to normal. I felt some urges to start meeting people again, and I went on a big house cleaning kick yesterday and this morning. I feel like I'm at the very beginning of "leveling out" in terms of recovery. I'm not there yet, but I finally feel like I'm STARTING to be myself again. I'm thankful for that.

I'm thankful for my job. I make pretty good money for only working 40-43 hours a week there. I have freedom to choose which projects I would like to work on, and I REALLY enjoy the projects. I am really interested in the ones I'm working on now and I love the work more than any full-time job I've had. 

I'm thankful for the future plans I plan to accomplish. Hiking, traveling, comic cons, costume parties, playing banjo, playing piano, getting a dog soon, having close friends, writing and publishing a fantasy book for fun, time to watch movies, concerts, video games, photography, etc. I'm really excited about it all and the fact that I've already made plans for some of it. :) 

Looking up

Just taking a minute to reflect on the border between my current state and my home state, here's a picture of the Columbia Gorge. Beautiful picture from Craig Wolf of Hood River outside of Portland:

Also, I saw the Northern Lights! I'm pretty sure, anyway. I've never seen a green sky before, but I saw one two days last week in the evening. It was really cool. The hills were cutting into the green. It very much looked like this picture, except without the Crown Point building:

A few cool ones of the aurora above Mount Hood:

I just flipped through some pictures from J. I love him so much. I think that every moment not spent with him is one less moment I'll ever have with him. That's how much I love him.

So, here's my view in the morning...looks way closer and jaw-dropping in person. I wish I could take one to show the real experience!

My view this morning

I had a terrible day at work today. I'm having a terrible time there in general. The culture and my culture don't mix. Imagine a group of soldiers and officers...now imagine them all getting hired at Starbucks and working in one department. Not that they are bad people -- in fact I like many of them. It's just the total mismatch of cultures being shoved into each other. I think asking questions is good, but it's considered insulting and insubordinate in some cases in this culture. I think offering to help is nice, but my offer comes across like I'm trying to butt in (because everything is so compartmentalized and segmented). I know I can't change the culture, and I certainly don't want to invest the effort required to do so, but I feel like I have to do something.

I am struggling so much just to have normal conversations. I feel like it's just constant miscommunications. There's no teamwork. I'm totally isolated and excluded, to an extreme. It makes me feel lost, being there. I am already lost in life right now, but I'm totally isolated, excluded (structurally but also excluded from the "good old boys" club at nearly every meeting), and frustrated nearly all day. I feel like I'm having so much difficulty that I'll get a horrible recommendation. I need to once again take a proactive approach and try to start communicating with my boss about the difficulties I'm having and how to resolve them. The problem is, he is a big part of the problem. He treats me like I'm unimportant, which makes me withdraw comments, stop making suggestions, stop taking initiative, etc. I feel like I'm useless and like I can't do anything right. That is the effect of this culture on me (and it's not just the officer side of the house--the civilian side is not great either, but it's hard to tell how much is due to reacting to the culture like I'm doing). I don't need that, especially because of the lack of good people in my current life. I've become totally isolated (a necessity in order to finish the school project) and that's not a good situation to be in when your work culture sucks too. I need a positive culture in my life to make up for the pain of the last few years of graduate school. I'm going to target healthy work cultures for my next job.

I'm nervous about leaving my job because of (lack of) finances and a weak job market in the NW for my level of experience in my field. I don't have confidence I'd get a job right away. I need to stay here at least a year for my resume's sake. I just don't know if I can take it much longer than that. I had wanted to stay 5 years for the retirement payout, but I don't know if I can last much longer than a year and a half here. I do want the stability of a government job, but not if I can't make my situation better. Everyone seems so...just plain unhappy all the time. People crying, I was about to yell at people today, griping. Everyone just seems unhappy. It's so hard to go to work in that environment that just makes me frustrated, upset with myself, and feel like a failure, because I have no life outside of work right now.

But I just don't feel like I'm ready for this position. The job description actually said 5 years of experience was required, which surprised me because when I applied it had said 3 years. I had about 3 years of professional experience, but not 5. So I feel like I got put into a position that should be "in training" but I have no one training me and no one to talk to. It is setting me up for failure. It's fine to challenge someone in a role, but in order to be challenged you have to be somewhat decent at the task first--otherwise it just makes it more stressful. So I just end up feeling dumped in the ocean to fend for myself and constantly trying to figure out who to ask. I also think they forget that I've only been there 7.5 months...they never did any training with me and I didn't know what to ask for before I was in the role, so I basically got no training (except for one aspect). I'm just horribly frustrated. Once I recover from school and get my life back on track over the next month or so, I need to start applying to jobs. My goal is still to leave in June 2014, for now. I might still try to go to Ireland for a month. Who knows, maybe J and I will elope and get married out of the country next year. I have so many conflicting desires because I feel the need to get out of this environment, but I don't want to be seen as a job hopper and I need to start saving money for a family. How can I achieve both? I need to start thinking about this now that I'm done with school and am starting to have more resources available (very slowly...even doing laundry right now sounds overwhelming!).

I wonder how society would be today if no men were around. I was reflecting on how women are encouraged throughout life to depend on a man. And I know that sounds cliche, but I can illustrate it well with an example. I'm watching Bear Grylls climb down a mountain in South Dakota, building fires, etc. He said something that made me think about how many mountains he's climbed. I reflected on how many I've climbed. I've climbed a good number, but nothing compared to him. Anyway, it got me thinking about something I thought about this weekend when I had a question about my computer...I though, "I don't need to worry about figuring that out. I'll always have a boyfriend in my life who knows about that kind of stuff." It was something related to an issue I'm having with a data file in my Outlook program. 

But I actually thought that, I'll always have a boyfriend who can take care of that for me! So you can see what I mean...being dependent on a man. Rather, being encouraged and reinforced to think you are dependent on men. Girls, at least in my experience, have always been socially allowed to opt out of things. I did half ass knee push ups in middle school along with all the other girls because that was something I could get away with as a girl. Women at work kind of assume that the men will do any difficult moving task, even if it's not that hard (like moving a desk to a new office). The point is, when you grow up thinking that you can always just ask someone to fix something for you, you really do become dependent on them because you don't learn how to do it yourself. I've decided to actively combat this. 

That's why I ask for instruction so that I can take care of things myself. Like fixing lights on my car, replacing air filters, etc. Even the seemingly easy things to a guy might not be things that many girls typically know how to do. I have no clue how to work a lawnmower because my brother always got that duty (not that I wanted it!), but I know how to clean the house because that was my chore. I'm reflecting on how reinforcement throughout my life has led me to not learn certain things. I want to continue making sure I learn those skills so that I feel powerful and independent. I know many of these words sound cliche, but hopefully in context you are able to step back from those words and understand the meaning behind my explanation of gaining my independence back.

Wow! Well, I started out the entry with an intent to focus on the good things I had seen and done today (Mount Rainier was beautiful of course), and I spoke to my "non-work colleague" BC about really good things. She is encouraging me through this recovery process. We talked about how for the time being I need to focus on letting myself recover and not doing anything else -- letting myself catch up on errands, watch TV, cook good food, exercise, and not feeling like I have to go run out and do other stuff. I need to recover. If I could choose a few words to sum up this current period of my life, they would be: Lost, Loss, Recovery. For sure.

West Coast winter

Seaside, Oregon

View from our deck

Awesome painted clouds

Morning run on day 2

Seaside

I'm sitting on the beach looking out at the sunny ocean. Okay, technically I'm not on the beach, but I'm about 5 feet away and 20 feet above the sand (in my room). I'm sitting on my deck writing my fiction novel. This morning I went on an hour-long jog South from the hotel to the end of this beach. Yesterday I went on an hour-long jog North from the hotel. I'll post pictures later when I get home. I saw mussels, crabs, jellyfish, seagulls, surfers, and huge trees on the beach (driftwood). This is an absolutely beautiful November trip. It has been sunny and warm...about 60 the whole weekend. The smell of bacon and coffee is wafting up from the restaurant below me. Some men are flying kites, children are building sandcastles with their parents, and of course you have the few older men with metal detectors. Someday I'll go ask them what they tend to find...I'm curious.

I would like to make a tradition with my future family to come back here every summer. I plan to go back to the beach about 2-3 more weekends before the year ends. Instead of having a vacation before heading back to work, the weekend vacations will be my "vacation". I want to start some family rituals once I get married. Summers at the coast and San Juan Islands, winter trip to Leavenworth, WA and Bend, OR, Puget Sound kayaking trips, winter vacation in a tropical location, and travel to other countries. R's family used to travel frequently and I always admired that. They used to go down to Guatemala and live for a month or two, or over to Asia. They travel more than anyone I've ever known. I always looked up to his dad -- a doctor who really enjoys his hobbies and does IMMENSE amounts of mountain climbing and traveling. I think he used to climb Mount Hood every weekend for a few years. I want to start some traditions and be able to look forward to doing the same things every year.

On the drive down here, I felt so happy to be "home" in Oregon. It was an intense drive because in order to get here you take a straight-shot through Astoria and through the complete wilderness. You basically drive through the forest for a big chunk of the drive. I used to be pretty experienced at this because it's a pretty similar environment to how I grew up driving, but for the last few years I have been living in very urbanized environments that are far from nature. Here, nature is surrounding me. I sometimes fear that the NW will become developed and lose its natural beauty. Like the former Oregon Governor McCall said, "Come visit, but don't stay." I sincerely hope that the NW can retain its beauty and not become much more developed than it is.

There is something spiritual to me about the ocean. I feel at home. I am at the end of the world right now -- the very left-most edge of the U.S. I love that feeling for some reason. When you stop to think about it, it's kind of amazing why people love the ocean so much. To Spock, it's just a bunch of water hitting the land. But there is something higher about the ocean. You don't really objectively think of the ocean that way. That is why I call the beach spiritual.

Moving forward

I came up with some ideas this weekend about where I want to go next in my life. I'm feeling pretty depressed because of all I went through, but I am on an upward slope. I have only had 10 days since I submitted my final dissertation, so I've barely had a chance to recover. That's why I want to come down here this weekend -- to take some time to recover and get back to myself. I've been dealing with some unfulfilling experiences in the last year and now many of them have been fixed in the past 2-3 weeks alone. I have left behind many of the things that were making me unhappy. One year ago I decided to embrace my feelings and take a leap of faith -- I moved back, found a job, and left a relationship behind. The difficulty about making big choices like that that is that even though you might like some aspects of something (i.e., a relationship, a job, a geographic location), you must follow your heart. Sometimes your heart is hard to hear over everything else. In October last year, I finally decided to take a leap of faith and believe what I thought my heart was telling me. That led to me finishing school, ending a relationship, moving across the country, and finding a brand new job. All of that! It has been a slow turn of the ship over the past year, mostly due to my dissertation being so painfully slow to finish.

However, I am rediscovering my world again. It has only been 2 weekends of "freedom" so far, but I have already figured out some of the directions I want to go in. I have a chance to have a fresh start in my life. I have time now to pursue the things I put on hold off and on for the last few years. I have a chance now to decide how I want to live my life and to start doing those things I love ALL the time now. It is really crazy...this concept of free time after work. I still don't quite know how to deal with it all because I've barely been keeping it together for the past few months, but I feel like I'm sensing a direction for my life.

• Go on lots of mini-vacations on the weekends.
• Plan big trips next year to Hawaii and Ireland/Scotland.
• Take banjo and piano lessons.
• Start preparing to buy a dog in a few months.
• Start deciding between Seattle and Portland in terms of where to buy a house.
• Write a fiction book.
• Run a lot. There is a project I have planned for the running aspect that I am actually planning on seeing if I can publish later -- so I'm not sure I want to talk about it here yet. It is akin to a travel guide you might read before hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, except that it's not for the PCT. It's for something else. I'm very excited about it. R helped me draw out some diagrams this weekend in his art program. It's going to be fantastic. I might actually turn it into a blog with visuals and photos, but if I do have the option of publishing it, I might do that so I'll have to hold off on talking about it on here until I decide. 

Other careers

I feel like over the past year I've really thought hard about my career choice. I absolutely love the concepts of my field and the research, but the logistics of working in the field make it a little hard on me (due to a dearth of opportunities in areas I want to live). There are still workable jobs for me and once I get more experience I can apply to plenty of places like Nike, IBM, Columbia, Starbucks, Microsoft, Boeing, etc., but for the time being the less experienced jobs aren't plentiful in this neck of the woods. So, in the past year I have found myself wondering, what else would I be happy doing if I could? And I found that I had plenty of things I would love to do but have not pursued to-date:

Animal trainer. I loved working with my horse. I loved training my parents' dog. I've never had any formal training in animal science, I just really love working with animals. I see all these dogs out here at the beach and I can't help but smile. Every once in a while I'll smile at an extra cute kid, but animals are what I love. I have always watched a lot of animal documentaries. I would love to be a dog or horse trainer and have spent more time specializing in that field. I haven't had a dog yet because so far I've been focused on other aspects of my life (graduate school, traveling, moving just to have a job, etc.). But now I'm at the point where I want to settle down so that I can be around animals. I always fantasized about having a farm where I could have animals, which brings me to my second career...

Organic farmer. For the last 5-10 years I have often found myself wishing I could buy a farm and grow plants. I haven't put a lot of emphasis on this in my life so far, but only because I have moved around way too much. It's difficult to grow things in apartments, especially when you move every 6-12 months. I'm tired of moving and would love a house to have a big garden in. I would love to have horses, a goat, chickens, etc. I have talked myself out of the goats and chickens because I have so many other interests to balance -- particularly the fact that I want to go exploring and adventuring every weekend, which would make it hard to take care of chickens and goats. I plan to compromise on this desire to be an organic farmer and have a dog, possibly a horse, and a big garden for my own food. 

Biologist or marine biologist. One of my favorite classes in college was Oceanography. I took it when I was attending school in Chile. My whole life I have found myself daydreaming about tracking animals or going out in the woods to learn about animals and follow them. One of my friends became a biologist who works with birds. All the time I see these pictures of her in the woods, tracking birds and just watching them. I would be content to do this all day. When I was a kid and my family spent 2 weeks every summer at the beach, I would spend a huge majority of my time just staring out at the distant ocean watching for whales. I would be happy to just study animals all the time. I've always loved it.

Travel writer. I feel like now that I actually have time to do stuff, I would like to devote myself to "adventuring" more again. I've had to put that on hold for the last half of a year as I focused on my dissertation. Now I'm back! I feel that I would have enjoyed being a travel guide if I had gone a different path in my career. If I had time to devote to that sort of thing, I would have focused more on my travel writing and designing adventures for people. I still may decide to follow that path for fun. Maybe start up a blog of my own and really focus on it. R could help me because he's really creative and knows a lot about design stuff and takes great photos (he was the photographer for our friend's wedding last month).

All in all, I find myself more inclined to have fun in life now that this weight is off my shoulders. I've had LOTS of fun so far, but I've just not been having fun for the past year as I tried to turn my ship of a life around. Now I find myself thinking on a daily basis about how I could have an alternative career that would let me live in a really cool house with a border collie, possibly a horse that I could ride on the beach like I used to, and travel adventures (including city adventures) all the time. I plan to achieve some of the goals I listed above by doing things just for fun. I might not want to become a marine biologist due to the schooling and logistics involved at this point, but perhaps I could buy a house on the water in Seattle and become a part of the killer whale watchers network. I will compromise so that I can do all of these things. I'll definitely do them anyway just for fun, but if I can, I would love to see if I can make a little money at it. Why not, right?

New life

Well, it has been a while hasn't it. The crisp October air and blue sky as far as the eye can see has been wonderful. I can see the Cascades, Olympics (which have started to get a little snow on the tips again), the colored trees, Puget Sound, and the Capitol. I look at them every day. I usually go on the deck in them morning and then go for a 15-minute walk. I started walking again this week, just for 15 minutes a day after I pick up my mail. I plan to keep up the walks for the rest of this week and then next week start at the gym. I think I might start walking around the nearby lake after work -- it's about 1.50 miles around the lake and to and from the car.

This is really a beautiful city, nestled between the mountain ranges and Puget Sound. It is isolated, but it has a lot of character and while smaller, it is reminiscent of the other NW cities. I prefer to live near a bigger city but I have enjoyed living here while I was forced to be a hermit for a while to finish this school thing. I even enjoy my drive down to Portland because of the natural beauty. There are breathtaking views, particularly of this one area when the road hits the Columbia and the sun is shining off the water, the puffy white clouds hover, and the neon green grass sparkles as you drive by -- you feel like you're driving through a movie. I also look forward to crossing the Columbia farther down (when you cross into Oregon) because the view of Portland and Mount Hood is spectacular. Basically, I even enjoy driving around here because it is so beautiful. Even when it is foggy, you smell the salt air and see the low-hanging clouds moving. It is like being at the beach. The wind, seagulls, and the mist burning off by mid-morning. It reminds me of early morning Cannon Beach weather on a misty day. It makes you appreciate the sun that much more.

I have often planned a study in my head where I studied how much appreciation people have for the sun in different locations. Do people enjoy the sun more when it is around 24-7? Or do they appreciate it when it is taken away and then given back? I think it would be really interesting to do a study on that. You know that old saying about not knowing what you had until you lost it? I think that is kind of what goes on here -- you have the sun taken away for a few hours or minutes and then given back to you. You grow to appreciate it more. I would hypothesize that people get more "enjoyment" (however I would operationalize that) when the sun has been gone even a short period and then returned. Otherwise, you stop noticing it if it's there all the time. For example, when I moved away from here I didn't realize how much I would miss the enormous trees and greenery until I left it for a long period of time. Same prediction for other nature. I love it here.

I have basically been doing my best to recover for the last week. I still had a lot of paperwork to do over the last week but finally got some of the confirmation I needed. My final dissertation form was successfully turned in and I submitted my final draft. Now, I'm waiting for final approval on my draft and then final graduation clearance. I hope to hear about that soon...I really can't get excited and start telling people that I am finished until I know I'm cleared to graduate.

I've been getting back to natural foods again. I had done a good job of getting "good fast food" for the last few weeks when I was totally exhausted. Some pre-packaged salads, vegetarian brown rice sushi, and Kashi's Mayan Harvest Bake to which I add some of my frozen artichokes, brussel sprouts, asparagus, olive oil, wheat germ, wheat bran, and flaxseed thrown in. I also had some treats like black bean chips with refried beans, avocado, and spices. I'm proud of myself for making those choices during the hard times. But this week I'm back to salads each night, fruit cereal/oatmeal for breakfast, etc. My desserts are chocolate-covered ginger and dark chocolate with cinnamon graham crackers. I'm intending to cut back on the sweets by increasing the natural sugar in my diet (fruit) so that I don't feel deprived. Chocolate-covered berries and ginger are a good dessert because you really don't want to overindulge.

I've also been trying to sleep more. I didn't sleep well last week for some reason -- was up for 3 hours in the middle of the night for some reason. But in general I'm still getting more like 7.5 - 8 hours a night, which is an improvement from previous nights.

Mentally it has been an odd week. I've had moments of joy and also confusion and frustration (because I'm still working on the final paperwork for school and was running into roadblocks). I've been confused about what to do next -- whether to apply to jobs in Seattle or Portland, how long to stay at this job (mostly because I'm so unclear about what is causing my health problems), concerns about my health, and trying to figure out how to start spending my free time. I will have free time after work! It is the first time in my life I will be just working like a normal adult. Some people have been doing this since they were 18 or 22, but I am now 30 and doing it for the first time. It is a weird, foreign, confusing, and exciting feeling. So far, here are the things I'm considering spending my time doing over the next year with my newly gained free time:

• Travel locally (Seattle, Leavenworth, British Columbia, Bend, beaches, Portland, Mount Hood, etc.)
• Travel to Hawaii (hopefully for 1 month)
• Get a dog
• Learn banjo
• Learn piano
• Learn Mandarin
• Clean up my belongings and simply my personal possessions and sell/donate stuff
• Ride horses again?
• Kayak (when the water is warm again)
• Volunteer doing something I believe in (probably environmental support or reducing/improving meat consumption)
• Play video games (I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately)

I've already been reading again so I'm happy about that. I love my pink Kindle. But I want to get back in touch with nature again. I've watched a lot of nature documentaries lately and I miss nature. I want to get back to hiking on a regular basis each weekend.

I also want to get ready to buy a house soon. I really want to buy a house in Seattle or Portland. It has to have a view and it has to have room for a garden. I want to have a little farm. I want to spend more time near the water. I want to have a family and spend a lot of time with friends.

I think I will go on a hike this weekend. I would like to sit on the top of a mountain for a while and reflect on the beauty of nature.

Winter is coming and summer is going

October 17th, 4:00 pm

• Status: 15 out of 15 revisions complete.

I finished the revisions last Thursday and sent the draft to advisor with a list of changes that I'd made. He got back to me on Friday saying that he "okayed" the changes and just noticed a few typos and errors to fix. Once I fix the typos, I can send the draft for publication. He had also told me that he'll turn in my final paperwork saying that I passed, but then 30 minutes later he noticed that one of the committee members hadn't signed part of the form, so now he has to get his signature before turning it in. It has to go to the secretary and then to the college of graduate studies, so I'm nervous that it will get through all those hands in the course of a few days next week. It needs to be finished by the end of the week. The only thing I can do is harass all parties involved and make sure the paper gets turned in. I have scheduled times to send e-mails and call each of those people to make sure they are taking this seriously and working quickly. This is causing me some anxiety because I thought it had been signed by the committee already. I am glad that I had set an earlier deadline for myself to turn in this paperwork, because otherwise I would have been in a serious situation. Right now it's stressful but I do have some leeway because I had a goal of turning in the paperwork a week before the true deadline. It's a good thing I bumped my goal up.

For my actual draft, I just have a few minor corrections to make, and then I have to read through it a couple times for typos, confusing things, anything else I notice, put it into the proper format, and prepare it to be submitted for publication. I think I might be able to finish all this by the end of Monday, so I expect to submit the draft for publication by Tuesday. The draft is due in early November, so by submitting it early I'm hoping to have some leeway in case any issues come up.

I went down to Portland on Friday for a haircut and to bring dinner to my parents. My dad had surgery so I brought over dinner and some leftovers for them. Then I drove back home in some really dangerously dense fog. It was a horrible drive. I was driving 45 in the right lane (on a 70 mph freeway) through the wilderness (no streetlights or civilization) and no cars with me for the most part. It was really dangerous. One of my headlights is out so it was even worse. It was such dense fog that I couldn't even see in front of my headlight. I was literally watching the white dotted line line-by-line to see which direction the road was headed in. I probably shouldn't have been driving and should have waited until day.

I think I'm on the verge of sickness. I feel sick. I've had a migraine the last 2 days. I've been playing Skyrim and wish I could just play it all day and be done with this school. I am leaning more toward just staying home for the rest of October until my leave of absence at work ends. I think I may go somewhere for next weekend locally -- maybe to the coast or something -- but nothing else. I need to rest and I wish I had like another month off for recovery.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. Fall makes me feel sad and excited at the same time. It means the end is coming (winter), but also means that lots of activities are coming too. This year, it is reminding me of last fall when I was spending time with a certain person, so those memories are making me sad. I love the sunny, crisp days of fall and the colors. Here is a picture I snapped from my parents' street when I went to visit them on Friday--it was like a rainbow of colors when I drove down their street:

Two

October 17th, 12:30 pm

• Status: 13 out of 15 revisions complete.

It's official. I'm f***ing losing it. Lol!! I'm seriously on the verge of screaming. I feel like I want to punch a wall. I can't take this anymooooooore hahaha. Oh I am glad no one else is here or they might tie me up for my own safety. Just two more revisions. I don't even think the stuff I'm writing is particularly good, but I guess it's not particularly bad either. I feel like I'm doing an adequate job of making the revisions. The only reason that matters is because if my advisor signs off on what I send him today, I'm TOTALLY done. Minus the formatting, of course. But I will be done with the content. That's why I'm taking a little bit more time to finish these changes, so that hopefully I can make them good enough before sending them to him, rather than us trying to get back and forth again with another draft. Omg I hope that doesn't happen...If so, he will likely only need to see a particular part of the draft so I could turn it around quickly in a couple hours and get it back to him for final review. PLEEEEEASE let him sign off on this draft ahhhh!!

I just ordered pizza so my goal is to finish with my changes by the time the pizza gets here. It's too bad I picked this month to stop drinking! It's hard not to want a beer today.

Okay, back to finishing up revision 14 (which is already in progress). I'm going to lose it here soon. I can't take much more. I need to finish this up and send it, hopefully in the next 45 minutes. I'm spent today.

Three

October 17th, 9:45 am

• Status: 12 out of 15 revisions complete.

I'm starting to lose my mind again... It's really foggy out so I can't see very far and I feel like I'm kind of stuck in a waking nightmare. It's like each of the revisions is a tick on the clock, and clock is ticking veeeeeeeeeery slowly. 

Tick. 

[2 hours later]

Tock.

[30 minutes later]

Tick.

The changes are going so slowly! I know I only have 3 more, but it just feels like everything is taking forever. At this point, I really just want to make sure my advisor receives the complete revised draft today before he leaves the office. I don't expect he'll be able to review it today because it's already 1:00 his time. Well, as long as I can send it to him soon, he'll probably read it tomorrow morning. I had really wanted to get this finished tomorrow but I don't know if that will happen. I might be able to finish the draft's content, but maybe not the formatting.

I'm going to have some cookies to reward myself for keeping forward movement and just getting the last 3 changes done even if they're not perfect. Just 3 more changes to go. Three...two...one...send.

Graduate students

October 18th, 7:00 am

• Status: 11 of 15 revisions complete.
• My number of total revisions to do has decreased because there are a few revisions that I had wanted to get done but they were really just my "nice-to-haves", so I just decided to remove them from my list. I will fix them after I send this draft, if I think they are really worth it.

I hope to finish with all the revisions by 9:00 am, so that I can send the draft to advisor by noon his time. As I was supposed to send the revised draft yesterday I'm only a couple hours "late" in sending this, but I still need to get it done ASAP. He had originally asked for the revised draft by the 23rd but I had bumped up the deadline to the 16th in an effort to proactively deal with my procrastination, so I'm glad I did that. I use a particular coping mechanism to help minimize the negative effects of my procrastination. I figure out the real deadline, I give myself a deadline that is well in advance of that deadline, and I figure that even if I can't meet my self-imposed deadline I will still be getting things done earlier than the true deadline. Example: Advisor says the revised draft is "due on the 23rd", I tell him I'll get it to him "by the 16th", and then I figure that I will actually end up turning it in on the 17th or 18th, which is still earlier than the original deadline and it will allow leeway if there are any issues (such as if he finds more errors that I need to fix -- this way, I won't have to fix them last minute on the 24th because I will have that buffer zone of a few days to deal with the issues).

It is a crutch that allows me to function with my procrastination but not deal directly with changing my procrastinating behaviors themselves. A crutch is better than nothing, especially if you don't have the resources for the time being to fix the actual injury. It's better than just accepting that I will inevitably procrastinate and then be late on the true deadline, so I give myself a pat on the back for using this strategy pretty effectively. The strategy amounts to lying to yourself that the deadline is earlier than it is so that you can use the anxiety to motivate you to get work done on it. It's probably not healthy in some ways (in my head I can hear my counselor telling me that), but it's effective in getting me to more forward in graduate school and at work, so at least it helps me function.

It's amazing, and kind of depressing, that writing even a mediocre paper can take months and months of full-time work. This is going to be my sixth draft that I'm sending today, meaning that my seventh draft is the one I will be publishing. That is fewer drafts than I went through for my Masters, but I feel that this is probably a lot better than my Masters.  I think at this point my paper is better than mediocre because I actually spent about 16 hours editing it in order to improve it (this is not something I have usually done in the past -- usually I just let my first pass be good enough and I never look back or edit very much). I have gotten away with my bare minimum work in the past because usually what I produce on the first try is "good enough", but I wouldn't call it good. I would call it "okay", but usually I take that label as acceptable and decide not to put more work into it.

There's a whole cost-benefit analysis that goes into the motivation behind improving the writing of something, and usually when I am exhausted, I don't view the benefits of improving the paper as very high. I have done a lot of editing of this draft in the last couple weeks. I hadn't put much work into the actual editing of it until the last few weeks, so before then it was kind of a jumble of words grouped into sections, along with some numbers thrown in. A 130-page jumble of letters and numbers. But since the initial draft, it has greatly improved in readability, clarity, and content. I still honestly think I could keep editing this for a few more months of full-time work before feeling "great" about it, but I suspect that is how many people feel. That is why you need to just do the best you can, set a cutoff deadline, and throw your hands up at the second that the cutoff deadline happens. Otherwise, you could go on editing into eternity.

In many ways, I find myself relating to the "anal retentive chef" skit by Phil Hartman on SNL. That's one of my favorite SNL skits to this day. It cracks me up (and it reminds me of both my grandma and my dad haha). It also reminds me of myself, but only as it relates to research and writing. I am no stranger to mess (in fact, I haven't even unpacked boxes from when I moved across the country over a year ago...lol). I'm kind of infamous in my family for being able to tolerate mess. I just don't care enough to fix the mess for now (or for the previous 15 years of my life...hah).

If I didn't have the valid explanation that I'm just plain busy and too exhausted to clean up because I move so often, I should definitely have been nominated as a subject for the TV show Hoarders, as my apartment has started to approximate that level of mess at points. Nothing nearly as bad as keeping dead animals and 10-year-old yogurt (although my great aunt was a hoarder and she saved tea bags, expired food, and the works! Gross), but definitely messy and chaotic by normal person standards.

99% of the time I know where things are, though. Even though I moved in haste 2 months ago, I can still remember which color box I put something in and what other objects are in that box. I know that if I want to find a stamps, I would have to look in the ripped, large, brown shopping bag that has a lot of junk mail in it to be shredded, and also my envelopes. That's just a random thing to remember. Why do people remember such things when they are not necessary to survival? Is there any personality characteristic that triggers our "survival processing" that makes us think, "Oh, I better remember where that stamp is at -- it could save my life one day!" And it's not like I was organized in my packing -- it was the opposite of organized. I threw things into anywhere there was space. I didn't plan out which items were similar and should be stored together, I just threw them in boxes in a matter of hours in a mad rush to meet the move-out deadline. There was nothing strategic about my packing, but I can remember nearly everything about it and often times I wonder why my memory is so good for that kind of thing. I suppose have a really good spatial intelligence, maybe that's why. I think my good memory and high spatial intelligence is the ONLY thing that has let me tolerate such a crazy level of mess throughout my life. If I didn't know where things were I would never get anything done, but I pretty much always remember where they are.

The best way to sum up my personal daily consciousness and experience as I go through life would be to say it's something like "photographic memory with a big serving of attention deficit mixed in". My office at work looks like the absent-minded professor's office with papers EVERYWHERE (it's pretty embarrassing, now that I realize how messy it was), scribbles of statistical equations, mathematical formulas that I was solving on post-its, and coffee stains all over half the papers, lol! It was actually kind of embarrassing when I was cleaning my office before my leave of absence because I was forced to realize how my office must look to an outsider. Yet, when someone came in for help I always knew where the exact paper was and which of the 20 other papers were covering it. I'm not really sure how I encode that information, because I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

I would be interested to learn more about other people's experiences with spatial memory, things that interfere with the encoding of spatial memories, and how all of this can be explained by evolutionary psychology and survival processing. I wonder if people with levels of certain personality traits (OCD or other things related to detail orientation or conscientiousness) let those traits mediate their memory of particular things. So, someone with OCD might remember locations of things because they do things in a very particular order and method and the OCD causes them to notice things that help them encode memories better. E.g., they know that they would never violate a particular order or method of doing something, so therefore they will always remember certain things better. I suspect this is true, because I know it's true for me and for people I've met who have OCD. It is almost as if the repeated habits of OCD individuals allow them to remember things easier because they do things repeatedly and in the same order, which are both characteristic and probably required for good encoding. I know that I MUST shut all cabinet doors, as a rule. It bothers me when a cabinet door is left open (going back to the survival idea, I am afraid of hitting my head on a corner of a cabinet so I always make sure to close it). So if a roommate leaves a cabinet partially or fully open, I immediately know that someone else was there. I imagine people are primed to remember these details pretty well, but I know there are MAJOR individuals differences here. I have lived with a variety of people who have absolutely no concern about things the cabinet-closing or remembering details or locations of things. Even people who are very intelligent in other ways. They leave towels on the floor, cabinets open, and constantly lose things. I don't remember every losing anything except once. I'm sure I've lost a couple other things based on margin of error (I'm not completely racking my brain at this moment for everything I've lost), but still, I am not a person to lose anything. Everything has its place -- even if it's a very, very, very messy place! One of my old bfs lost his glasses multiple times a day, and he's really intelligent otherwise. Even has a great episodic memory. But he is TOTALLY not spatially-oriented or detail-oriented. It's interesting to think about how personality might play a mediating or moderating role that makes us remember certain things better. I suspect that the presence of OCD makes a person more apt to remember things better. But of course, this is just me rambling...I haven't read any research on this so it's just an educated guess! Very interesting, though.

However, now that I'm about to be out of graduate school, I do find myself wanting to settle down and unpack for the first time in my life, really. Anyway, I highly recommend that you go watch the anal retentive chef skit if you haven't seen it...

There is a very interesting line between "good enough" and "good", especially when you move into the realm of perfectionists and researchers. Many researchers, if they are like me, see one thing and think of another. They see an idea and wonder how it applies to another idea. They see a statistic and wonder, "Did they transform the data? How is the variable calculated? How did they deal with missing data? Should they have used the Spearman or Pearson coefficient? Should they have used Bonferroni or Tukey? [YADA YADA YADA??? forever]". It is an endless line of questioning that goes on in your head when you read something. This is what we are trained to do, so it's normal, but it is an absolute NIGHTMARE when you are trying to finish editing a document as big as this. If you let yourself go on tangents about everything you thought about, wondered about, wanted to analyze, or wanted to summarize when writing your 130-page paper, it could easily become a 1,000-page paper. I'm sure that if I weren't limiting myself, my paper would have easily been 300 pages by now. 1,000 pages isn't that difficult to imagine, either. Luckily there are some unwritten rules for how long the paper should be so the 1,000 pages didn't happen, but it could have. I "settled" for only 130 pages. It's hard to reread my paper at this point because I find myself just wanting to add "one more paragraph" here and there. I need to be cut off!!

I think everyone who goes through graduate school has a personality made up of extreme traits that aren't "normal" for most people, whether it's a highly increased need for achievement, OCD, high intellect, big ego, pressure from parents to enroll, insatiable curiosity to learn things, or inability to let go of being a student forever...the list goes on and on. Whatever it is, I would put money on the fact that most graduate students have at least one trait that is well outside of the norm, or a combination multiple traits that are well above/below average. That's the only explanation for why anyone would "want" to put themselves through this horror. I know I have certainly questioned my sanity throughout the process (and have also questioned the sanity of everyone else who chose to go through graduate school too lol). We are certainly "different" folks. More on this later. :) Haha. 

Back to my point -- it's really an interesting concept when you think about performance from an individual standpoint -- what do I as an employee perceive to be "good enough" versus "good"? And how does that perception of the quality of my performance compare to peer or supervisor ratings of performance? This is something that I have become more interested in, especially after studying performance in recent research. The belief of certain researchers that certain sources of performance ratings (i.e., supervisor) are inherently more accurate ratings of performance. It seems blatantly obvious that they would be more predictive than other sources of ratings such as self or peer ratings because the supervisor is the one rating performance at the end of the year! So of course when you correlate ratings of performance in a research study with actual ratings of performance, it seems really obvious that those ratings would be predictive. That's basically just  a repeated measures design in which the supervisor is just rating performance at two time periods, so of course it makes sense that the ratings are predictive. If the measure is good, the correlation should be very high, well over .7, is what I would predict. So there is some research claiming that supervisors are better sources of performance ratings. Well, that is only true in some cases. If you are predicting in-role performance, then they should be better raters because they are the ones actually giving the true performance rating at the end of the year. But sometimes we're not just interested in performance ratings by the supervisor -- I am interested in what the employee perceives to be good performance. This part of the process is critical because how are you ever going to improve performance if the employee doesn't have a good idea of what good performance is? In a way it seems useless to just evaluate supervisor ratings of performance because what we're really interested in is the discrepancy between what the employee thinks is good performance and what is actually considered good performance by the supervisor. This gets into the performance feedback and performance rating process too, which is something I would like to focus more on as well. Once a year evaluations are not enough, in my opinion. I have ideas for different programs of evaluation. Research idea! 

However, I take an argument with the fact that other types of performance, extra-role performance, may be more accurately assessed through supervisor ratings. From personal experience, I know that my supervisor probably has no clue that I have gone out of my way to help other coworkers, that I've come in early, that I have proposed ideas to help the organization. My supervisor wouldn't actually observe those things because they are not coming across his desk. He might have hear-say experience of some behaviors, like, "She stayed late all night to help me solve this problem!" But if other employees don't report those behaviors, the supervisor is unaware of the true extra-role performance. Peers might have a better idea of some of these extra-role behaviors, but how does one peer really know what all his or her coworkers are doing to help out every other coworker? They don't. In many ways, only you know the true extent of your extra-role performance. I believe that self-report ratings of extra-role performance have some merit, and I would like to investigate this further. I would like to investigate the measurement of extra-role performance more as an area of research. I'm not sure what I would like to investigate, but it's something I want to include in future applied studies. I just got an idea for a study...I wrote it down! I won't detail it here, but it would definitely be interesting. 

My current job could potentially give me access to applied data. Because of my position, I have a good chance of being able to ask to conduct a research survey in the organization. I have a number of ideas that I would like to investigate at work, especially on the populations I work with. This is one reason I am considering sticking around for longer, so that I can do research. But the whole physical sickness thing at work thing is still there...ugh. I don't know what to do. 

Wow, that was a long ramble about performance. Back to work.

Revisions

October 16th, 11:20 am

• Status: 5 of 15 revisions complete.
• One of the changes in progress is that I'm making sure all the citations I used in-text are in my reference section. That is pretty mindless.
• I'm going to buy fast food (the healthier variety) lunch and dinner.
• I plan to be done with 10 of the 15 changes by 2:00.

October 16th, 4:00 pm

• Status: 8 of 15 revisions complete, 2 more revisions are half complete.
• Had some sushi and a spinach salad for lunch, and some more coffee and green tea.
• I'm going to try to make progress on a couple more of the items as I watch some TV and eat dinner, but then I'm going to bed. It should take me about 8 more hours to finish the changes. I could probably finish them all today if I stay up until midnight, but I don't work well in the last half of the day. I wasn't very effective today, but I did get a chunk of the revisions done, so I should feel good about that. 
• I think I was right in that my revisions have taken up about 3 full 8-hour work days to complete. At this point I have spent about 2 full 8-hour days working on the changes, so I still have 1 more 8-hour day to go before finishing. It's amazing how long everything takes...even things you think are minor. Once you start making changes, you notice other changes to be made and then you start fixing nearby paragraphs...pretty soon a 5-minute change turns into 30 minutes. I need to be careful about that. I keep catching myself slipping off task and researching other related things to change, but I keep reminding myself that I only need to change what they required me to change. Just do the required changes first and only come back to additional things I find if I have time.
• I plan to sleep for a while and get up to finish the rest of the changes, sending him the draft by 5 AM PST so that he has it in his inbox at 8 AM EST. The time difference is kind of a killer because I feel like I have to work on east coast time, which means the start of the work day is 5 AM for me. It doesn't work out well when you need to get something to your advisor by 8 AM his time EST -- you pretty much have to get up at 2 in the morning to work on anything. Well, I only have to do that one more day, so I think I can deal with it once more.

I'm struggling to focus. I had another episode of that "falling down" sensation, even though I know I was perfectly balanced. It might be vertigo. All I can think of when I think of vertigo is Lucille 2 from Arrested Development. It's nothing that intense, but it's this falling sensation when your body thinks it's falling when it's not. It's horrible. The only other thing I have experienced that is similar is when I have been really intoxicated (not in a long time, but I still remember the sensation). I mean, really intoxicated, so much that your head is spinning and you can't focus your eyes on anything because the room is spinning. It's kind of like that, but you're perfectly sober and sitting upright in a chair, and it hits you all of a sudden and you start falling out of your chair. It's kind of like the sensation when you're jumping down a flight of stairs in a dream, anticipating hitting the bottom. It's this uncontrollable sensation that gives you the tingles and makes you dizzy. I've only had it happen once today, but in the last week or so it has happened about 5 times.

I'm tired of being fatigued and unable to sleep. Today I have dark circles under my eyes and am extremely pale (I kind of look like a vampire) and I look really sick, I'm having vertigo and sensations of feeling like I'm falling off my chair all of a sudden, eye strain, night terrors, panic attacks, and constant anxiety. That is what the last couple months have done to me! The panic attacks, night terrors, and constant debilitating anxiety subsided once my meeting was over, but the other stuff is still present due to the stress that I'm under. The anxiety isn't overwhelming anymore but I still feel a little anxiety because I still have to finish my revisions before this is all over. I want to be done done, not in limbo like I am. Tomorrow, I should be one step closer to being finished, after I send my final revised draft to my advisor. I'm aiming to send it by 8 AM EST so that he can read it tomorrow and get back to me on it tomorrow. That should allow me to finish my PhD by the end of the work week. Hopefully, all these symptoms I'm having will vanish after this weekend.

Liquid beyond the limit

I have a habit of filling drinking glasses too high. I'm not joking in saying that I do this every day and have spills pretty much at least once a day as a result. Is this something that other people do? Many of my past relationship partners have made fun of me for doing this repeatedly, so I know that it's not a normal thing to do haha. I fill the glass to the top so that the liquid is literally over the top of the rim, balancing by some physical property in a convex fashion over the rim of the glass. I fill the glass with coffee, add the almond milk and soy creamer, and many times the liquid is technically higher than the rim of the glass. I think, "I can fit a little more in there before the glass is full." It's as if I'm playing a childhood game of "fill the glass to the brim" rather than "use the glass to transport liquid to your mouth -- no requirement about filling it to the brim." It doesn't spill until I move it. Then, I move it and it spills. I do this pretty much every day. It's only 7:00 AM and twice this morning I have had to wipe up spilled liquid, once with each glass of coffee that I made myself.

This simple repeated act is analogous to my life as a whole. I fill my life too full and I spill. I am brave for trying to be so bold and daring; daring and confident enough that I think I can just get a little more liquid into the glass. Bold enough to push the boundaries. Daring to try to use the tool to its maximum. Confident enough to think that I can fit so much into my glass of life. But I am also constantly cleaning up my messes, a byproduct of my bravery. The spills of my life as a whole have been both physical and mental over the years: Spills of anxiety about not being able to get everything done, spills of feelings of inadequacy for being human and not being able to handle more than what is humanly possible to accomplish, spills of sadness about the liquid that was spilled and lost during the process (i.e., the experiences that spilled out of my life and I couldn't accomplish due to not enough time), and spills of exhaustion and fatigue from trying to push my body to its limits.

You would think that I would learn that it's easy enough to just go back for a refill on whatever I'm drinking, but I haven't learned that lesson yet. I am 30 and still doing this. In my life as a whole I have been getting better about this -- slowly reducing the amount of responsibilities that I have to focus on so that I can do a better job of focusing on the ones I'm engaged in. I have improved this part of my life greatly over the past year. I realized that I was pushing myself too hard and that I didn't think my body could handle it much longer, so I stopped pouring the activities into my life. I took a leave of absence from work so that I could focus on finishing the PhD. I have made many choices that equate to not filling my life so fully, and this change has mostly occurred over the past year or two. It has been a conscious effort and struggle to refrain from following my heart's desires (desires that have often lead to me filling my life too full). [Nerd alert: I almost edited the previous sentence to say "hearts' desires" because for a split second I thought I had two hearts. Doctor Who has two hearts because people of his species naturally have two hearts. Nerd!! Hahahh]

But there have also been rewards from the bold confidence in my abilities. I have been satisfied by having done so many fun and rewarding things, experiencing so much of life by the time I was 30, receiving a dual major Bachelor's and a PhD, and having been selected for my achievements. As I summarized in a recent post, my life has been very active and I have had SO many fun adventures that it's kind of insane. I can't believe I have been able to put so much liquid in one glass, or one life. My boldness to push the limits has caused some great spills of mental anguish over the years, but has also lead to great satisfaction and enjoyment as a result of continually trying to fill my life to the brim.

"It's all over"

Someday Nintendo will be viewed as archaic. An ancient artifact, a byproduct of the beginning of the technological era surrounding the birth of my generation. I can't believe it. I am both excited and scared for what could potentially come next. Excited because I love games, scared because I have seen the infiltration of devices into children's lives and I feel strongly that it threatens developmental processes, cognition, and safety (e.g., texting while driving). Just another reason to buy a self-sustaining farmhouse in the country and live outside of the city! I am both repelled by and love the city life. A topic for later.

My main reason for writing today is to continue the open dialogue with myself that I have on this site. I feel that by writing "out loud", such as in an internet journal, that you have a more externally reflective voice than you would otherwise if you wrote in an offline and hard copy journal. I find the two experiences--online and offline journaling--to be distinct experiences. Writing by pen requires a lot more time and can be potentially take more than three times longer to write. I did a little sample and it took me 20 seconds to write one sentence, which would lead to an estimated 42 wpm if I were writing continuously. But of course you don't write continuously, you pause to think. Whereas an online journal lets you write about 110 words a minute. and you don't have to pause as much because if you are a fast typist because your typing can keep much better pace with the actual speeds of thoughts going through your head. You don't have to stop to process as much--you can just transcribe verbatim the ocean of thoughts in your head. You might only capture a small river of thoughts with an online journal, but with an offline journal you capture even less -- maybe just a stream's worth.

However, I find offline writing to be much more reflective and meaningful, partially due to the slow writing producing more conscious and well-thought out comments. In a way, it is a form of focused attention and meditation in that as you are writing you are thinking about that sentence and the next sentence, but nothing else. Then you pause and think about what to say next. You cannot proceed with the next sentence until you decide what to say. It focuses your thoughts and constrains your attention to your current consciousness. It slows you down.

Offline journaling is also a lot more personal because you can say whatever you want offline. In this journal, I know that people could potentially read it, so I refrain from saying many personal things. I intend to start writing offline again. I feel that writing in my journal throughout my entire life was a major source of strength and confidence for me before I quit doing it. I have felt out of touch with myself in the last few years due to recent life experiences, but perhaps also because I have stopped offline journaling. I switched to writing online journaling around 2005 when I started graduate school, mostly because of the need to be efficient and write quickly. I now believe that stopping the offline journal writing in 2005 was one of the major factors that contributed to my feeling out of touch with myself over the past few years. I will begin again.

I have been existing in limbo for the last week. I've done some errands, went to 7 doctor appointments in the last week, paid some bills, and things like that, but I haven't done much more. I have been working on making corrections to my final manuscript and also doing other administrative tasks required of graduation. I have been semi-productive, but not as much as I would like. I have gone on a couple walks (very proud for doing so when I didn't feel like moving). My sleep was good for ~4 days after my meeting, but has declined. Not quite sure the cause, but it probably has to do with me staying up late because I've been playing Skyrim. :)

Today is the final day to work on this draft. I told my advisor that I would send him the revised draft today. I made a list of 18 things that I needed to fix on this final draft before I could resubmit it to him. Many of them are just small fixes that the committee thought would improve the reader's understanding of particular points I was trying to make, but some of them are additions that require more than just a couple minutes of corrections. Four of the things were my suggestions based on things I noticed after rereading my draft over the past month and the rest are suggestions that the committee made during my meeting. Here are the 18 final changes that I need to make:

• 2 general changes (check for typos, fix confusing sentences)
• 5 fixes of errors (e.g., reformat table alignment, correct some citations)
• 6 clarifications to existing content (e.g., explain why excluded a subsample, explain what a high score on one variable means)
• 5 additions of new information (e.g., add paragraph of support for sampling method)

The last 2 bullet points are really the only things I consider "changes" that came as a result of my meeting. The other things are just typos and error fixes. So really there are about 11 tweaks that the committee suggested.

I have already finished 4 of the 18 changes. The majority of the rest of them will be quick fixes requiring 5-30 minutes to fix. A few of them, maybe four, are more intense and will probably require 1-2 hours each. Here is my plan for today:

• 6:30a - 4 out of 18 complete
• 10:30a - 11 out of 18 complete
• 12:00a - 13 out of 18 complete
• 2:00p - 16 out of 18 complete
• 4:00p - 18 out of 18 complete
• 5:00p - list of changes and final draft sent to advisor
• 7:00p - send 8 e-mails requesting permission to republish survey items in appendices

I know that the changes will make my paper better in the long run, but I'm so tired of working on this that I am annoyed by all of them (even though from an objective perspective I agree with them). I mean, I know that you need to fix typos, clarify confusing points, etc. before you publish it. I get that. I'm just so plain tired of working on this. Once I send this to my advisor today, I need to get to work requesting copyright permission (that I should have started requesting earlier), fixing the formatting of the paper according to guidelines, checking once again that my data are correct, checking for typos, and preparing the paper to publish. I will also have to make any final corrections that my advisor finds as he reads this last draft. If it goes well, he will just say, "I checked that you did all your revisions. I found a couple errors -- fix those errors and then submit the paper to be published, I don't need to see it again." That is usually what he says when I'm TRULY on my last draft. So, I will make any other changes (if any) that he founds from this draft, and prepare to submit the manuscript for publication by the end of the work week. 

I am really trying to get the draft submitted and all paperwork completely finished by Friday evening. My trip to Portland got pushed to this weekend, so I hope to have everything totally finished and sent off before I have to see anyone this weekend. I have a hair appointment on Friday and am planning to have dinner with my family during the weekend, so I really want to say that I'm totally done by the time I see them. "It's all over." Those will be the words that I and everyone else who knows me have been waiting to hear since 2005. If I keep my act together this week, this chapter of my life will be totally done by the end of the work week. I only have a couple more days left. I really only have today left as far as hard work goes, because tomorrow and Friday will just be spent checking for typos, fixing formatting issues, and fixing the document for online publication along with the library's help. Those are relatively easy fixes to make.

On another note related to adventures (that's what this journal is about, right?) :-), I don't know what my trip plans are for this month. My friend can't go with me out of the country, so I'm reconsidering the trip to Mexico. I have been feeling so bad physically that I'm considering just staying at home and sleeping and playing video games until I have to start work again. I need a serious break from life for a while to rest and recover. I may just take a week to do nothing but sit on the couch, cook healthy foods, start going to the gym every morning, and catch up on sleep and life. I may go out of town for a while, but only locally or to California. Who knows. I'll figure it out this weekend after I'm done with my entire PhD and have a moment to myself.

Rolling along

Trying to maintain productivity is difficult! I've been getting stuff done though. I closed my human review board account (for my survey), made some corrections to my paper yesterday, and did some errands. I'm just trying to tell myself that I need to keep checking things off my list and keep moving from 9:00-5:00 each day. I have lots of errands to do, doctor visits, mail, e-mails, bills, etc. that I need to start getting caught up on too. When I feel too tired or demotivated to keep doing stuff, I just tell myself, "You just have to keep busy until 5:00. Just do SOMETHING until 5:00." I've been letting myself start by making some of the easier changes that I need to make to my dissertation, rather than the hard ones, because it helps to get started if you feel you are making progress. There's always that debate about "should I start with the say stuff or with the hard stuff", but pretty consistently I feel that I just don't end up getting started if I force myself to start with the hard stuff. I feel like starting with the hard stuff is too much of a roadblock to getting started. So go ahead, start with the easy stuff--the low-hanging fruit! At least you're getting some of it done that way.

I've been getting a median of 8.5 hours of sleep each night since Friday night. That's a huge improvement!

I'm going to Portland this weekend to see a couple people and to get my hair cut. I hope I'm at a place by then where I can feel comfortable telling people that I'm done with school. I want to be at that point, but I don't think I'll feel there until I get my revisions done. Some of the revisions are easier than others, but really it's only about a full week's worth of revisions. One day for formatting and typo checks, one day for typical writing editing, and about 3 days of revisions to the content.

I think I'm going on vacation for 14 days :). That's the first and only time I've gone on my own vacation with absolutely nothing to do except write my novel and read books while sitting on my balcony overlooking the ocean. :)

Ahhh...I can't wait to finish these changes...I'm really looking forward to planning some winter trips and next year's Hawaii trip too, and preparing to get a puppy in the next few months.

Plot development

My view earlier today. The weather goes through an amazing series of changes each day, and this was just one of them. I have a mind to set up a tripod on my deck and take a picture every 30 minutes or so when the weather changes. It would be an amazing collage of different images. I loved the rainbow in the picture above :)

Will write more later. I tried to recover this weekend. Took a little time off, did a couple errands, trying to get back on a normal schedule. I should be back up and running tomorrow. I need to be. I need to get my changes finished in one week and be done with this so that I can go on a trip! I think I might go for 10 days :)

Plot development...of my book and my life

Also starting to write my fiction novel a little more. I need to sit down and do some planning of it. L reminded me of the National Novel Writing Month soon -- maybe I'll do that this year! It would motivate me to work on this every day. I need to get some plot outlines and things like that going. Right now I'm just writing different chapters from different characters' points of views, just to see what comes out. It turns out that I like one of my characters more than the original main character, so I think I might have her be my main heroine. It's kind of like doing a test drive for characters. I've sketched out all my character groups, but not my main characters, so now I think I am ready to build the story.

I need a little rest and relaxation and recovery, but for now, working 8 hour-days again is nice enough. After I'm done, I need a serious meditation retreat with myself. I need to reconsider what I want out of life. I feel a bit like I just emerged from digging out of a hole for 8 years and now I'm looking around, wondering what to do. Do I still like the same things? (of course I do, I'm just expressing my state of general confusion and disorientation for the time being) What do I do with my life? (clearly, take a vacation and go back to my job that is waiting for me, but still...I mean bigger picture what do I want to do with my life?)

No matter what I decide, it sure is nice to be able to look outside at that view all day. I really appreciate it and it makes me smile every time I look up. :)

Doctor Nerd

PhD Update

A quick update: I passed! I passed my meeting, with conditions of making certain changes to my 130-page manuscript. I plan to take this entire week to make the revisions, edit for any last confusing sentences (I found a couple after taking a couple weeks of break from the paper and then rereading it again), typos, formatting, etc. I will send the final draft to my advisor next week and he'll review it one final time to make sure I made all the revisions we agreed upon, and then he'll send in the paperwork to the college that says I passed. After that, I just need to get the paper into the correct online publishing format and submit it online to the college, and then I'm done. You have to pay for it to be microfiched, take a long survey on your doctorate experience, submit your paper online, and then you're done.

I don't think I'll feel truly done until the day I submit my final paper to the library online and get confirmation that they received it, but I feel SO different now. I felt so different immediately after the meeting. I felt FREE. I felt instantly like a new person, even though I haven't finished all the paperwork and revisions. I feel different. That was my last hurdle and now I just have to turn in the paperwork over the next 2 weeks or so. I feel FREE! On the flight back we were having some pretty moderate-severe turbulence (we flew out as the winter storm Atlas was building in severity, and we flew over the storm for most of the flight so it was really bumpy)...but I kept telling myself..."You got a PhD" and it would take my mind off the turbulence and make me feel better.

I don't like saying I have a PhD because it's not final and I still have to submit my stuff to the college, but in just a few weeks that will be done. My advisor and I are aiming to get the final draft published by October 23, which means on October 23rd I'll really be done with it all. I'm kind of hoping I can get it done earlier, like the 18th, but we'll see how it goes.

He did also mention that I might have a chance at publishing it, so I think I will try to do that if I have a chance. I don't really care if I publish in a B or C journal because I want to work in an applied setting and I don't care to go down the tenure track, so it's not as critical to me.

I feel so free it's incredible. We flew back into Seattle and it was clear sky and a PERFECT landing. I couldn't even tell we were moving for the last 30 minutes -- that's how smooth it was. It was night so we got to see the lights of the city, no clouds (the storm Atlas had hit Seattle a few days earlier so it was gone), and it was very pleasant. Now I'm sitting in my apartment with a view, it's a totally clear day and I can see Puget Sound, the Olympics, and some other landmarks. The trees are changing color so it looks absolutely gorgeous. I went outside on my deck for a bit and sat in the sun looking out at the view. Here is the view I'm enjoying:

I feel slightly recovered after last week, but I expect it's going to take about a week to recover fully. I slept about 8.5 hours the last 2 nights so that's a good start, but I need more. Today I feel the most excited and free that I've felt in nearly 8 years. I started writing some more of my fiction novel on the plane home and had fun with it. Today I got more excited about being able to work on it some more. I really want to self-publish it, just for the fun of it. I don't really care about marketing it or being serious about it, I am just having fun creating an alternate universe.

Nerd Status?

I finished watching Portlandia Season 3 yesterday. I loved it. It's really accurate and makes me laugh a lot -- even more than the previous seasons, which were very sketch comedy. I like sketch comedy, but typically it provides a more intellectual kind of satisfaction than laughter. Creative and accurate and funny, but less "laugh out loud" funny. Season 3 is definitely more "laugh out loud" funny. One of the episodes was a public service announcement from the Portland Nerd Council about real nerds versus fake nerds. The nerd in there says that he watches Star Trek TNG and plays Skyrim...and as I have recently rewatched TNG and was playing Skyrim right before I watched that episode, I started to reflect about myself. I started to wonder, what makes you a real nerd? Do you have to be fat? Do you have to be shy? Do you have to be male? I think the old stereotype was that you did have to be male, unsocial, and unattractive. As I started to reassess my "nerd factor" and the fact that I believe "nerdiness" is much more pro-women these days, I started to run down the list of what I think pushes me over the border into nerd-dom. Here are some of the indicators that led me to conclude that I'm a nerd:

• I wear one ring every day. And by that I mean that I wear The One Ring, like, the one that was forged in Mount Doom by the Dark Lord. That one ring, inscriptions on it and all. 
• I've built my own computer
• I love RPGs
• I own a tabletop role playing game
• I own an RPG dice set and a leather pouch to carry them in
• I played WoW for about 4 years...I can't even remember how long. The amount of time spent playing the game was utterly shameful
• I am writing a fantasy/science fiction novel for kicks
• I wear a doctor who and a unicorn shirt on a regular basis
• My phone cover is a TARDIS and my ringtone is the Game of Thrones theme
• I have been playing video games since around 2nd grade, starting with Doom and Indiana Jones, among many others
• I still believe that Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still the best game of all time
• I get more excited about playing a game or going to renaissance faires than I do about seeing my family
• One of the most exciting moments of the past few days was buying my avatar a house in Skyrim
• I like dressing up for costume parties more than I like going to non-costume parties
• I have a PhD (in 2 weeks) and I read scientific journals for fun in my spare time
• Finally...a game. Can you find the 3 nerdy parts of my car?

Of course there are many other things I've done in my life that make me nerdy, but I think those are some of the biggest indicators I can think of at the moment. I mean, of COURSE I love Harry Potter, Star Wars, and one of my favorite authors is Philip K. Dick. So at what point do you become a nerd? I dunno. Are you a nerd? What makes you a nerd? I think there are a variety of types of nerds. Let us all take a moment to reflect on our nerd status based on this important public service announcement by the Portland Nerd Council :)

Peppermint tea

I've been watching the weather trying to figure out if flights will be cancelled tomorrow. It looks like I may have a chance at getting out on time, due to my location. I don't fancy the idea of trying to take off in wind gusting up to 30 to 40 mph on the ground, let alone who knows what in the jet stream. So I've also been watching the wind forecasts. I like flying better in the day time, in low wind, nonstop, and when landings are smooth (I think this is typically in the winter when there is less humidity at the ground? Dunno). I like to try to make things easier on myself when I'm doing something I don't like to do (flying), so typically I try to choose those options. I'm so glad I spent the extra $200 for 2 nonstop flights.

When I was even more afraid of flying as a teenager and young adult, I also used to fly first class in a coping mechanism that I like to call "classical conditioning". I pampered myself in first class, with calming drugs (legal), and all the food and (free) drinks I wanted in first class. That way, I sort of came to think, "Hmm, flying's not all bad!" And it got easier for me from there on out. It was very smart and effective of me. I also learned that you just need to let go and focus on something else like writing something -- it can't be reading, it has to be something to take your FULL attention like reading mathematical formulas or doing analysis on SPSS. This time around I was reading about squared semipartial correlations in determining effect size of interaction effects. It took my mind off of the flight. Another strategy I use is imagining how much smoother the flight is than many roads -- bumps in the air are just "air gravel", as I refer to them in my head. When we have turbulence I just repeat, "Air gravel. Air gravel." A final thing I'll mention is that I tell myself, "This is so fun! This is fun." Whenever I start to get scared. Even though I don't believe it, I try to take a page out of the smile literature that says you can increase your mood by just smiling -- the old theory that emotion is caused by interpretations of your behaviors (and in my case, my thoughts). You see yourself smiling, so you interpret that you must be happy. I hear myself saying this is fun, and I interpret that maybe I am having fun! It seems to be doing good things for me.

Back to today. I've made some good choices today:

• Slept in for another 1.5 hours this morning, longer than I was planning to.
• Twice I chose not to get calorie-laden beverages that sounded amazing (a variety of seasonal flavored lattes that sound amazing and have whipped cream).
• Picked up healthy food for dinner and breakfast tomorrow from the grocery store rather than eating out (which had been my plan). Got a ready-made spinach salad with cranberries, glazed pecans, feta, and balsamic. Some curry cashews, and a banana. Got Greek yogurt, Amy's tofu/pea/rice meal, and a bowl of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries for breakfast.
• Took a 45-minute nap tonight which I awoke from feeling surprisingly awake and good.
• Went back to coffee shop to keep on track so I can study for about 4 more hours tonight.
• Picked up my parking permit for tomorrow so that I don't have to worry about that before my meeting tomorrow.

I will probably take a long nap tonight, based on how awake I'm feeling. I don't really feel tired. I wonder what I did during the nap that made me feel so good. Usually I feel really groggy after naps. I guess I picked the right amount of time.

The only bad thing right now is that I feel this very strong squeezing in the bottom of my throat, below the collarbone. It comes on all of a sudden and usually stays for 15 minutes to a couple hours. It's incredibly distracting because it feels like you're choking or like something's blocking your throat. It's these waves of intense squeezing. I don't know what causes it. The only thing I've ever noticed as a potential cause would be eating too quickly. I'm a really slow eater naturally. I ate my dessert tonight quickly because it is quiet like a library in here and I wanted to get it over with so I didn't bother the people here, so I ate quicker than normal. I wonder if that's what caused it... Well, it's been going on a while so I have an appointment for a procedure to get it looked at later this month so hopefully they'll rule out anything that could be problematic.