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.