Tuesday, September 29, 2009

being summonsed

after yesterday's emailing with supervisors, they want a face-to-face meeting as soon as i'm back from melbourne. hmm... i don't know what to make of this. i think it could one of the following:

a) they think i'm crazy / not coping
b) one of them wants to bow out
c) they want to make sure i will show up for my review
d) they want to counsel me through 'my issues'
e) all of the above

i think i'll do some more writing and reply later. the chapter is actually coming along okay, though will not be complete by thursday. i'm having fantasies of it being beyond brilliant and making them fall over themselves, realising that i do have a sense of what i'm doing. as usual, such fantasy keeps me going.

an excerpt from my email of yesterday (about as close as i got to saying 'fuck you'):

I'm tired and in need of a break, hence the trip to Melbourne where I can be with friends and family, refresh, and gain perspective. I'm not offering this as an excuse, but sharing it because this is where my priority lies (in my health and relationships, not my thesis), and therefore this impacts upon my 'output'...


can't wait til friday, victoria, the house by the beach.

Monday, September 28, 2009

i want a divorce

i feel kind kinda knotted at the moment. caffeinated, tired (exhausted even), and wanting to cry or scream or both.

my supervisors keep wanting me to write for them. i don't write for them, i write for me. i want to tell them to fuck off.

yesterday morning, in bed, i wrote a zine. see, i'm productive. but i don't produce for them. and that's the problem. they think i'm difficult. i am difficult. but they don't like that. fuck them.

grr... i had such plans today to write, to make headway into this chapter which is thus far only a bunch of notes and thoughts churning away inside me. and this is what they want. but now they've contributed to my angst. my paralysis set off by their guilt-inducing emails.

i just composed a response and read over it several times to tone down my angst. i told them i'm tired. i wanted to say "leave me the fuck alone".

supervision and me are incompatible. i make zines. and words. and things. and none of this needs supervision. well it hasn't so far. and i don't care if it's judged to be no good. if it makes me feel good then it's good. like my writings, my friends, the things i do.

this may not make sense. bah.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

108 steps of boredom

thursday and i'm tired and it's dark. just finished teaching, feeling all abuzz, workshopping my performance in my head as i climb the stairs from the quad to the library. a guy next to me grumbles: "too many stairs. 108." i'm impressed that he has counted them - the stairs i climb on most days. he tells me it's due to boredom.

it's a nice interruption to my thoughts. we part ways. i climb more stairs towards my desk. i count 43. that's 151 steps on my journey to this desk, chair, computer, headspace.

is each one a step or a stair? it seems it's a step, a stair being the entire block of steps. well that's what one dictionary tells me. and now i can't remember if he said steps or stairs. i may have misquoted. ah, technicalities. it's been an afternoon of those.

we talked about religions: islamic, christian and jewish. too much time spent on clarifying distinctions between them. and then a slightly dodgy discussion on Islamic 'veiling' practices. and then time was up before i fully redeemed the conversation. or maybe that's not my job anyway. sigh. why the fuck am i teaching this, stressing about this, reading up on this? i sometimes forget i'm just a lowly tutor. give me my money so i can go and get pissed. oh yeah, i'm supposed to be writing a thesis. all the more reason to get pissed.

and now i have 2 weeks without classes and readings and marking. 2 weeks of thesis-only, of making up for the last 3 weeks of not writing very much. it all starts tomorrow. 151 steps a day.