Tempest
by phill
photo credit: launceston_lad
A week from
yesterday, I will be on a four-month deadline to finish my thesis. It seems apt, coming less than a week after the storm you may have heard about. The storm was a rebirth after one of the driest (or perhaps the absolute driest?) Summer we’ve had on record. So, too, is this deadline. It marks the end of the three years that were given to me at the start of my PhD. Everything from here on in is a bonus.
What this means is that from the 4th of April, I’m going underground. Radio silence. I’m uninstalling my I.M. programs, deleting echofon, and blocking every website I’ve ever procrastinated on for more than five minutes. And yes, that includes Google Docs. No writing unless it’s in a file ending with *.tex. I think I’m heading back into the ideas phase of my writing cycle, which is convenient. I’ve completed (or very nearly completed) half-a-dozen short stories in the last month or so, and found initial markets to submit them to, so going back to jotting notes in my little black book isn’t going to seem like a waste of motivation. Luckily this coincides with Perth’s weather shifting to being a bit milder; my shorts can’t fit my notebook in them comfortably.
I guess the take home message is that if you don’t hear from me, don’t panic. I’m okay, but this is essentially the set-up for the next decade or so of my life I’m trying to bash out. If I finish my thesis early–and this the primary goal I am trying to achieve by going dark–I’ll be able to pour my efforts into producing a publishable paper, which is something I’ve yet to do. And in scientific research, papers are everything. Your rank as a scientist is measured entirely in terms of how many people have read and referenced your work. As far as I can tell, nothing else is relevant. The maxim is ‘publish or perish’. It doesn’t even really seem to matter if you split a piece of research over multiple papers just to increase your numbers. However, my feelings on that particular practise, and the game of research in general, are for another blog post.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I might be putting together another UtW soon on some snippets that have been floating around. Besides that I’ll try to continue commenting on people’s blogs, but if this experiment is going to work, even that activity will be sporadic and controlled.
Wish me luck, y’all.
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Comments
Good luck my child.
Good Luck! I will probably be following you-although I plan on about 5 days without internet per week-working in places without it to get some serious work done. Best of luck to you!
Thanks guys, really appreciate the well wishes. (:
“Storm”. Pff.
Don’t forget to uninstall ICQ. I know how often you use that. Don’t forget also that nothing really matters and regardless how this paper turns out, we’ll still be BFFs.
Big hugs sailor matey, will chat after you un-batten the hatches. <3
Cheers matey. Yeah, it’s going to be pretty rough. I’ll still try and hit up gtalk through gmail every now and again, and that whole telephone thing, yeah. I won’t disappear completely. Just mostly.
….mostly. <3
That “y’all” at the end of your note reminded me of my own Texas writing! May I say that you’re doing exactly the right thing–you’re getting your focus. That guarantees your success. Ride the wave.
Good luck!! Twitter will miss you.