the whininess is endless (i.e. self-indulgent crap alert, level 5)

i wish i knew why i'm doing this (i.e. the whole postgrad shennanigans)

let's look at history for a bit. end of undergrad felt very burnt out, insecure, uncertain, grouchy. kinda fell over at the end of semester with not handing in a whole bunch of stuff for 2 subjects and hiding in my bed for a couple of months. (thankfully, had spent previous semesters building up gpa and had at least one very marvellous lecturer for one of those subjects, so still passed and did okay). (ps. would love to say that Tracey broke my brain, but it's probably not true).

honours was a fucking mess from start to finish (see all the whining i did between 02 and mid 03). 03 was, for the most part, an utter bastard of a year that broke my brain in a few new places and turned me into a shambling depressive. mostly because balancing avoidance and rationalisation against manic work periods is really a weak point for me and to endlessly repeat the same mistakes makes me a miserable bugger. inert and awful. the difference between pulling that shit in undergrad and in honours was that a) timelines in undergrad were shorter so it was generally harder to feel so far behind b) by the end of 3 years of a BA, i had been in school or uni for 15 years straight. i took some time off before honours and it was like being out of condition going back in, i couldn't rely on just being able to fill my head with ideas and spit out 5000 words a day of reasonable quality thesis. this rattled me more than i think i was admitting at the time.

and now i'm doing a phd. i got really angry at a friend a couple of years ago for doing his 3.5 years on scholarship and then dropping out when the money did. i got on various high horses about that money coming from the taxpayer as well as other people needing the scholarship more but having to work their way through while he just cynically took the money.

to be completely honest, i applied for this scholarship because i was on the dole at the time and not sure what next. i accepted it because a) i wasn't sure what i was going to do after my contract ran out anyway, b) i was working in admin and worried about spending the rest of my working life being treated like an idiot (yes, i do realise that there is not a little ego in that), c) it seemed to be what people expected, d) it is really a pretty good opportunity that doesn't crop up every day.

but just because it's a good opportunity doesn't mean that it's right for me.

but if i spent the energy i do worrying about these things and fighting myself on actually getting things done, i wouldn't have all this anxiety and guilt.

i worried about this whole thing somehow being cursed. both supervisors have had various medical problems since the start of the year, i had a car oopsie when i drove down to the uni, and have had a recurrence of nasty woogly eye and nastier antibiotics. but i'm just finding excuses here.

the very shabby thing is that i think my main motivations behind thoughts of quitting this have really been because i haven't been holding up my end of the agreement and i would rather hide than have to work through it. this is all avoidance.