I've updated the progress meter in the sidebar to be out of a more realistic 100,000 words, rather than the 56,000 or so I will likely need for my finished draft. My progress goes less quickly (and hence is a bit less inspiring for me to watch) with this method, but it's more likely to be an accurate measure.
Making slightly more progress here at the end of the week, but still disappointing overall. It's not writer's block, exactly - more like "dissertator's paralysis."
Also, the writing meter refers to total draft pages written; I'll need to add another meter for finished, or at least edited, pages. But - there's some progress there, yessiree.
Today, I intended to work from home in the morning, and to spend the afternoon helping someone move. When I checked my email this morning, though, it turned out that she didn't need help today after all. Which should have been great, because that left me more time to work.
Instead, though, it sent me into a downward spiral of procrastination and no work. Probably because I felt like I had lots of time, and hadn't left the house. Sigh.
And then, what was to be a slow-cooked chili ended up not, so much, because the stupid burners on my stupid stove don't stay plugged in (or connected or whatever). Grr. Not loving the electric stove just now. Or ever, really.
So, I'm back from a truly wonderful Thanksgiving weekend (though Victor lost a day to food poisoning - BOO). (Photos here.)
Victor convinced me to go in to the office with him more frequently, which so far has been awesome. I have an actual deadline coming up - I promised my dissertation buddy I'd get a new chapter to her by the 8th - so I'm particularly motivated right now. Also, I'm working on having a more consistent schedule, because that's been the most productive strategy for me so far.
I'm tracking what's working and what's not in my daily freewriting, which has turned out to be wonderfully useful. My basic schedule involves writing my own stuff (arguments, questions, insights) while I'm at SP during the day (I mentally refer to this as "BS writing" - hehe) and then writing material directly from my primary sources while I'm at home in the evening (my mental tag for that writing is "skeleton writing," because it provides the structure but none of the meat).
So far, part one of that plan's been working pretty well - years of graduate education have given me the ability to spin out my own thoughts and arguments pretty much endlessly - but the second part has yet to actually happen. I might end up having skeleton writing just take place on the weekends, so that I don't need to worry about writing at night when I get home. We will see.
So, instead of actually posting interesting things as they happen, here's a short summary:
Dissertation:
Recreation:Intermittently, both good and terrible. The days that I actually bring myself to work on it are awesome. But there are at least as many days where I don't quite manage to do anything dissertation-related at all. Those days suck, not least because I procrastinate by beating myself up about not having gotten anything done. It makes for a fun cycle, especially if by "fun" you mean "hellish and demoralizing."
So obviously the ratio of days worked to days spent agonizing about my lack of progress needs to change. The good news is that having an office all of my own at Victor's workplace is working out fabulously, and has led to nearly all of my productive days. I need to find a rhythm that will work for me at home, too - I just started a long-distance writing group with a friend from grad school, so hopefully that will help.
Food!:Victor's dad was here a few weeks ago for the Earshot Jazz Festival. We only got to talk to him briefly, but it was fun (as always) to hear him play, and it was nice to see him.
My friend and former co-worker Tom was in town for a conference just after that. I played hostess, and acted like I know something about Seattle and showed him around the city. It was a blast, and reminded me that I actually am getting to know Seattle, at least a bit.
Davin was in town the weekend after that (documented on my flickr page, and more extensively by Aaron). It was uber-fun, and they actually convinced me to sing some karaoke. We also went to Bainbridge Island, which is one of the Seattle places I really wanted to visit while the weather was still good this fall. So, I can check that off the list ;-)
I went for a ride on Saturday with the Cascade Bike Club. I was a little worried about my ability to keep up, but as it turned out we did a very easy 20 miles and I barely broke a sweat. Also, it was a much flatter route than I had feared - biking up the hills here still completely winds me. I'm planning to keep working on the hills around my house (which, truly, are massive), and also do some longer rides with them on the weekends.
Sit & Knit Tuesdays at the Fiber Gallery continue to be fun - and are a big part of feeling like I'm settling in here. It's a fun group - so fun, in fact, that I just signed up for some classes at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat with them. It will be a weekend of knitting geekery, for sure.
So, now that I'm all caught up, perhaps I will be magically transformed into a regular poster. If not, just imagine that I'm too hard at work on the dissertation to have time to post (even though I'll probably be surfing videos on YouTube).Haven't tried many new restaurants, although we did find an excellent dim sum place (I don't even like shrimp, normally, but have been craving their honey shrimp ever since we had brunch there).
We went back to Macrina, which I enjoyed a hell of a lot more than I did last time (which was during the Terrible Flu in June, while I couldn't smell or taste). We probably should just stick to their bakery items, which require less waiting and are phenomenal (as opposed to their sit down brunch, which requires a lot of patience and is just good).
We re-visited the Malay Satay Hut, which continues to be tasty.
Also, I've been cooking up a storm, and actually baking (just muffins, but still). Our freezer is filled with lost of tasty goodness, so when (hopefully) I'm too engrossed in dissertating to take time out to cook, we won't simply be eating take-out every night.
So, it's been a good couple of days: lots of hanging out, followed by lots of productive work. Also, people in Seattle have been so consistently nice here, it just blows me away. Minnesota has nothing on Seattle, folks. I kid you not.
Anyway, I'm tired and really, truly, for reals, going to go to bed somewhat early and start catching up on some sleep. Tonight will be the night!
So, today the "working at Victor's office" experiment began in earnest, and all I can really say is that this is the awesome-est, best idea ever. I worked a full day, with time out for what will likely be by new gym here in Bellevue. I read a bit of one of my "core" secondary sources, but mainly used RefWorks+ JSTOR to locate references for the two chapters I'm working on. Damn, I have a lot of reading to do!
Today was a productive day... just not so much in terms of my dissertation. Several medical-type appointments (nothing major - a teeth cleaning here, some dental x-rays there, etc.), and loads of errand-running.
The Prius will finally be going to the body shop tomorrow a.m. to have the damage inflicted on it by the car movers repaired. This is awesome, but it means we'll be totally car-less for the remainder of the week (if we are lucky, we'll have the car back on Friday). So: lots of errands. A whole week's worth, in fact.
And now it's bedtime, so all updates (exciting and otherwise) will have to wait 'til tomorrow. G'night!
I ended up spending most of today hanging out with Tom, a friend and former co-worker from the U of M. We walked around downtown and the market in a vaguely touristy way. I remembered a few times that I'd planned to take pictures.
Then I had a longish wait for the bus to get home, and ended up making some really useful progress on figuring how to approach the dissertation, esp. with regard to secondary reading/research that's chapter-specific. How to handle the secondary sources for individual chapters has been a tough problem for me to tackle because of the structure of my dissertation, and it's something I've been putting off all month.
My dissertation is going to be a collection of essays, essentially, which all focus on a central topic. Each chapter looks at a different time period and body of historiography (for instance, the third chapter is about the 1920s and 30s, when the Harvey Company branched out into "Indian Detours" and the secondary sources for that chapter deal with the history of tourism in the Southwest). [For an overview of the Harvey Company, see this wikipedia article; I don't entirely agree with its presentation, but until I write my own overview... it's what I have to link to ;-]
I'd been going around in circles with regard to secondary lit., because my dissertation touches on too many fields for me to do a full lit. review in the introduction as is typical. My solution is simple (and, ok, fairly obvious) - I'll footnote a short lit review for each chapter in each chapter, as appropriate. I'm not entirely clear on why, but I feel much much better about actually starting to review my secondary research now. Whew.
