http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HREgMeDSqCc

The Weather is Here--Jimmy Buffet....now this is THE SONG!!!


"he worked hard all year just wanted a few weeks alone...the weather is here, I wish you were beautiful...my job is too dutiful..." about a businessman that runs off to the islands!

BOAT Drinks...now I am smiling again and its a step towards a better mood than crying in your beer music of John Prine!

Those are some good perspectives...sometimes just knowing you are not really stuck, only as stuck as you let yourself be, is important in changing how you feel.

In the land of the big roads, Missouri, the winters are nearly as long as the roads are big, bringing on the inevitable cabin fever, and the need to play nothing but Jimmy Buffet songs on the juke box in local honky tonk bars ( another reason to do a PhD in Missouri as opposed to anywhere else!!!!!) while drinking a lot of Coors Light...I have just found my favourite surviving winter song--well second favourite, A Pirate Looks at Forty--the other one..I have to think a minute to get the name of it...BOAT DRINKS!!!! but a pirate looks at forty--well, he wonders if his "occupational hazard is his occupations just not around..."

I am just sitting here wondering WHY try to compete ( in my case that is)--it just seems so futile a waste of energy--for what??! I am the classic over-achiever--give me some task to do that is too hard and too challenging, and I will succeed! which is a burden as much as it is a gift...because it is hard to unlearn a lifetime of responding to the challenge in front of me, in fact thinking I have no choice but to tackle it.

But I don't HAVE to. Its OK to not do it. It is hard to get away from a lifetime of thinking in a certain groove though. Being an over achiever is its own private hell, when "more is not enough".

Thanks for the words of empathy, Smilodon! Oh, I agree, its not enough socialising--not nearly--and agreed too, Hypothesis, that a guided walk is not really socialising as such--but its just one of my attempts to do SOMETHING even when what I would prefer is not on. I try to find something to do besides sit and look at footnotes and articles! If you each want to check the PMs on the "other forum"--

Oh...should not be listening to this one--Simon and Garfunkel, Homeward Bound

OUCH!

"Tonight I'll sing the songs again, I'll play the game and pretend, but all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity, like emptiness in harmony, I need someone to comfort me, Homeward Bound, I wish I was, homeward bound, home, where my thoughts' escaping, home, where my music's playing..."

yes, that would about sum it up.

Thanks as well Jouri for the reply, its nice to know I am not the only one with this chattering inner voice. In the end, I suspect I will carry this through, and then...I don't know. Working in a book store and having a small organic acreage with some organic sheep ( kept as pets and for their organic wool, not to eat) and a lot of dogs is what appeals to me! And writing novel.

there just seem to be so many layers of things to have to deal with in academia, and I know that is true of life, but it has sort of an empty feel to it. It ( at this moment looking ahead) does not seem very soul satisfying. Money is not a huge motivator for me, I need enough to live, and have the basics, but other than that, I am not that bothered.

Thanks as well Jouri for the reply, its nice to know I am not the only one with this chattering inner voice. In the end, I suspect I will carry this through, and then...I don't know. Working in a book store and having a small organic acreage with some organic sheep ( kept as pets and for their organic wool, not to eat) and a lot of dogs is what appeals to me! And writing novel.

there just seem to be so many layers of things to have to deal with in academia, and I know that is true of life, but it has sort of an empty feel to it. It ( at this moment looking ahead) does not seem very soul satisfying. Money is not a huge motivator for me, I need enough to live, and have the basics, but other than that, I am not that bothered.

Being a mature mature student, I am neither fish nor foul...Going to nightclubs and partying the night away lost its allure a while ago, but I am neither a fully fledged member of staff--so where do I fit? ( alone in my office, listening to Youtube videos at the moment!)

I am listening to El Condor Pasa ( again) and just plugging into the lyrics mentally, why IS it I am listening to this song? Its the Paul Simon version--with the chorus, " Away, I would rather sail away, like a swan that's here and gone. A man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound."

Not sure what it means, exactly, but its how I think I feel!

Thanks, Hypothesis for the reply. No, I am not doing enough meeting and mixing with other people, but its not for lack of trying!!!! I even now get to go along to some informal department meetings, which are good for chat and socialising, as well as doing business, a former flatmate from Bleak Towers and I keep up regular contact and get together every few weeks, I go along to anything I am invited on, I go to things such as local guided walks even if it means going along on my own, etc...but its not enough!

It seems sort of artificial and in a way really meaningless. Like, taking in each other's washing.

In my existential crisis--I am not sure its what I want. I am trying to resolve this without any knee jerk decisions, one of which would be to say I have to carry on since I am on this point, and the other which would be to say I will leave since I have no clear sense I want to stay.

While perhaps I can have "my brilliant career" is it really what I want? Being in a day to day atmosphere of a university has taken a lot of mystique off post PhD life--I am not disillusioned or dissapointed by anything, yes, I can see myself in that role, but...DO I WANT IT? do I want an endless round of teaching, marking papers, giving papers at conferences, trying to publish things....and I don't know! To some extent, its a sterile environment--the real world with all its ugliness and beauty does not come knocking that often.

The only way I seem to be carrying on at the moment is to have given myself complete permission to QUIT. I do not have to do this. I can leave it any time I want. I owe no one an explanation of why I do leave it if I do. I only owe myself. That, if I want, I can get on a plane today and just leave. ( well perhaps not in the same day, but within a few days). I am hideously and horrible homesick in a way I would never have imagined. That said, if I went home, would I want to be back here doing the PhD? What is hard is feeling torn between the two--I want to be home, and I want to do the PhD and I cannot have both at once.

I am going through a real strange patch--I think that dark night of the soul describes it best--where I am really really really questioning what on earth I am doing, whether I have the motivation and desire to carry on, and if so, WHOSE motivation and WHOSE desire--mine or someone else'? I have moments of feeling extremely emotionally fragile, moments of feeling engaged and inspired in the work...etc..I know those are all part of the whole PhD process, but for me, these are taking on a particular intensity.

The art of it--sort of like a Salvador Dali painting! Which reminds me of the episode of Gilligan's Island when Salvador Dali went to the island! For a very small island, it sure had a lot of visitors--all of whom remained very tight lipped about the inhabitants!