Momentum Fail

Ya’ll, I finished another chapter!  It went to my diss directors at approximately 1:57 am Saturday morning following a week of extremely intense writing (one day, I produce over 15 pages, though a lot of that was cobbled together from notes and previous drafts).  What’s more, I’m actually pretty proud of the draft I produced and think it may eventually be the best thing I’ve written in grad school once it’s been through a couple of round of revision.

After finishing, I was all like “Booyah!  Next?!”  I was ready to tackle the next chapter like an NFL linebacker and spent the next two days reading and taking notes, making a list of books to get from the library, pulling articles off online databases, etc.  I was thrilled by the prospect of beginning the next segment of my project, going in with a sense of what I would be arguing but preparing to be surprised by the turns my research might take.  It was a totally awesome feeling.  Then life intervened, and the following things happened:

1. I got a flat tire, and Sears, where my tires are under warranty was very, very busy on the day that it happened, so I spent a whole day trapped in a terrible shopping mall and wound up taking a book to the section where the leftover clearance lawn furniture was kept, but I couldn’t absorb myself in what I was reading because I felt self-conscious and feared that the employees would ask me to leave, because I’m neurotic like that.
2. This.
3. One of my guinea pigs started acting a little weird, and I spent an afternoon trying to figure out if he was sick (he’s not.)  I am a hypochondriac on behalf of my pets.

In short, I got distracted, and my momentum has been temporarily derailed.  Because my mental health is actually pretty solid today, I’m going to rest in the assurance that things will get better, hopefully this afternoon.  We’ll see how long that lasts.  But for now, here’s a chart illustrating how my morning was spent.  Click to embiggen.