Tada! The most bestest, adorablest bunny ever seen on the internets!
Ahem.
Now, back to business.
Last week I worked, in small bits, on a 1500 word paper. 1500 words is a small amount of words. Tiny, in fact. By Friday night I had a solid third draft that needed probably one more edit before it was ready to be handed in and graded. And then, for The Husband's birthday, we went camping, and everything went to shit.
Let me explain.
My husband is basically what survivor man would be if survivor man was also an engineer. This means that he is crazy, can survive in the wilderness for days with a piece of rope and some beef jerky, and makes spreadsheets for everything all the time, including his camping trips. Yes, I said spreadsheets (he also has a label maker, but we won't get into that just yet). So, for his birthday he decides to organize a mass camping trip, one that is pretty medium-to-light on the hardcore scale because some of the participants hadn't camped before outside of folk fest, which is really more like car camping but with more music and less underwear.
So I wrote this paper.
Then I hiked 8KM, got hammered, slept on a rock, hiked another 8KM, showered, and sat down to edit a paper that suddenly looked like the biggest pile of shit anyone had ever left on my desk. I was embarassed. I was in the final stages of editing this... this... thing. I decided that any decent person would have put the thing out of its misery, and so I did, through a panicked email to my professor that kind of rambled about needing to shape my paper into something that didn't make me want to vomit until my eyes bled.
And do you know what he said??
He said "These things happen sometimes. Put it away for a few hours, return to it with fresh eyes, and see if you can get it to me in two days."
In conclusion:
my ass aches (ACHES!)
I have a shit-pile pretending to be a paper to resurrect and frankenstein the hell out of.
I'm pretty sure I have a fever.
AND shin splints.
I've read more critical theory in the past two hours than I had, on averaged in entire days before this.
I am the luckiest woman alive, with the most understanding professor ever to exist.
Dear Professor:
I hope that when I become a prof (if I survive grad school) that I can be a small amount as awesome and understanding as you. Thanks for helping me feel okay about my perfectionism and anxiety.
Sincerely,
a total freaking adult.
On an unrelated note:
I am a masochist. I have decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yup. I feel that in addition to all of the stuff I have to do for school and work I should also write 1666 words per day that, if I have the time and energy to edit in December will be a novel of sorts. I think there is an old saying about how if you want something to get done you should give it to someone busy. This is true, because busy people are masochists that have no sense of how much is too much.
Anyways, I will be posting about this, and hope that others will also participate. If nothing else it should be an excellent exercise in forcing yourself to produce more. You know, capitalism.
Has anyone reading (all one of you) ever participated in this challenge before?
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