It’s been a shit day. The odd thing is, on sheer word count, I got a lot more done today. Yesterday I actually ended up with a negative word count. I handed in the two chapters I had done and then got stuck, badly stuck, on how to proceed to the need section. After talking to my supervisor we redesigned the layout of my thesis. It meant the 9000 word findings chapter was basically scraped and the methods section had to be reedited. But with a long view it actually made me feel better about the design, and gave me the inspiration and layout to follow on with. And really the finding chapter wasn’t completely trashed, I’ll be able to cut sections out of it, build on it. So although technically I had dropped 15 000 words off my total when I left there yesterday I felt like I had accomplished something. Today, I rewrote my methods section and did about 1500 in my discussion section, so technically I did achieve quite a bit, I felt odd, unsettled, disappointed.

I hadn’t wanted to get up in the morning, and felt headachy and sore by the time I even made it to the bus stop. It had been a shocking day, emotionally and mental health-wise. I did manage to stay there until 3pm, heading home only half an hour earlier than we usually do. But by the time I got home I was shaking quite dramatically, really dissociative and physically exhausted. Part of it I think was a combination of lack of food and that oppressive heat we’ve had today.

When I got home I should have gotten something to eat and drink and just put my feed up, but it seemed imperative that we reorganise the desk. It wasn’t a difficult job, other than there was pulling out the table and climbing over things, and untangling wires. I really didn’t want to be doing that, but it seemed urgent suddenly. Of course, once settled I thought I’d fucked my modem again, but it was just sulking it seems because the second time I turned it on it worked fine.

So I got changed, made myself a cheese sandwich and drank a galleon of water.