This month's Scientiae theme is particularly apt for me (I'm just a lot late in posting). I'm within (approximately, you know, give or take a semester or five) a year of graduating, I'm training for a 13k in October, and Dr. Man and I have started brewing our own beer. I feel like I've been in a holding pattern throughout my PhD experience. There's a lot of 'Well, I'd do X after I'm done with school' or 'I'm justing waiting to graduate until I try Y.' A lot of times, it's like I'm waiting until I'm old enough to do something. Like there's some magical age after which I'll have things figured out or there's an age I must reach before I can do something.
Recently, I've decided that I might as well allow my life to move forward as much as it can. Hence all the activities. It doesn't make sense to put off my life until after school. And I think that's become an excuse to stop trying. If I categorically state that I won't try/do something different until I've graduated, then I'm off the hook. I don't have to do anything new or different or scary.
I don't have any advice on how to make forward progress, but my guess is that it'll be incremental. It'll involve breaking up the new, different, scary things into smaller more palatable pieces. For once, I'll look at the trees more than the forest. And hope that will allow me to make it through.
scientiae-carnival