When Sleep is Not an Answer

The world has become a better place since the very last time I wrote, with the thesis done and dusted, you never have to see another picture of my working station again (yawns), or hear me ranting about the schedule of work and sleep and eat (bigger yawn). Too bad there is one more thing coming up, aka the THESIS DEFENSE.

No. I am not going to go into the details of that right now. I will leave all thesis talk for the last installment, which will happen soon enough without my urging and talking about it.

Instead, I want to tell you about today. It has been endless boredom after boredom for me since the thesis has left me. Life has lost all meaning. My day is now spent mainly in bed, horizontal. With the trusty laptop on my lap playing a video or movie of some sorts. And inevitably, I will be weeping. Not because of a sad story plot or a happy one. I just cry at movies. There must be something about the screen aspect ratio, or is it the way the credits seem to roll that make me shed precious tears. But yes. I cry. At all movies.

Now, the teary part of me begs to be explored on another day in another post. What I really came to tell you today was about this night-mare. Actually it is technically a day-mare that I had this afternoon when I was thoroughly bored with being bored and have decided to go take a sweet afternoon nap.

So I was there, lying on the bed and willing myself to enter dreamland to get some reprieve from the boredom of it all. I was in this delicate place between lucidity and sleep. And I was having this vision of being in this dark and grey place. My mood and heart was heavy and dreary. In my vision/day-mare sort of thing, I was at my parents place. There was the unmistakable rosewood furniture and the precious potted plant that my parents loved.

Nothing scary really about dreaming about your parents’ place. What is un-nerving is the way I was feeling in the day-mare. A certain depressive and aimless feeling plagued me. And I was walking around... slumped over and distant from reality. Gosh, it shook me to my core that I was feeling this way because I had nothing to do.

BAM WHAM

I forced myself to wake up and cook some 3^rd grade bolognaise, to pretend my life still had some shard of meaning left in it. That I am still useful for making lunch. Or washing dishes.

And I was happier.

The Thesis Story Part V: Completion is Sweet.

The more I think of it, the more I see the entire year as a long marathon. Clique I know. But true.

The last few days of thesis writing was a nightmare of endless writing and editing and begging for people to read and edit it. It became a whole routine. Your shoulder ache, your mind is bursting at the seams. You eat and think of thesis-worthy phrases. Walk out of the door and wonder if you are wearing underwear. You forget if you have brushed your teeth for the night, or for the day.

Think of your worst nightmare… Envision it all happening while you are awake and conscious.

Now you got an idea of how it all feels.

But there is a clear difference, between your horrible nightmare and the thesis writing process. Yours end in sleepless nights and sweaty PJs, mine end in a bounded book and peaceful nights free of thesis thoughts and full of sleep.

You see the difference yet?

So anyway, I had to say, thank you dear friends and wayward readers, for reading and understanding my life all this while. And if you did not understood it, thanks for trying.

And thank you, blog. For being the platform for angry and vent-ish thoughts. While sometimes I do feel angst at having to pluck blog-a-ble material out of thin air, mostly I feel released and clear-minded after writing a post, or two. And the blog was a great great object for these. Although inanimate.

Geez… felt like I am writing my acknowledgements all over again. Anyway, for the record: I cried while writing my acknowledgements. But that is a story for another day.

For now, I leave you with a short thing I wrote about running sometime back. Random I know, but it means too much to be to not share it.

There must be somewhere that this path must end.

Pounding breath. My vision jarred with every step. Howling winds. I feel the earth rising to meet my feet.

Would I be able to stay the course, moving one shuffling feet in front of the other? Meeting effort with hard gravel, keeping my eye on what may be waiting at the very end.

This path. It twists and winds. I see not further than the next ten feet. But anxious minds seek; further.

I need to make the intangible: mine.

The Thesis Story Part IV

Okay, there are good news and bad news. What would you like?

The bad news is that, this is another thesis story. I am so sorry that you have to listen to my woes about a stack of papers that I have to write. Unfortunately, my sorry-ness doesn’t stop the woes from happening.

The good news: It ends. In 5 grand days. After which, I promise to post my, often emotional, sometimes comical, annual summary on how the year went by. Last year, I made you look at the University of Melbourne’s exam conditions. This year, I promise you something better.

To be honest, this post feels a little… what do you call it… naughty. I am not supposed to be here. And if anyone asked, you promise to say the same? Yes I know, you promised.

Well... I am not supposed to be spending what is left of my vocabulary on a blog. I am supposed to be hard at work on what supervisors call the thesis. But you know what, dear friends and wayward readers, I miss you too much to stay away.

Anyway, you know what to do if someone, or anyone asked about my whereabouts.

These days, it feels that I am leading a monasteric life. I wake up at 8, trot to the toilet, then to the kitchen for the preparation of the days’ ammunition and back into my room, armed with food that would last me for the next 9 hours while I write and amend what I have of the thesis.

I would stay, in solitude until hunger calls my name when a trot to the kitchen and toilet would be in order to satisfy [1] basic human needs and [2] energy requirements. Dinner would last for the next 3 hours at the computer while work is being done.

After dinner has ended, work carries on till 11 when a longer trot to the toilet is required to satisfy human sanitary needs. Sleep, then calls my name.

I now work an average of 15 hours a day. Non-stop.

With an average shower time of 4 minutes.

Work and more work. It is a clockwork motion. [Pun fully intended]

It is like a monasteric life of solitude and mental energy. Except I have the internet at my fingertips.

Sometime back, I was disillusioned. Disillusioned enough to say that I am an organized person. Here is the honest truth, all this writing has turned me into a slob. My bed is unmade. My prized Elmo is neglected. Papers are strewn everywhere. My footstool now has a new glamorous job of being a paper pedestal. If a burglar came by and ransacked my room, I wouldn’t know the difference.

And oh, look carefully at the laptop. I was on youtube.

Yes, youtube.

Remember... you promised you won’t tell.

The Thesis Story Part III: The Underwear Drawer

I really should be initiating a penetrating discussion on the value of my Honours project on the global research effort to understand the effect of gut metabolism on human health but I can think of a MILLION other things to do.

I can think of inspecting the ends of my hair for split ends. Going through my underwear drawer and discarding things that dun fit, things that are old and things that do not belong to the underwear category.

I am longing for a cup of warm hot chocolate to replace the heater that is blowing at my feet. Or a box of handcrafted filled pralines and truffles.

Am I only dreaming?

Yes. It is all but a dream.

The Thesis Story Part II: In case of Emergency. Eat Chocolate.

Now, the million dollar question is, ‘Why did I begin the The Thesis Story and how many parts are there exactly?’

Honestly, I don’t know. And that is my answer to both questions. I just woke up one fine day and arrived at this title; which splits a big story into pieces, but I think it is brilliant. Considering the alternatives, which will be long rambling titles, this is a concise way to annotate the thesis process.

So. This is part 2.

I want to begin by saying that I think I am organized. Really. I do. That is on normal days. On thesis days, my study table belongs to another realm. And I am amazed at how unaffected I am. It is 4pm, but the plate that contain my breakfast is still there.

Welcome to the thesis diet; where breakfast stretches to dinner. Where on Wednesday you do introduction, Thursday is for planning and Friday are reserved for results and discussion. You would be amazed, the consequences are startling.

This diet, it threw out my back.

I have a problem. And if you remember the braces encrusted me back in those polytechnic days, you would remember that my teeth are not the only thing that needs to be straightened. My back is way off as well. The story behind how I think my back got a mind of its’ own belongs to another day but for now it seems to me that it doesn’t really like the way I sit, the things I do and the hours I have to stay still to make a thesis appear out of the blue.

So I woke up in pain. And I worked in discomfort. And because the pain was mainly in my right upper back, I felt as though there was someone looking over my shoulder.

How do I describe this to you? This discomfort is like a serpent that spreads, slowly but surely, until you yield to it with rest and more rest. And dear friends, my serpent is currently upset with me as I have ignored its’ existence for the entire day.

This discomfort has taken over my neck and is on the edge of my face. I feel a headache coming on and this is all so somber and funereal.

So. Could someone please explain, why am I still so happy after clicking the sent button for an email attached with my results draft, addressed to my supervisor?

Honestly. I am really very sorry.

Looking back, my mother was probably right.

Well… except that time at the playground, when I ran, crying to her after this bossy neighbor pushed me down into the sand. Her advice then was, ‘Go push her back.’

In her defense I must say that all her advice, since then, have turned out well and in some instances, great. Like that time when she said that hailing a cab is wayyyy faster if you were wearing a short skirt. Damn does that work! And there is that time when she said that the guy on the other side of the phone was way dodgy, and that was one relationship that did not work. You know I can go on forever but I shall spare you that one agony and tell you about this one poor man in my life.

You know, Mr. SO.

And so the story goes that just the other day, we were checking out the screen-sharing feature of skype. It is this nerdy function where you can show the person you are skyping with your screen and hence do something like a work presentation while you are miles away sort-of-thing… so he was really excited that it worked. In his excitement, he had to show me a model that he have been working on for eons.

I mean this is THE MODEL that he was working on while skyping with me, he was looking at this model when he was web-camming with me and I am pretty sure that when he was suppose to be thinking about me he was definitely thinking about this model. After all that, I HAD TO SEE THIS ONE MODEL.

Anyway, to show me this above-mentioned model, he had to close tons of windows and go to his desktop to retrieve the file. Before I continue the story of the model, I have to digress a little.

So, I could see his screen while he was closing all those windows. And I could see his screensaver, which was NOT our photo and that kind of offended me a little because I was like… ARE YOU ASHAMED OF ME!!! My poor heart, it chipped a little there and then. I mean, it shattered into a gazillion pieces. DUDE, mark my words, in all future domestic quarrels, this screensaver issue is going to be the one thing that I mention over and over again so be ready for it.

End of digression.

Yes. THE MODEL. So Mr. SO excitedly scrolled and zoomed to show me his fantastic model. My reaction at that, wow, priceless. You remember the movie that crashed at the box office, about this crazy toy store. Mr Magnorium’s Wonder Emporium. I felt exactly the same way about Mr. SO’s model. Oh man, was it disappointing!

I will be honest about it. It was a rectangle with graduated colors.

And so I laughed. Mind you, I was on skype and I laughed rudely in his face. I think I gave a new meaning to ‘lol’ but I was all…. MAN… I COULD DO THAT WITH POWERPOINT IN 2 MINUTES FLAT.

Now people, see what I did wrong? I laughed at someone else. And that is a big no-no. My mother told me not to laugh at others or to be mean. According to her, it is rude and ill mannered. I wished I had listen to her. My mockery of Mr. SO model has turned around and bitten me ferociously in the ass. The past 2 days was all of data analysis and more data analysis with only a few miserable figures to show for it.

Damned… my mother was right. Except that it has got nothing to do with manners or being mean. Dalai Lama would have gotten this right; karma baby, karma.

The Thesis Story Part 1

I think I am beginning to get a grip on this thesis writing business. It helps that I am writing my thesis in the age of technology, where research is a few clicks away and analysis is in the comfort of your study while blasting your choice of music.

These past few days have been a blur of processing NMR spectras. And it involves this ridiculously crazy process of putting dots on the spectra so that everything line up proper. Think of it as connect-the-dots, except in reverse as the line is already there and what you need to do is to put in those silly dotties.

So. It is a simple and brainless task. The perfect job for a trained monkey. Easy peasy. It is something that even Homer Simpson cannot screw up even if he TRIED. One would think that I would be having a grand time doing such a simple task.

Well, guess what? The weirdest thing happened. I realized that I could only do this silly dotting if a song of extreme ANGST is playing. Think Eric Claptons’ ‘Before You Accuse Me’. Think Savage Gardens’ ‘Break Me Shake Me’. Honestly! I never thought that mundane tasks would push me to that sort of an edge.

In case you need to know, the latter song has been played 180 times, according to the iTunes counter. That’s a lot of hours doing work. And being angsty. And of shout-singing ‘BREAK ME, SHAKE ME, HATE ME, TAKE ME OVER’. But at least work-work is still being attempted. And being accomplished. –inserts a proud grin-

Reading back, it seems that I should not have started this entry the way I did. ‘Got a grip’ doesn’t seem apt after sharing the above-mentioned story. But trust me people, I was in a worse off place. I begin to write this entry with a specific story in mind to illustrate that.

Some weeks back, a full day of writing and data appreciating would give me the shivers and shits. I would crave sunlight and company and conversation. I would literally shake with withdrawal. And my mind would go into overdrive. The TV will not placate and there is no comfort in food. And all I was doing mentally is working (20%) and screaming CAPITALS in my head (80%)!

I am glad to say that I am no longer that way. My grip on thesis writing is here, in the center of my palms. Two weeks ago, when I was typing at my computer, all that I am thinking is ‘Why do we have to write a thesis to be graded, why can’t we just be graded like that?’. Now, I am a picture of zen with a pen tucked behind my ear, my trusty notepad right in front of me; to jote down all-important numbers, and feeling ‘This is me, writing, working, this is how it all should be.’

Ooooohhhh yesssss. This is all how it should be.

The Entry That My Therapist Will One Day Read To Fully Understand My Mental State.

Ever had those moments when all you want to do is clench your hands into balls of fists and feel your fingernails digging deep into your palms? I am having one of those moments now.

This is one of the sacred moments where I go DAMNED DAMNED DAMNED because my brain is not functioning the right way. The right way being the way that I want it to be, which should be the only way considering that it is MY brain.

Do you get me? No? Let me illustrate this for you…

Spring is here. And that is my favorite time of the year, or rather one of my favorite times of the year since I still am undecided over autumn or spring but you get the idea. I love how the evenings are now balmy instead of chilly and the noontimes are blindingly bright and cheery. It makes me happy to see sunshine after a cold winter and I am all ‘DUDE LETS GO OUT AND PLAY!’

Trust me on this. If I had a tail, I will be wagging it. If I am a dog, I will be panting with my tongue half-hanging out. But ALAS! I am human! And that would mean that I have to sit here writhing in my own whiny and wanting agony to go out and play, because my brain is calmly making organized plans for the thesis-that-is-yet-to-be-written, and ignoring my needs to be out in the sunshine.

DUDE! MY BRAIN TOTALLY BETRAYED ME!

I sense a certain future ahead of me where I will have countless such moments of brain-not-listening-to-instinct. I am fantasizing this one scenario where something screws up as a result of my brain manifestation, and my beloved instinct get to stick its tongue out and tell the brain I TOLD YOU SO. However that seems rather far off and impossible. The more likely scenario would be something screwing up due to my primal instinct. The ending would be somewhat like this. The brain will be too angry and mad to say anything mean, the instinct will be all apologetic and docile for eons afterwards while things are being rectified, and the nerves will be in absolute disarray. Yes that is how my life will play out at the end. You may get to witness it if you stay long enough and if I don't die in a car crash tomorrow. But that is the problem with my instinct really. Sometimes it just gets out of hand and hence my avid suppression of it at every possible point in time. People, it is not that I don’t want to have fun but there is no room for fun when my brain is alive!

DON’T YOU GET IT?

It seems to me that it is turning out to be a day of capitals. I LOVE TO TYPE IN CAPS! Listen up. There are three sorts of therapy in the world. The first type is the expensive type for filthy rich people who have so much money that they have problems because they are too rich. So they go and rent designer lounges by the hour and sit and talk about their problems. They call that doctor the shrink because those sort of therapy shrinks your wallet really quickly because it needs an awful lot of hours to get through all your issues.

Well the second type are the cheap type where all you need is easy access to secluded places. Those sort of therapy will see you putting yourself in dangerous positions like on the edge of a sharp cliff or at the peak of some hill/mountain or near some open water source like the sea/ocean/lake. And what you do is cup your hands around the corner of your mouth and give the loudest and longest scream that you can ever do after which you will fall to your knees oh-so-dramatically and collapse in a heap of yourself except that you are now immensely relieved, stressful and cheery.

And then there is the third type of therapy where you need access to a computer keyboard and all you do is TYPE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. With tons of EXCLAMATIONS!!!!!! You can type ANYTHING YOU WANT OR DESIRE. This method is CHEAP AND INEXPENSIVE!!! It is easiest form of therapy out there. It is the anytime anywhere type of therapy. And it will leave you feeling… well the same as before except that you will now grin lopsided and silly. And there is also that slight possibility that people will think you are cuckooed beyond repair.

BUT WHO CARES!!!!

When my brain and my instinct are at loggerheads there is no time to waste on what other people are thinking about me. What takes center stage is the argument in my head, it doesn’t matter if the world stop revolving, because my brain and instinct will still be putting on a show for all the other audiences in my head.

OH! WAIT A MINUTE! JUST WAIT A MINUTE! I FEEL ONE COMING…

Brain: I cannot wait for the moment when the thesis draft is ready and complete and all that I have to do is to just email a copy to boss with a small note to ask for his opinions on it. –scatters heart and star shaped confetti-

Instincts: -throws a stack of printed thesis in boss’s face- THERE THERE THERE THERE THERE THERE THERE!!!!!!!!!!! HOPE YOU LIKE READING A THESIS IN CAPS AND PUNCTUATED ALL BY EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!!! –turns and disappear in a puff of smoke-

-sighs-

When will my brain and instincts agree???