I continue to be a little disoriented by the fact that I'm almost done. I've got a dissertation checklist, a list of discrete tasks that need to be completed, some of them between now and the first of May, some of them between the first and nineteenth. (1 May is when I'm giving a full draft to my committee members, although actually I'm shooting for 28 April there, and 19 May is the actual filing deadline.) And for the first time in three-plus years, the dissertation checklist tasks are things like "fix footnote formatting in chapter three" and "expand conclusion to chapter one" rather than, I don't know, "write chapter four" or "travel the Midwest in a rented minivan."
It feels sometimes like I've been in graduate school since the dawn of time, but in just over a month, that will be over. I'm not sure what to do with that.
In any event, I've been so completely buried in the dissertation for so long (and using magazine-related work for study breaks) that I was starting to get squirrelly. (More than usual.) So I took the weekend off. Like, completely off. No working, no thinking about work, just a weekend. I did a little bit of cleaning, I started a major new crafts project, I went out for dinner with my charming boyfriend, I played some computer games, I watched a lot of television, I read some magazines. I slept in. And it was really, really lovely.
And now it's Monday, and I'm back to work. (If I were a true patriot, I would take the day off in remembrance of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but alas I am only a pretender.)
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