on stress headaches and people like me

I’ve had a headache since about Tuesday. I’ve been fighting it off with a combination of lots of water, lots of caffeine, and occasional Aleve. I’ve also been fighting the overwhelming desire to stay in bed each morning. It’s the only time my head doesn’t hurt. But knowing myself, I know this is a stress headache. Thus, staying in bed is not the answer. The stress would only build as the to-do list remained undone. The headache, then, would get worse. Today it’s especially bad I think because we’ve received a few inches of snow. (It is soooo bright outside, from every angle.)

The same thing is happening to me now as in the fall. Time is passing, I am fretting. Except now instead of fretting with the fleeting hope that *just maybe* I can pull of a specific graduation date, my frets are more grounded. Quieter and less urgent, but more solidly rooted. Like a voice that whispers “You didn’t make it in the fall. you won’t make it this semester, either.” (And if I’m feeling particularly urgent about it, “And the summer is nearly impossible. So you’re really looking at next December.”)

I’m also a tad bit worried about what I’m going to do when I reenter full-speed-ahead dissertation [re]writing mode, and still have my class to take care of. But I’ll figure it out. I’m more worried about my sanity than my ability to actually get everything done. Those people are counting on me to facilitate their learning; they deserve a high priority in my life and they will get it. (It’s just that, everything in my life seems to be high priority at the moment. The low priority things have dropped right off the map.)

I’ve been kicking this around in my mind for a while: my advisor is a lot like me (or I am a lot like him). I get the feeling that he takes on a bit too much and then tries to prioritize everything highly. It’s so hard to sustain a life like that…but he does…and so do I. But a casualty of this lifestyle is that time just slips through my fingers. I feel like I blink and a month has gone by. Things slide down the list and it’s not because I don’t prioritize them. It’s because everything on my list is high priority, and everything takes time. I sometimes need to look at a calendar and remind myself what’s coming up, when, and how long I have until I really have to deal with it. Knowing that my advisor seems to be like me in this way, I develop additional anxiety when the ball (dissertation) is in his court for a long while. I know it’s a priority to him but I also know he has about 20 high priority items and all of them are ‘number 1′ on his list. And I know (well I believe) the same thing happens to him with the calendar. It’s been 3 weeks since I sent back my draft to him, for example.

Once he gets it back to ME, I need to tackle the bulk of the changes. Then it will need to be really read by him, and then more by me, then re-read by him again at least once more before it goes back to committee. Given that the new preliminary approval deadline is April 12 (and I don’t want to push it like we did in the fall), the goal is to have that final draft in the committee’s hands by beginning of March. It’s going to be February next week…and the rewrite is still in the ‘outline’ stage. Wonder why I have a headache.

I used up all of my vacation time (literally every last hour of the year) working on my dissertation in the fall, so I’ll have to complete this rewrite on evenings and weekends, along with my class work (I have to do all their readings, since I have not read them either, provide guidance and feedback, grade, and develop class activities for each week). This could easily be a great deal more difficult than things were in the fall. I’m also giving two talks about my dissertation research in the coming month….that’s minor in comparison to everything else though.

I talked to my advisor on Wednesday. He said he will have it to me before this weekend. So I hope to receive it today. And that’s where I’m at.

*Update* – I have the changes from him as of about noon today. Let the carpel tunnel resume after work!!