After the massive mind-feck that was last week and my PhD breakdown, I’ve decided to declare this week a mental health week and just do some of the things that make me happy. For the past two days, I’ve spent a couple of hours at the beach, not really doing a hell of a lot except lying on the sand (on a towel, of course), swimming, and reading. Granted, I was reading a book that I’m due to submit the review for in a scant 27 days but have not yet read (!), but it’s a book I’m enjoying, so I won’t really count it as work.
I wasn't going to post this photo due to the fact that I'm evidentally retarded and put my finger over the lense, but the part you -can- see is stunning. To be fair, I couldn't actually see the picture on the screen as I took it due to glare, so I'm pretty impressed by the fact that the horizon is actually straight and that this is actually a picture of the water. Actually.
I live in the city (southside, yo), so going to the beach is nothing to sniff at. It’s a good 20 minute drive each way, and I go to Port Beach which, until this morning, I thought was actually North Fremantle beach… which is ridiculous as it’s actually south of Fremantle Surf Club. Port Beach isn’t the most picturesque beach in town because, as the name implies, it’s right next to Fremantle port… meaning that to the left, there is many a crane and warehouse to be seen. Regardless, it still beats the crap out of pretty much every beach in any other country in the world – even if the sand was a little seaweedy yesterday morning.
Whilst lying on the beach, I got to thinking about things, such as the fact that I am possibly the world’s most prolific procrastinator, and the world’s most prolific freak-outerer. Even as I lay there reading my suspiciously interesting academic text book, I began to panic because I wasn’t following the text 100%, and there were concepts I didn’t entirely understand, and I felt like a failure. I’m not sure what crazy universe I think I live in, but apparently in it, I’m a supreme being of intelligence and know the answers to everything without even trying – and when I don’t, it’s just way easier to stick my head in the sand and ignore the issue, rather than to work hard to improve the situation. I was one of those kids that did well in school without even trying. There, I’ve admitted it: I’m kind of smart, in an academic sense at least. That made me incredibly lazy, because I realised that I could get by without really having to try. Every few weeks I’d receive validation of my intelligence which, due to the fact that I hadn’t studied particularly hard for tests and the fact that I’d begun writing papers the night before (or morning!) they were due – yet still received 80%+, meant that teachers were validating my existence as the laziest person on Earth. When I got to uni, I had to try a little harder – but only a little. I put more effort in to papers because I genuinely enjoyed what I was doing a lot of the time, but many a paper was still begun within 48 hours of being due. The key was that I was still receiving feedback often enough that confirmed my abilities had not left me: I was still academically intelligent, and I could still not try.
Fastforward to PhD years, and suddenly, there’s no validation. There are no essays due, no exams to sit. Deadlines set by supervisors can be worked around by the simple sending of an email. Hell, deadlines set by conference organisers can be worked around by applying the same method. And that, my friends, is the worst news ever for a chronic procrastinator. Suddenly, there’s no one telling me that my work is awesome… but at the same time, there’s no one really kicking my arse when I don’t get things done – so the doubt sets in. I’ve become an absolute world champion self doubter. I’m realising that I don’t actually know everything; I don’t really know much at all. This scares me. How will I learn everything? How will I make sense of complex theories and apply what knowledge I do have to obscure theoretical frameworks and come up with some kind of original thought?
I’m panicking, and I’m terrified of being bad at what I do, and so instead of facing the music, I’m just not competing. If I don’t try, no one can tell me I’m not good enough. If I don’t submit papers for publication then no one can reject my work, and if I don’t attend conferences then no one can mock me or, even worse, ask me questions that I don’t have the answers for. It’s just so peculiar that instead of sorting out the root of these fears and getting some sort of help to get me out of this rut, I react by not trying – or by trying to run away. My boss told me the other day that if I’m not running to something, then I’m just running away from my PhD. Friends – what I’ve been doing for the past week is searching for something to run to. The fact is, I need to have a really really good reason to quit my PhD. I don’t really have any hobbies (because procrastinators, believe or not, don’t have time – nor inclination, due to the need for commitment – for hobbies). I have things I’m interested in, but is it really worth giving up this path I’m on to go back and study something completely unrelated that I’m not sure I’ll even like – or worse, to end up working in a job I’m not at all interested in, for the rest of my life?
I’m only 25. I forget this, and think sometimes that I’m 80 years old and my life is over and that any decision I make now might be the last one I ever make, and I put so much pressure on myself to make the right decision, to make sure I know at all times exactly what I want out of life. I plan everything. I plan what to do with my money. I plan what to do with my day. I plan what to eat. And you know what? Every day – every single day – it turns to shit, and I don’t stick to it. That kind of says something: maybe it says that I’m not the chilled-out, easy-come, easy-go person that I’ve always thought of myself as. Maybe it suggests that I’m actually an incredibly highly-strung perfectionist who will never be happy in life until I become that person that I’ve always thought I am (you still with me?). I’m going to chill, and relinquish some control, and just see where life takes me. If my PhD ends up taking another three years… so what. I’ll only be 28. It’s not actually the end of the world if I take longer to do this, and do it in such a way that doesn’t completely stress me out. Sure, my money runs out soon, but there are ways and means (and husbands) around that. If three years means that I can spend my summer mornings at the beach and my winter mornings in a coffee shop doing what makes me happy, then so be it. If it takes less than three years, then awesome – I’ll be able to become a valuable, contributing member of society at last!
So I’m going to explore my happy medium: that place between hard work and relaxing, and I’ll see where it gets me. Rather than regarding everything with the all-or-nothing attitude that I’ve been prone to employing for approximately the last 25 years, I’m just going to accept the fact that I don’t actually know everything, and consider the notion that perhaps if I stop putting such immense demands on myself to be perfect, then I might actually learn something – including learning to love my research. If that can happen, I’ll be happy. It sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
