Milestones

 

This cold makes me sleep more, eat sweets and stay indoors. It also makes me want to run forever because when I stop I freeze. There is no middle ground. No gentleness in transitions from out to in-doors. However, I managed to do a clean 8k this morning in less than one hour (‘morning’ is an overstatement! It was already noon by the time I finished running). My performance was good and I was pleased with myself in the end – normal breathing, little pain in my muscles, decent pace… I could have run more, but I reminded myself that my PhD was waiting to be finished.

I left the garden to go to school feeling a bit jealous on the squirrels, foxes, birds, flowers and even the sun; they seem to have no deadlines, no anxieties about the quality of their work, no supervision meetings. Stuck with the idea of supervision meetings for animals, I spent some time today checking the social organisation of squirrels (and ended up reading about dominant and mating behaviour). As compared to that, my chapter five seemed rather uninteresting, so I started to read a book chapter about bouncers. Considering that the latter had been written by my supervisor, I felt that I was making considerable progress in my work.

Towards the end of the day, I actually started to write a new chapter. At this point I am quite excited and intrigued – how will this chapter turn out? How will I write it? Will it be good? It always takes me some time to get in tune with any new piece that I write. No matter how certain I am about what I write, no matter how detailed my outline is. People have different milestones in their lives. For me, every new beginning is a milestone. Especially in writing.