Another one bites the dust - in a good way

I just mentioned feeling a bit spent and TGF replied said I had worked hard today. Yeah, for a few hours. Doing what you might ask. I finished my second paper for Relationship and Family Interventions. Hee-freaking-haw! Really. The professor even said he would try to read it in time for finishing my course evaluation. So cool! Yeah, I still owe the second paper for Ethics but damn, I did it.

This semester has been a real season of progress for me. Throughout the "more semesters than I want to acknowledge" experience of graduate school I have struggled mightily with a deep paralysis when it came to writing papers. Some of the papers were really not hard I thought as I sat at the computer when they were done, wondering what I was so scared of, what made up my fear. Granted I haven't loved every paper I produced but I wrote and wrote and wrote. Someone wondered why I would have a blog with all that is going on in my world, but I think it helped. While it is true that I have turned a few select blog entries into assignments (obviously the less academically rigorous ones), and even turned assignments into blog postings, I think the act of writing anything at all has helped. But perhaps more importantly to inducing the change has been some of what I have written about - my work struggles, procrastination, relationships, a place to vent my frustration at my school work performance- it freed something. As I wrote on my blog's first birthday this outlet has helped me focus all areas of creativity: writing, photography, and knitting, even cooking though not as frequently.

One more paper and maybe an assignment or two and I will take a few days off. Not the way that I have done for the past 29 months (yes that's 2 years and 5 month) where I do not do schoolwork but even if I kind of give me self some kind of permission not to (like out of town guests) do work, I am constantly thinking I be should working. After a full day having fun I sit in my living room at 10:20pm calculating how if I stay up for 3 more hours I could get X amount of work done. Yeah, that's healthy. No, if all goes well starting on TGF's birthday I am officially, and without punishing thoughts, giving myself at least 5 days where the goal is to not work on school AT ALL. It is not an option. Nope, not once. Yes, it will be hard because damn I am not sure I know how not to think I ought to be doing school work. Wish me luck!