The most fun I had today

Ever had one of those days where the most fun you've had was watching all the red bars on your de fragmenting hard drive turn blue?

I'm having one of those days right now. I've been endlessly working on my theses, correct here, edit there, cut out here, paste there, type here, delete that, find references for this... AAARGH!!! It's so monotonous that I look forward to any break or possible escape from the hellish cycle. I found some relief staring at my defrag for around 5 minutes before realising how desperate I was and watching half an episode of Top Gear to regain some sort of sanity.

Writing up is far from easy, even if you have everything you need in front of you and all you need to do is assemble bits and pieces into one sensible paragraph. If I could just work my way around these mental blockades I could probably finish off the rest of my thesis in two days! Instead I have budgeted two weeks to complete the work.

Wish me luck fellow strugglers/stragglers

Why I’m taking so friggin long with my thesis

The Epilogue to a paper entitled “Eight Reasons Why Optimal Foraging Theory Is a Complete Waste of Time” by Pierce and Ollason (1987) summarises my predicament quite well I think.

>>>Begin<<<

Optimization theory has no place in current evolutionary thought: its use is a throwback to the comfortable determinism of Divine Creation; to the endeavours of natural philosophers seeking to demonstrate the wisdom of the Creator.

J. B. S. Haldane (1963) observed that there are four stages in the normal process of acceptance of a scientific idea:

(1) this is worthless nonsense;

(2) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;

(3) this is true, but quite unimportant;

(4) I always said so.

Criticisms of optimal foraging theory have met with all four responses, but current literature suggests very little change in the way ecologists think about foraging behaviour.

So, which excuse is it to be this time?

<<End>>

You see my work and hypotheses all rely on the assumption that optimal foraging theory is a strategy employed by frugivorous birds. I’m either very brave or very stupid to even try going against popular views and opinions expressed by other so called ‘experts’ in this field. Nevertheless, I will endure and make sure I get my two cents worth in there…

Joy from Arb

Today I had writer's block. I was working so well too. I put some Enya on and just went for it.

All of a sudden I found myself retyping the same sentence 30 times over just looking for the best wording. It was 15:00 when I started correcting this sentence I looked at the time when I was finally done with it and it was 15:30!!!

I find myself in a strange situation here. I'm overdue handing in my thesis so I feel the need to sit at my desk and work no matter what the costs. Yet there comes a point when one stops accomplishing anything. You just sit there and check e-mail over and over again. I've even looked through the email titles in my Gmail spam folder on one occasion (I was quite disgusted, I'll not be doing that again in a hurry). In any case every time I have a writers block I find myself doing some mindless activity without even realising.

Todays mindless activity was making authentic fart noises with my mouth and hands to the tune of Enya's Orinoco Flow. It was fun (and if I might say so, I thought I was quite good at it...where's that microphone when you need it?). It's a good thing everyone else in the office is away on vac. I know I would be rather concerned if I heard one of my office mates farting to the beat of Orinoco flow.

Am I going crazy or is it common for people to do weird stuff when they have writer's block?
According to Wiki, writer's block can be associated with Bipolar disorder, mania, brain tumours, hypergraphia (the need to write non stop...) and depression. GEEZ!

Sail away
sail away
sail away...