Things are looking better today. After cleaning up my desk and room for much of Thursday it seemed that Friday held a new promise. I went to the OU in that evening and worked until 9pm and it felt productive. It's funny how with analysis work I will delay doing it for as long as I can, almost created a monster in my mind. But when I simply sit down and work through the data as systematically as I can, then it doesn't feel as bad. It's still hard work trying to make sense of what is happening in the data, even if you have a clearly framed analysis tool (which I don't or rather which is still in development). Then working out how you want to express your interpretation, your analysis, your story of the data can be like mind gymnastics. So it can feel like it might be easier to just walk away and make the whole thing the monster lurking under the bed that you must avoid at all cost. I managed to complete the section I set out to work through over the weekend and within the time frame I allocated myself. It is starting to come together for this case and instead of a sense of wariness, there is a slight hint of excitement as I explore the data more deeply and start to carve out the story I think is interesting or useful to tell.
I still get far too distracted by all the 'things' around me and think back with nostalgia for the days when I didn't have the internet to bother me so much - but then again I would probably have found the fridge or the cleaning or the nice day outside just as wonderful a distraction. Even though I feel a lot better this week, I am now 7-10 days behind my planned schedule and I'm going to try to reduce the backlog over the next week. I need to finish the analysis of this last case by Friday because I have a literature review waiting patiently for my attention.
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