'In Bruges'

I've been away from my work for about 4-5 days. I went to Bruges for two days and wandered through the beautiful old city thinking only cursory thoughts about my PhD. I took some writing work with me but just couldn't bring myself to look at it. The weather and the beer were too good to lament over the stylistic construction of my sentences. But this temporary sidestepping of my PhD was exactly that...temporary. And once again it fills my brain and almost every inch of me. It depletes all my energy and really does dull my mind and senses - who says a PhD is meant to make you feel more intelligent? I'm falling behind almost on a daily basis - it just seems to be taking me so long to do 'simple' things. Tonight I sat working out my 'final' (well I certainly hope so) workplan. My submission date is now firmly set for December 2012 and if all goes to plan (and I stick religiously to this final plan) and I don't have to resubmit my thesis for review (I hoping in the worse case scenario for major corrections without resubmission) I could realistically have my degree by June-September 2013. But as I'm trying to tell myself on a daily basis, in a bid to stop myself from hyperventilating, I have to focus on small specific, doable tasks rather than on thoughts about how my final thesis might be received, or more destructively, and all the gaps in my knowledge base or what I haven't or won't be able to do in my thesis.

So six months to go before the end of my funding period and full-time stay at the OU - exciting, happy? but also sad - like most things it's never an either/or scenario. No matter how I finally come to see this period in my life, positively or negatively it will have made a fundamental mark on me, shaped me forever, I'll never be able to go back to where I was from here - it will forever be different, I will forever be different.

In Bruges - an intertextual moment