I'm feeling pretty good these days on the whole (hurray!) but I don't quite know what to do with myself. Every time my mood changes in the larger sense (not just from having a bad day or a good day) the edges of various solipsistic information about the world show up. It's something like having a piece of paper that has been folded over places, then had the surface written on and then unfolded again, showing blank spots that were always there but previously unseen. It's simultaneously expanding and contracting - there's more paper but there's more blank space.
Now I'm here and I can finish my work in short order and I don't really have enough to fill my days now that it isn't painful to get out of bed. This makes me think I must be doing something wrong because I'm sure that grad students aren't supposed to have free time in such abundance. I could, of course, make myself busy with study. Perhaps I should. I doubt, however, that I shall. That doesn't feel like what's missing. I can't quite identify what's missing. I think I might doubt or fear my own agency. Any ideas? Any similar experiences?
It's very hard to structure one's day, isn't it? I have to make a very detailed schedule of all the tasks I need to get done for the day when I'm not working or in school or else the day gets wasted.
ReplyDeleteI need tasks! I'm the same, generally, with needing to make a list but I ran out of things to put on the list. It's too much to try to fill one's whole week with 'do optional extra studying sometime before the start of June'.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, though, how structure breeds things to do. I think my angst has come from being just short of the critical mass of busy and structured - my time is just too loose. I think I've solved it now, though.