Confession time

I have a dirty little secret to share with you. Oh, the clever clogs among you already know what it is; some of you have suspected it for a while; and the rest of you might be really pissed at me when I tell you. But I had my reasons.

First, I must pause and take a moment to acknowledge myself for completing my MA thesis. It was handed in today. That's it, done. Over. The last year of my life culminating in the click of a "send" button. It's all over but the shouting now.

I'm exhausted. I said I wouldn't do it, but I wound up having to pull an all-nighter to meet the deadline. So I'm off to bed soon. It still hasn't sunk in; as I was saying to someone earlier today, I know I should feel elated, proud, relieved or SOMETHING, but I'm just kind of numb. Maybe it's the exhaustion, maybe it's knowing that my book isn't finished yet and I still have lots more work to do on it. But I'll save that for another day.

And here's my dirty little secret: I've been back in Vancouver for a couple of months now. Since mid-April, actually. After I had a sort of nervous breakdown I decided that once the course work was over at the end of March it might be a good idea to return home, where I could get necessary medical care and attention and perhaps even a good night's sleep. So I flew home and continued my work from here (Vancouver) without telling anyone but a select few that I had returned, so that I wouldn't subject myself to the temptation to goof off, hang out with friends I hadn't seen in a year, or otherwise spend time doing anything other than write my thesis/book.

Which doesn't mean to say that there weren't distractions. Oh, there were -- plenty big ones, too. Like moving house, for instance. Within two weeks of arriving home we had to move from our house on 20th Avenue to a smaller, 2-bedroom apartment nearby. Prior to leaving for England I had already packed up most of my worldly possessions thinking D. would move house while I was gone, since technically our lease was up when I left for the U.K. anyway. But work on the house kept getting postponed and our lease kept getting renewed month after month, until in a fit of impeccable timing we were told the property was finally going to be redeveloped in May. So we upped stakes and moved a few blocks away.

Even though I was already living out of boxes (and had lived out of a suitcase for the previous nine months), moving was still an enormous pain in the ass. I hate moving; I've done it often enough to know (about 20 times in 25 years, I think). We had to downscale our crap quotient radically, which is not necessarily a bad thing; we jettisoned several rooms full of stuff that was weighing us down in more ways than one. But it took time and energy which were in short supply. Two months later and we're still living amid boxes. What was supposed to be our office has become a storage room, crammed to the gunwales with stuff we haven't had time to organize yet. Soon!

Then, three weeks ago, Captain Klutz did it again. While playing basketball (hey, a guy's gotta do what he can to stay in shape) I tore a muscle in my calf and landed myself in hospital. Stop laughing. Ever torn a muscle before? It's painful, trust me. I've broken bones before and had loads of other injuries, but that's nowhere near as painful as a torn calf muscle. So I've been hobbling around on crutches since then which is a bitch because I'm already accident-prone as it is (apparently), and that's when I'm 'normal' and on two feet. Put a pair of crutches under my wings and I'm a slow-motion disaster area. Everything takes five times as long to do, too. Taking a slash requires careful advance planning. (Sorry if that was TMI.)

Anyway, this week was supposed to be a celebratory holiday for me in between finishing my thesis and starting my new job as of July. I was hoping to go camping, but the leg has kind of put the kibosh on that. Ah well. The weather here in Vancouver has been mostly craptastic anyway.

I'll offer my apologies to anyone I've inadvertently offended by not calling since my return, but believe me when I say it was a matter of sanity preservation and hard-nosed focus. At least I didn't lie to you. (I told everyone before I left for London that I'd be gone for anywhere between 8 or nine months to a year, which was exactly right.) I simply neglected to tell you that I had come home.

And now I have to drag myself off to bed.

Nearly over

The countdown has begun, which means I really ought to be typing up my thesis introduction rather than another blog entry, but there you go -- as I began, so I apparently intend to continue. But I've made some phenomenal progress in the time since my last entry. Seriously. I've written a few hundred -- yes, hundred -- pages worth of manuscript. Mostly first draft, of course, but there's some revision.

Bottom line: Deadline is this Monday the 25th at 6pm, which is 10:00AM for those of you in Vancouver, or 1:00 PM for those of you in Montreal. (Everyone else can figure it out for themselves, sorry.) So I'd better get cracking.

Wish me luck. More in a few days, once the deadline passes.

Hooray! Draft one finished, plus...

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/214109

Panel pushes vote overhaul

A government-appointed panel of citizens officially recommended today that Ontario overhaul the way it elects politicians and usher in a new system that would better distribute power in the legislature.

The panel of 104 members voted to endorse the mixed member proportional voting system, which would have citizens vote twice – once for a local representative and once for a party to govern the province.

Advocates say the new system would make the balance of power in the legislature better reflect the overall vote.

The legislature would be made up of 90 members representing ridings and an additional 39 seats that would be distributed among parties to help ensure that popular vote numbers reflect the overall balance of power.

In the last four provincial elections, all governments won a majority while receiving less than 50 per cent of the popular vote.

To crash, perchance to get up and at it again in 6 hours

Been a while, wot? Just submitted the (very rough, even more incomplete) first draft of my thesis slash dissertation slash final project, or whatever the crap they call it here. It weighed in at 44,700 words (approximately) and 167 pages, although as indicated I'm really only about 35-40% done so I'm confident it will top the 300 page mark, before appendices etc.

All of which means it's not exactly worker's playtime just yet. I've got another 6 weeks of hard slogging to go before the final draft is due, and I can't afford to wait for feedback from my mentor before plunging onward. So I'm going to crash out for a short while after pulling a near-allnighter and get right back on that horse in a little while.

In other words, see you in six more weeks. Unless by some miracle I zip through the rest of it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

The real work begins

Okay, I've had a bit of a break, I got out of town for a while (even got to visit the old ancestral home), recovered from a bit of a breakdown, but now it's nose-to-the-grindstone time. My thesis is due in just a little under one month from now.

And it's a big one.

Not content with simply writing and submitting the usual 10,000 word paper, I've decided to write an entire textbook for the course that I teach back home. In just a little under one month.

Needless to say I probably won't be blogging as much as I used to...

First draft is due May 14, so expect only sporadic entries until then. The final draft is due June 25.

Wish me luck.

Things I will miss

1. 'Mind the gap'.
2. The constant but reassuring sound of trains.
3. Magpies. (Yes, I know most people despise them, but I think they're actually rather beautiful creatures.)
4. This is a much shorter list, isn't it?
5. The miniature United Nations that is the MA-MBM cohort 2006-07.
6. The miniature United Nations that is Flat 88, with representatives from Palestine, India, England, the U.S.A., Ireland and Canada (among others).
   
7. The extensive selection of surprisingly delicious "FreeFrom" (gluten-free) products from the local supermarket.
8. Waddles the Penguin on my coffee cup.
9. Harrow-on-the-Hill and St. Mary's.
10. Tom, the campus cat.
11. Northwick Park.
12. The commute to Baker St. and Marylebone Road.
13. The Wednesday evening pub sessions.

Three more sleeps

It's been a while since I posted, and frankly it's been a while since I've felt remotely normal enough to post. So here goes nothing.

I've spent most of the last couple of weeks recovering. Not that I'm back up to 100%, of course, but close enough that I feel up to blogging (briefly) and I can go out and about playing tourist for the last few days of my stay in London.

I still feel lightheaded on occasion, kind of hovering on the edge of reality. It's an odd sensation. I don't know what causes it, whether it is a physical or a psychological side effect, but I am willing to bet it's the former; it probably has to do with my body adjusting to my new way of breathing, which to be honest I haven't quite mastered yet. So an ongoing imbalance/changing balance of CO2 and oxygen in my lungs is probably making my eyes wobbly, and my head as well. It comes and goes and there seems to be very little predictability about it; mostly it happens in the morning when I wake up, and lasts for a few hours until noonish, but then sometimes it just seems to happen of its own accord, like right now (it's about 8:15 pm GMT as I write). Maybe I'm just dehydrated and need more water, too.

Oddly enough I feel in full control of my faculties, and I'm not taking any drugs (though I was given a prescription last week in case of emergency) so it doesn't feel like a psychological thing; that's why I assume it's physiological.

As I wrote in an e-mail to my team yesterday:

On the plus side, the panic attack has been a wonderful demonstration of how crippling my addictions to safety, security, control, 'normalcy' (whatever that is), etc., are. I am using this experience to conduct a deeper inquiry into the way I am.

So my stay ends with a bang, at least, and not a whimper!

The next two days -- my last in London for quite a while -- will be very busy, as you might guess, seeing off friends and packing and and sight-seeing and generally preparing to leave on Saturday.