Rough week

Last monday morning, I was talking to Lucinda, and I was saying that I could have a rough day or two ahead of me.  I'm in the middle of trying to write my BAD (Babar Analysis Document), and it's been a while since I've had to write anything.  So I'm going through all the annoyance of trying to take what I know and put it down on paper in such a way that everyone who reads the BAD will know what I'm talking about.  I'm at the tail end of things, and since I'll be trying to get my analysis reviewed and published soon, I'll need this supporting document to be ship-shape.

Anyway, I've come to realize that I hate writing.  At least starting to write.  Writer's block sucks, and it's really easy to get distracted.  It's easy to make a plot of the data that tells my story better than words, and then lose the desire to actually write words.  It becomes a sort of "Look!  Can't you see?" sort of thing.  Of course, try getting something approved with nothing but a picture.  Unless you're an artist, of course.

So anyway, Lucinda was nice enough to send me a Calvin and Hobbes strip :

She figured that if my day was going to be tough, it always helps to laugh about it a little bit.

It was weird...the strip kind of turned out to be prophetic for the week.  Right after getting off the phone I found a new decay mode in my data.  That's actually a good thing, cuz it's something new to look at, and it gets to be mine.  But...it does mean that we have to figure out why we didn't expect to see it, if it's really there, that sort of thing.  I think my advisor's exact words were "You found something new!  You're never going to graduate"  Took a little bit of the wind out of my sails.  This changed my day from "write like mad" to trying to figure out what the heck happened.  This went on for a while, and I'm now to the point that I'm writing like mad so that I can catch up to my analysis and start working on the new stuff.

While I was going back over things and putting them in the BAD, I realized that I'd made a few changes since I made various plots and tables.  So I started remaking things, and in the process of remaking things I learned that things had changed enough that I had to figure out why stuff was so different.  It seemed like one thing after another was breaking.  Nothing made sense, and I essentially felt like I was starting over.

Fortunately, I think I've gotten past the worst of it...maybe.  There's still a lot of writing to do, but I understand and have fixed the problems that I created last week.  It's not like these things are necessarily all that bad, but it sure does add to the stress level.  Hopefully this week will be more productive.

Comments

[Lucinda]

You're welcome...I think. Maybe I shouldn't send such prophetic comic strips....

[The Green Lantern]

It's ok Bryan. We want you to say here anyway.