Thanks to the wonderfully boring and never-ending holiday of Easter, I’ve really been hit by the boredom of my life lately.

Two of my usual workout sessions cancelled along with the weekly painting class, all because of some stupid Christian non-event which someone decided to stick in the place of some heathen event celebrating something slightly more sensible I’m sure.

I have been completely spoiled by the atelier environment in the painting classes. There’s so much room, so much light from a long wall of windows, big(gish) tables empty and waiting for you to lay your stuff on them and start painting. At home, I have a desk with a laptop on it, and plenty of other stuff that needs to be gotten rid of before I can start arranging my painting gear on the same space.

Or maybe I’ve just become even lazier than I used to be. I don’t need much money to get by, rent is ridiculous and Lidl provides ample yet affordable nourishment. Money’s guaranteed, jobs aren’t. I still haven’t applied for post-grad studies because I’m too lazy to go all the way to Kela to ask if I could still get their money if I’m a student, theoretically more productive than an unemployed version of me.

But I don’t wanna! I spent over 6 years studying and I’ve had enough. Granted, it wouldn’t technically be the same. I would only be doing whatever I want with my own research, but it’s not that simple. There’s so much stuff I don’t want to deal with right now. Like being confident about your topic and defending its purpose in conferences, or to others at the uni. Anyone else pretty much. I hate the competitive side. I’m not competitive with anyone else but myself.

I don’t know why I see the other postgrads as enemies. It’s some kind of a gut reaction, derived from some deep sense of self-worthlessness and inferiority. I find it very hard to push myself from this happy, if somewhat boring place where for the first time in a very long time I can actually say I am content, even happy. Every day is not a chore no more and I even look forward to living a long life. But there’s a line, I think, between being content and being complacent. One means wanting to keep living your life, the other means you think you deserve all and more than you’re getting.

Oh well. I don’t know why finishing my research plan seems like such an insurmountable obstacle. Perhaps it is because I would very much like to get accepted at Langnet with full funding for 4 years and they only take brilliant students and brilliant research plans. I know that my biggest hurdle is communicating my topic in plain English to people who don’t know anything about it. Much easier said than actually done. I wonder if popularizing your research isn’t the most challenging part of it. How to explain in lay terms something that doesn’t exist in lay terms?

Long shory stort, I’m trying to regain my focus by reading some relevant literature, trying to come up with ideas and hypotheses to look into. In other words, a nice way of spending some time sitting on the sofa and pretending to be useful.

P.S. I’m absolutely in love with this new WordPress bug which causes the save button not to save your post until you refresh your browser and lose whatever it didn’t save before. (EDIT: Apparently it works for the publish button as well! Super.)