Resblog

But part of meeting my resolutions means I don’t always have the time or energy to update here. I’m still poor and am about to face the summer, that time of year when the amount of taxes withheld from my paycheck doubles. I’ll have to cut way back on some things. This fun little trick of the university is actually the reason I am very poor instead of poor, since I made my budget to fit the monthly income during the semester.

Anyway, I’m hoping to make this a short term problem by finishing up my PhD as soon as possible. Which, at this point, may be something like 2 years. Since it took my advisor 5 weeks to give me a thesis project, after the committee rejected my original proposal, I’m thinking that my best efforts won’t shave more than 6 months off this time line. On that note, I’m adding a new resolution: I will work at least 10 hours every day during the week and some amount of time (TBD, ~5 hours maybe each day) on the weekend. This is really formally outlining what I do most days and expanding it to every day. Hopefully I can catch up this summer to where I should be and things will be easier when the semester starts. I’d still like to TA a semester or two but I need to feel more confident in my knowledge and abilities before then. At least I know now that my advisor’s real value is helping me develop the pedigree to get a good post doc and not helping me become a good scientist so much. Others in the lab will help with that and he and boss jr can pat themselves on the back all they want without messing me up so much.

So, this bundle of work cuts short my relaxing time which doesn’t bode well for making a dent in my reading list. I’m trying to be regimental with my time this summer, sleeping no more than 6 hours during the week and 8 on the weekend, working out 4-5 days a week, using my time constructively when I do have relaxing time (ie no tv).

I don’t really want to talk about work any more, lets just say it’s stressful and makes me question my ability to have a career. Despite that I’m doing well on being more laid back and such.

The conference I went to a few weeks ago totally messed up my workout schedule. For the weeks bracketing my trip I was too busy to work out and for the week I was gone I managed to use the ellipticals 3 times but this severely effected my ability to run for real in warm weather. In other words, I was up to 3.5 miles and was knocked down to a painful 2. I am back up to 2.5 but I’d really like to get to 3 again this week. I had just made 3.5 before the trip so that hurdle will be a little harder.

I also need to add more fruits and veggies to my diet. Fresh stuff is expensive, sadly. Still cheaper than meat though. I love meat but I might have to be a (quasi) financial vegetarian. This should help with the flab loss too. Frustratingly, I didn’t eat any more than usual while I was running more but I didn’t lose weight either. I actually ate out too much in February and gained 5 lbs, so that was the exception, but I’ve lost that and an additional 2 lbs in the last 6 weeks. I know exactly what helped too, being too nervous to eat before my thesis committee meeting and too depressed to eat after. I lost most of the 5 lbs that day.

Bottom line is that I’m doing well, yet I have miles to go before I sleep, etc. It’s almost June, eek.

What I lack in frequency in posting I make up for in volume of each post.