Plodding along... .

This, I am sorry to say, is going to be another one of those (rare) filler posts. I had so many ideas for posts but, in time, they have all evaporated away with the stress of completion. I'm guessing that the following few months will yield more filler posts ... and although I dislike just about "keeping my hand in", I think that's all I can manage for now.

I should say I have started writing in earnest, but, really (and most unfortunately), I haven't. I have what My Advisor thinks is a fairly solid outline, and I have bits and pieces of writing, but nothing that you would yet call a dissertation. (And, just for the record, I hate having to write those background chapters. It's not like they help anybody, myself included.) On the other hand, though, I do have a nearly complete presentation that is for my dissertation defense talk.

What I have been doing in the past few weeks is starting to tie up loose ends, polishing up all the projects I have worked on so they can be taken smoothly forward by others after me. I have also started working a little on 'building a world' outside of the University, to which I can belong once I leave this place. My Advisor has been incredibly supportive and helpful in this respect, and I really am grateful! Although a large part of me is looking forward to finishing and leaving, a little bit of me is focusing on the emotions attending the act of "moving on". I feel a sort of wrench having to leave this lab, and I am starting to gradually reconfigure my connections with the people in it. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with similar feelings involving anything outside the lab. A few people, yes. But it is (hopefully) going to be easier to keep up with them as individuals once I leave.

Wow. I'm talking like I'm leaving tomorrow! I really ought to get back to writing my dissertation first, or I'll just be here ... forever. Goodbye!