Yesterday was one of those days where I was overwhelmed by life in general. I didn't really do much of anything, which is disappointing and frustrating and I don't really have much of an excuse except that I just couldn't seem to handle the world. Days like come along occasionally, and I usually just let them happen and figure that things will be better once I've got it out of my system. Probably a lot of it was the inner toddler rearing her ugly head again and using her extensive veto power by putting her foot down with the emphatic "no!" when I suggested to myself that I do something productive or useful. I did run a few errands, grocery shopped, met with my therapist, bought a new desk for my office, and had a lovely lunch outside with Spousal Unit, so I probably wasn't actually as dysfunctional as I felt. But, the three hours of internet junk surfing in bed in the afternoon was the true indicator of my mood. (I did learn that Jude Law is promising a $9 million dollar "I won't cheat again" bond to Sienna Miller A bond -- like, take away my money if I skip town and send a bounty hunter after me kind of thing. Didn't know that there was such a thing for cheaters. Worth a lost afternoon of working time to learn? Probably not.)

Tuesday, though, was a pretty good day. I went to the New Office and unpacked a ton of books, and did other nice moving-in kinds of things like putting some interesting postcards etc. on my office door, putting some things in frames that I had never had framed, and organizing the books on the shelves. I never know whether to do that by subject or by chronology. So, I did kind of a mixed hodge podge of both. And, can I just say, the New Office looks great. I am really pleased with how it is shaping up. If I may be so bold, I will declare that I have a bit of a knack for nesting.

On another note, I've been thinking a lot lately about a post that Jane put up a few days ago about fear as the primary motivating factor in graduate school. I hadn't really thought about it before, but she is right -- almost all of the motivation to work in graduate school comes from fear - fear of not getting a job, fear of the advisor, fear of losing your funding, etc. Jane asked then, how do you transition out of that fear-based mode and into the mode of a professor -- where it is the love of the scholarship and the intellectual curiosity that drive you to work. I don't really have an answer, since it is a problem I'm grappling with myself, but I thought it was really interesting to think about my work now from a fearless perspective. And maybe that shift will help me finish. Perhaps.

Off to work!