Brainstretched

Now that I'm halfway through the term and very much in the student groove, I've been feeling a little mentally disoriented. As I put it to a freshly minted PhD friend last week (albeit less eloquently), I feel as if I spend all my dead-tree reading time (with the odd PDF) trying to get a handle on what each cultural theorist is about and sorting them out from each other, while my non-tree reading time is still focused on the something's-always-happening-on-Twitter-right-now world of contemporary culture, in all its minutiae and madness. I've become quite self-conscious (perhaps occasionally, even self-reflexive) about all sorts of human behaviour I see around me, including my own --- but at other times I just downshift the brain and let myself just be.

Another friend (this one still writing her PhD) suggested that I give myself 25 minutes of uninterrupted hammer-at-the-keyboard time, to let my thoughts loose and sort themselves out. I haven't, er, made time to do that yet.

In two weeks, I'll be submitting my first essay. It only has to be 2,000 words long. My writer side scoffs at the number, but the student side of me is still scrambling to formulate the essay question that I want to write on.

I realise this blog post makes it sound like there are many different voices in my head talking to each other.