The beginning of this week was really tough. I lost all perspective on things and had sunk into a bit of a depression. I still liked the program, but I just felt like I couldn’t make it to the end of the quarter. It seemed like my performance was slipping. I wasn’t absorbing the readings and my last ethnography was a disaster. Or the later description there was more than a bit of hyperbole. Mediocre would be a better description of my participant observation. Ironically I had made some good progress on my thesis. But all and all I was feeling l-​o-​w. I just wanted to come down, like some junkie cosmonaut… what happened to Cracker anyway?

Finally I realized that what I needed was to take a night off and not feel bad about it. Up until that point, if I allowed myself to get distracted from things I would get ticked at myself and not let go of that frustration. I think that’s been my main problem. So for the moment I’m beyond that. Last night I went home and cleaned and organized my apartment. I feel so much better.

IRB

Sucks. Institutional Review Board. Just because some medical researchers had to go off and conduct immoral experiments on unwitting participants, I need to get what feels like fifteen bazillion releases before I can talk to someone. Double that amount if the person is pregnant. And its frustrating. I blame you for this foodgoat (only one reader of this blog will get that inside reference).

A recent interviewee for a possible thesis topic requested anonymity. Now I’m not sure how much, if at any, I’m able to talk about that interview. Ugghhh! And I really need to beat on the topic and the interview with people to decide if there is something there. Grrrr.