I feel his pain

There is something very similar between PhD students and bestselling novelists working on the next volume of their bestselling series.

Douglas Adams once said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

There are two things that can stop me in my tracks as far as working is concerned: writer's block and life.

Writer's block is sent by the devil and is my very own proof that there is a malevolent force in the universe. The benign force lives in my shower. So much for omnipresence.

Life is a giant conspiracy created just to try to tempt me to live it rather than waste it sitting here slaving over articles that do not prove what they say they will prove and then get used as proof in other articles thus setting up a situation in which all of the proof rests on hot air. Which is known to be stable only in a closed academic environment.

I have four doors to paint today. I need to move my bedroom to the back room so we can prime and paint the window, but we can't do that until the radiators are painted and last night my husband accidently put too much paint on one so it wrinkled and now we have to sand and do it again. We have to be out by Monday morning so that the floors in the rest of the apartment can be done. I can't move any furniture into the rooms that have had the floors done, because the radiators need to be painted. But the furniture needs to be moved or the rest of the floors cannot be done.

You know those plastic square games where the picture is all jumbled up and you need to rearrange the pieces by sliding them up/down and side/side, but you can only move one at a time, so you have to plan all of your moves well in advance? I HATE that game. I'm living that game.

On a happy note, I met the folks at JobCenter again.... and it went very well. Had the husband there, which was a good thing since her English wasn't so hot, but she was very nice and emphasized the things I could do rather than the things that I can't. She also apologized for all the stupid hoops I had to jump through. And unlike a lot of people, like the immigration lawyer who filed our paperwork, she never said that I didn't have to worry because I was an American WASP. I get that I am more likely to be "accepted" by the Danish system because I'm white, educated, with a Danish maiden name... but it bothers me. And it bothers me when people point it out as if it was acceptable for immigration to behave this way.

I then made my visit to the Sprogcenter (language school) for my interview and figured out that while my Danish is by no means stellar, I don't need to start again from day one. But I need the review. So the very friendly lady there figures it will be best to drop me in the middle of a Danish one class. So I'm waiting on that. I bit the bullet and signed up for a morning class. Why? So that I am forced to get up and get a move on rather than rolling out of bed, taking my sweet ass time, going to afternoon class and then finding myself out of time to do anything else. Until Denmark realizes the brilliance of midnight banking and grocery shopping, I am going to have to be a day person. (Note: I've never found a land that believes in midnight banking, any ideas?)

One day I'm going to wake up and my dissertation will be done and I won't have anything to paint and I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. It's on my To-Do List.