I’ve come to an age where I feel I should be capable of handling most things. I should know myself, be able to foresee difficulties and manage them in a way that doesn’t lead to too much trouble for me or for my surroundings. I’m not saying that I should be done in any way, with figuring out life and stuff, but I should have a pretty good idea about how to handle myself at least.
What this past month and a half of starting up my master’s thesis work has taught me is that I am completely clueless. Method development, conceptual frameworks, research ethics, visa applications, insurance, emergency plans, Ebola, elections, gadgets necessary for fieldwork, grant courses, French, people who don’t answer e-mails, software, hardware, international phone calls, coordination with Elli (whom I’m going to Burkina Faso with), budgets, vaccinations, accommodation, tickets, having time to see friends and family before I leave. I’ve been running around in a more or less constant panic, spending way too much time on trying to handle my panic rather than actually working – even though working is what I should be doing, because if I got things done, the panic would go away. And I should know this about myself already, I’ve been through similar things before. It’s just, I think I should be able to handle things and when I don’t I just loose it completely.
I’m a mess. I’m absentminded, I forget things, I forget the time, sometimes I’m even rude. I’m needy and whiny and I have very little patience with other people’s particularities. I’ve started to cut people off while they’re talking, because I think they’re taking too long to get to the point, I’ve already understood what they want to say but people are just way to roundabout about things. Which is terrible, because if there’s anyone who can spend ages explaining something, taking up way too much of people’s time and attention, it’s me. I’m living by a double standard, and I keep on rushing forward like a high-speed train.
I hope this will calm down. I hope my friends have the patience to see beyond my sudden exponential increase in eccentricity, and still be around once I’m back to some kind of normal. Which might not be until I turn in my thesis in June. If I make it there, that is.
Katja Malmborg 