Thorns

This grew out of discussions with other people and inside my head, dealing with that little voice that tells you you're mediocre, not living up to your potential, without value etc. I'm specifically coming at this from the point of view of someone who was "gifted" as a child then became increasingly unable to work or think very well, I'd be interested to hear from people with very different POVs.

Something I've been trying to get my head around since getting so ill is a broader understanding of what a person's "capabilities" really are. I am in many ways exactly as "clever" as I was when I was at uni, but I struggle to follow one or two lectures a week on Coursera because of my cfs related difficulty concentrating, and had to quit my really-not-that-challenging job because my brain just couldn't handle the work (neither could my body, but that's a different issue and in some ways was easier to accept)
( some personal context )
It's silly to blame myself for my limitations now, so did it make sense to blame myself for them then? Should I feel "proud of myself" for being less overwhelmed than I was two years ago now that I am on anti anxiety meds? In some ways it's depressing to admit your limitations, and obviously you shouldn't give up on your dreams out of misplaced "realism", but it also makes no sense to despise yourself for being "inherently mediocre" AND feel guilty for having failed to live up to your "brilliant potential". Everyone has a mixture of gifts and weak points, and we shouldn't feel guilty for not maximising the former without feeling proud for not being totally overwhelmed by the latter.

And why do we have to "live up to our potential" anyway? Life isn't a competition, not with each other and not with our "potential". Personally, the things I aim for are to maximise (a)My happiness (b)Everyone else's happiness (both by being polite etc and working on social justice) (c) Seeking truth and expressing things noone else is expressing (though maybe that's a subset of (a)? These goals are always open to change, anyway :)). I used to think (c) meant I had to pursue Science but for now it means making art. Is it great, popular art? No. Am I really all that inherently "gifted" at art? No(*). But it gets the ideas out of my head. Of course finding a balance between maximising the things I value and not beating myself up about missed opportunities is still difficult, but at least I'm worrying about things that matter and not holding myself to impossible standards (except when I am. This post is aimed at myself as much as everyone else!)

endless_murmur made a good post about the danger of telling people to be extraordinary which in turn inspired this post. As I said in my comment: we are told to be "extraordinary", but also told not to be weird, and the difference between the two is incredibly subjective. And not everyone is drawn to be either, and that's fine. Pluralism=good, elitism=bad.

I would have a final conclusion but like I said, I'm not good at formal essay structures any more :)

(*)Seriously, I was middling ability as a kid. I just kept at it because my parents are artists, and even then didn't really get any good until my late 20s when I had literally nothing else to do.

I have a Phd and YOU DON'T!!(*) I am a doctor! Of MATHS! Shrivel into the insignificant slugs you are before the incalculable glory of my doctory presence!!!!

I don't have any photos yet, so here is my highschool graduation.

EDIT: have to rush to work, but thank youse all :)

(*)unless you do.

Well..it's done. I have handed in my phd (all 8 copies of it).

I would probably feel a lot more enthusiastic about this if I wasn't feeling so crappy. I think all the adrenaline from the last few weeks of waiting has gone sour, so I'm sleepy and grumpy and feeling generally under the weather (I actually called in sick for work tomorrow, since as always the first symptom of me not feeling well is a sore throaght)

In fact I'm seriosuly considering not going to Terracon, though I think I'll wait and see if I feel better by Friday. I thought about offering up my ticket to someone else, but I think I'd rather give myself the chance of going and if neccesary let unisfa keep the $65 to buy more muffins or something.
Still, Sarah and Jocelyn, you may want to consider buying your own packet of pasta and bottle of sauce, though you're welcome to stop by my house and pick up mine if that's too much trouble :)

Guh. I may go lie and read some more. Still, though I may not feel very excited about it now at some point it's going to hit me that I never have to do any work on my phd again, and I'll feel pretty chuffed. Well, unless you count the paper my supervisor wants me to cobble together out of the first half, but I can take as long on that as I want.

My supervisor told me she wouldn't be able to get back to me with any more corrections till tommorrow (leaving two days to do the corrections and hand it in! Eeeeep!!!) so I've been spending my time doing all the stuff I was planning on doing in my proper time off. The house is very shiny, I have practiced my shows for work (though I may try to co-opt people to help me learn a two person script at Terracon, since I need to learn it for the day after) and I'm at level 30ish in Bonnie's Bookstore.

Last night I decided it had been far too long since I did any drawing that wasn't comic-related (and thus more rushed craft than careful art) and flipping through my old sketches came accross "an irritated demon" which I decided to expand on: I give you Angel and Demon *bows*

Ok, not very original and somewhat flawed but it was fun to do, and I'm moderately proud of it :) I don't normally put my pictures online but lilysea did ask (I looked up some of the reference pictures while we were on the phone)

Hmm...and now I'm out of things to do again. Maybe I'll play God Of War, Cam's been going on about how fantastic it is. *goes off to keep self occupied*

I know many of you have exams, but I am in my own special little ball of stress right now. My Phd is due(*) on the 28th. That is, twelve days from today. To hand it in, I need at least one of supervisors to have read, checked, and approved my corrections. The description of these corrections takes 13 pages, and they are scattered throughout my 170(!) page thesis.

A week ago, I emailed all my supervisors with the corrected thesis (I would have done it earlier, but had a cold, then reflux, then my ear got infected. Guh.) Only to have Supervisor 1 (who is the only one familiar with all the maths) to reply with "Oh, but I'm leaving the country for four weeks. Tommorrow."
Supervisor 3 is in Hungary busy with a new baby and hasn't replied.
Supervisor 2...is apparently going to email me with her comments later today. Will she say it's all good? Will she say "You need to redo all of it"? Will she be baffled by the sections she's unfamilar with?? Argh!!!

I mean if neccesary I can go overtime, but that will almost certainly mean missing Terracon :(

Also, I lost one of my piercings when it got Horribly Infected.

On the plus side..uh...I saw Cars. It was ok. Also work is going well apart from feeling sleepy and having sore throats more than I would like.

(*)Yes, I already handed it in. Then it was marked, and I was given four months to fix all the errors they found. This is the usual way of such things, afaict.

For anyone who didn't see me in my big red "Phinished" shirt: yes, I have passed. I have four months to put in some mainly very minor corrections (ie, consistently mispelling one of my examiners names, oops :)) and then I should graduate in September! The examiners reports were really very nice, lots of positive comments and fairly high marks(*). I knew if my supervisors weren't such perfectionists I could have handed in ages ago and passed, but noooooo :D

Annoyingly I have a big ol' headache, and that's after a 2 hour nap (I only just managed to finish reading the reports)
So I hope this isn't too badly written, just thought I should let you all know.

Also, tommorrow I find out if I get an interview for a job at scitech, fingers crossed!

Oh, and it turned out I hadn't told my mum we were going to england either. She was not amused :)

(*)It turns out you do get marks, getting a number from 6 (flawed) to 1 (exceptional) for six categories. One of them gave me a 1 for my Lit Review, yay!