Grinding To A Halt

I was feeling good at the start of term, when the majority of the data was in and I felt 'on track'; but things have nearly ground to a halt now. Apparently that expression comes from the idea of an engine getting clogged up, or ship running aground, and it's apt because that is exactly how I feel.

I have uploaded most of my data to 'Dedoose' and played around with some preliminary coding, but not really in a consistent or systematic way. And apart from some half-hearted reading of loosely connected articles, I have done nothing in the last month.

I can blame: pressures of work, pressures of the part time work, other writing deadlines, my supervisor being absent for a couple of months with her own writing deadlines, doing a play last month, some extended periods of international travel....

I can console myself that this term is always difficult - after the luxury of summer to work uninterrupted for long periods. Looking back at this blog I can see that Autumn has repeatedly been a relatively unproductive time in the year.

Even so, I know that I am procrastinating, and worse, just blatantly avoiding, doing any work at all. I think my fear is that I must actually start writing, and I'm scared about doing that. I need to know what the structure is going to be, and - and this quite ridiculous - the university have just changed the website and software that we use to access materials and I haven't got my head around that yet. I'm feeling bad for not sorting something that should be relatively simple, and it's turned into a major barrier. 

This blogpost is acting as an admission of guilt. I'm just hoping it is enough to kickstart me doing something about it, and finding The Cure.