Third Culture Kid(s)

I figure the reason I have, maybe, two readers right now is that I’m a complete and total downer.  If you read back over just the entries from this weblog (which is all you can do, actually, since the Typepad one is defunct), I seem to spend a lot of time moping.

Just so you know, then, this is more of the same.

I dunno.  I’m just feeling tired again.  Not depressed, just listless, friendless, isolated, stupid (relates to dissertation), and just generally adrift.   I keep feeling like I’m inevitably going to give up on my dissertation anyway, so why bother?  And this despite the fact that I used to love my topic and that people tell me it’s good enough.  I feel so behind in the reading I need to do to get up to speed, not to mention the piles of data (in Japanese) that I still need to plow through, and I can’t help but think that I’ll never be able to do it justice, I have nothing relevant to say, I’m so much more stupid than everyone else in academia, and I don’t even know what I’d do with the PhD if I managed to get it (except keep it in a box somewhere so my kid(s) can open it up one day, discover it, and marvel at how their mother never did anything relevant or useful with her life).

Oh yes, I’m in a place today.

I worry that I’m going to wake up five years from now to find my kid(s) in school and me without any kind of plan for the rest of my life.  Having failed at graduate school (where I actually used to be reasonably successful; I wasn’t a ’star’ student, but I wasn’t bringing up the rear, either.  Now I’m kind of persona non grata among some of the faculty in my department - who I have little respect for anyway, although that doesn’t keep me from beating myself up about it - and one of those floundering students that faculty don’t talk about anymore, while they wait for us to either drag ourselves across the finish line or give up).

Pfffffffffft.