Sometimes you get motivation from the thoughts that make you feel a little down, and you are left wondering whether the motives are the right ones. For example, am I getting down to working on the PhD proposal because I genuinely want to study, because I want to be doing anything but sitting around leeching off my parents or because I feel better when people talk to me about doing it?

I'm quite enjoying my part time job as a driver. The other day I had a lovely drive up to Glossop then another down to Dunham Massey, beautiful rural roads etc. I get a strange sense of freedom just being an anonymous driver, turning up, dumping a little compost-joy and leaving again. No pressures, no worries about the future. It's only temporary though, my mind will surely cotton on at some point to the fact that I'm wasting my education and focus solely on that, ruining any zen-like moments.

The PhD project text finally clicked yesterday. I'm going to be honest and say that I'd read it for 2 hours and slept on it before I finally understood what they were trying to say. I felt a rare sense of achievement and excitement before I settled down to the matter of researching what I was going to say. I feel a little more confident now, despite the fact they want to see a copy of my MSc dissertation in the application. I'm proud of my grade at uni, but the little voice in my head keeps saying "No! You can't show them that, they'll take one look and realise you're a fraud in the academic industry!" which I know on a sensible, logical scale is complete nonsense.


In other news I spent a day working with Liz on her front garden and got burnt quite badly on my arms and back, yet with a f50+ screen on my face came away with only a mild rash on my face. I'm happy because that means the medication has worked beyond the end of the treatment. I went back straight after I returned from Sweden at Easter and the doctors are suggesting another course of treatment which, despite the discomfort, I'm quite happy about. I want to be able to go out in the sun with normal sun protection and know I'm not going to be scaring small children (at least not accidentally) for the next few days. Also, I might get to visit Suzanne in Italy.

Setting plans

The contact my tutor has turned out to be a woman I was put in touch with 18 months ago for a career chat. She agreed to meet and never returned my call. Hmmm. Have contacted my tutor to ask whether I should approach it as a totally new contact, or bring up the fact we have already been introduced via e-mail. Sadly, she may recognise me from my background.

Urgh.

In other news, my plan for today is to ring all the agencies I'm registered with to chase on temp jobs, run through the environment job sites for new openings, turbolist at least 5 items for eBay and do 30 minutes of French.

After that, some cleaning and then perhaps a delve into the wool chest to see if I can find something cheap to teach myslf knitting with. What? Well I'm skint and threw out all my holey jumpers last spring, so why not turn those balls into jumpers that fit my stupidly long upper body?

But first: washing out on the line. It might even start to dry...