Bittersweet acceptance

I received a letter of acceptance to a conference in Paris. I am at the same time flattered and a bit bitter. Maybe rejectance would have been easier this time. The conference takes place in June, and it would have been such an excellent opportunity to meet other people working in Jordan. It might be possible to have my paper read in absentia, if I manage to produce one. It is not quite the same, though. Not nearly the same. I thought I had already become calmly accepting but now I can't help feeling that this bloody illness is ruining what might have become my career.

Postponing again

Most of you who read my blog know me IRL and know what I'm currently facing. But I'd swear my dissertation has got a curse on it. At first I picked a subject that just didn't work out, then suffered of loss of motivation and uncertainty about what to do with my thesis, and now when I was motivated and it seemed possible to finish it, I was diagnosed with something that is going to ruin my timetable once again. The doctor emphatically said the treatments are going to leave me exhausted and I should not try too much. Of course he is right and the top priority is now to get me back to shape, but although not normally tending towards fatalism, I cannot help thinking that I am not destined to get that PhD.

Needless to say, I also had to cancel the congress trip to London. It was not strictly forbidden, it would just be potentially very unwise. So far I need not give up teaching though, and I'm still hopeful that I will be able to do even the fieldwork part of the course in archaeological survey in May. 

Oh, well. This is just momentary self-pity, you understand. I'll try to keep working on the dissertation as much as I can, not to lose the touch again. And it will do me good to have something else to think than sickness and treatments. I am not going to turn this blog into a medical journal though, so I won't be writing a lot about that here. Let's just say I am in good hands and hope to be almost as good as new after all this is over.

I did it!

I did it, I managed to leave the chapters in time. Go me!

Now various matters not related to the dissertation have turned up to complicate things, and it has been somehat difficult to continue with the next chapter, but I solemnly promise to finish at least one chapter by mid-February.