SIIIIIGHHHH
I feel at quite a loss. I have been struggling to get some work done on my PhD research for the last month but I find myself totally without motivation on most days. I am beginning to be anxious about all the time I am wasting and being afraid that I may end up paying a very heavy price for this procrastination! I thought I was more self driven than this but alas! A friend of mine told me once that one of the most valuable lessons she picked up during her own PhD study was the ability to drive herself, and I am must say she is one of the most self driven people I know.
I am aware that every difficulty in our lives is meant to teach us a valuable lesson and make us stronger, if only we can embrace the lesson. In my particular case, things are made worse by the feeling that I have somehow bungled a very promising relationship. I met this guy through an online dating service, and over a period of four or five days we spent hours and hours writing to one another, building up to our first meeting which we both highly anticipated, if with trepidation and uncertainty. Out of the blue though, he suddenly cut off ALL communication, and it has been almost a week since he was last in touch. Although we were in touch for less than a week, he and I got along so well and seemed so compatible, and both admitted to having developed quite strong feelings over that short period, that his sudden silence really hit me hard! I have since achieved a semblance of calm and resignation, but still experience sudden moments of piercing longing and regret, and over all cannot get back my groove pre-meeting him, a groove that was decidedly precarious to begin with.
Over the weekend though, I watched a documentary on Quantum Mechanics and what it means for our daily life, and one of the most profound messages it had for me was the notion that we are all essentially a mass of energy, and that as such have complete control over the state of our bodies and emotions (I had heard of a similar idea in "The Secret"). The film makers postulated that the very idea of being "helplessly" in love with a specific person was quite preposterous, and was rather only evidence of the addiction to the feeling one comes to associate with the loved one's presence; apparently, at any time one may wean oneself off this person simply by mastering this addiction. Given the emotional attachment that had been engendered through the intensive contact with this guy over the previous few days, this notion certainly gave me hope of a quick recovery; indeed, I felt as if God Himself was speaking directly to me an dmy situation.
Today is Tuesday, and although I have had bursts of productivity since the work week begun, I am yet to fully recover my usual steam. Yesterday I erased all our previous contact and contact information because I was making myself crazy continously scanning it to see where it went well wrong. This made me feel really sad, and today I seem to still be going through withdrawal. Given the intensity of our contact however, a part of me is convinced that he only got cold feet (rather than lost interest) and will get back in touch when he makes up his mind to go for it after all. I wonder if I will have the courage to give it another go; A part of me tells me he is not to be trusted and I shoul dnever speak to him again, another tells me that he really may have genuinely freaked out and decided to take the time to give the whole thing furhter thought. At any rate, all that has nothing to do with me until he actually gets back in touch, so in the meantime, I occupy myself with other suitors, and try to really turn towards them and engage with them. Who knows? I might develop an attachment to one of them in the process, and find decide that I have found "the one" (another apparently ridiculous concept) after all.
