Lobo's Lessons

Image by Mentalpirate I was on a roll last week, writing close to 5000 words in 3 days, and I felt bloody good about it. You see the thing about feeling good is that it can lead you off track, and make you think you deserve a break. And like the most natural reaction to hard time labour, you feel you've earned it. You stop your writing and think - "Know what? I'll just take the day off and carry on where I left off yesterday. No problem. No fuss. Done and done." And you take it. You take that day off. You spend it with the family doing the things that you should be doing as a family, taking them out to the park, shopping mall/movies, and you chill out for the rest of the day. And at the end of the day, you tell yourself - I'll pick up bright and early tomorrow and continue. No problem. No worries. Except that because you've grown accustomed to working at night (the only time your kids are in bed), you can't just fall asleep, just like that. ...

I hate touch-typing. I guess I never had the patience to stick it out when I was doing my degree, and this followed through to my masters, my job as a tenured academic… and now this ghost has come to haunt me here. It has come at last to the land of PhD, where I am struggling in my final year writing up the thesis. But why bring this up now? Haven’t you managed well enough so far? Why shoot yourself in the foot now? Well, frankly, it’s to do with my wrists. And my neck. Several years back I developed carpal tunnel syndrome, which I first realised when I was playing video games on my Xbox. And then it became painfully obvious when I bought my first motorcycle where I could only ride a few minutes before I lost all feeling in my hands and arms, especially the left one. And doing all this typing writing up my thesis isn’t helping either, as the pain became more pronounce the longer I spent time on it. And did I mention the neck? Do you have any idea how painful it is h...