I'm on a Leave of Absence this semester. I have to continually remind myself of that and stop overpromising[^1] to myself. My skills as a project organizer (the project being my dissertation) are impeccable and only surpassed by my ability to overestimate what I'm able to actually do in a day when care-taking for my elderly parents. I'll be meeting with my advisor next week, for the first time since last semester (I think.) I wish I'd be able to produce more words last fall, but both of my parents had extended and, sometimes, overlapping hospitalizations that took my energy and focus away from everything else in the world. It's 100% understandable that I've not been able to write and I feel 100% shameful for not being some inhuman super-student. Why do we do this to ourselves?[^2] My dissertation, which I'll discuss in more detail later, focuses on film and I have not watched a single film, diss-related or other wise, since sometime before Thanksgiving? Maybe one megashark movie at some point. So after so many years of starting and stopping, I'm back at square one, but the clock is ticking. --- *© H.B. Flyte All Rights Reserved.* [[HBlog]] | [[Logs]] l [[Home]] [^1]: I added "overpromising" to my Obsidian dictionary because I'm sure I'll be returning to this topic later. [^2]: I almost wrote "Why do I do this to myself?" but over the years I've realized that I'm not a special flower alone in a field. I'm a grocery store carnation stuffed among many in an aluminum bucket on sale the day after Easter. This is the first of many academia metaphors you'll have to put up with here.