Deadlines = Neurosis

I have two deadlines rapidly approaching -- one is self-imposed and arbitrary, the other can't be renegotiated. If I miss the latter one, then I lost an opportunity. The first deadline is my chapter and I told my advisor that I should have it for her review at the end of the month. That's 15 days from now. I'm almost done with the review of incitement and true threat jurisprudence, but I'm missing two very important sections: an analysis of Virginia v. Black case, and my own analysis of true threats, burning crosses, state power, and First Amendment protections. By the way, my current draft is already at 58 pages, so there's still quite a chunk to do before the end of the month, and already I'm entertaining the idea of pushing my deadline back another week.

"Must resist the thought!"

The second deadline is much later in July 15, 2007. That's close to two months from now which gives me some room to work, but the days can quickly turn into weeks and the next thing I know I'm out of time again.

The hard part about writing is organizing my time. I know writers who have multiple deadlines measured in terms of days (sometimes hours!), but can manage to meet them all so long as your time is managed correctly and efficiently. Of course, this is assuming you don't have writer's block, but even then, there are exercises for getting over that constraint. It also helps when you have little or no other obligations other than your writing. This is where my dissertation committee and many friends and colleagues rightfully warned me about the dangers of teaching: it is a time sink. Teaching will take up your time, time spent away from writing, and in the end, an unfinished dissertation is just that -- not finished.

[As I write this, I am also mindful that time spent here writing this post is also time spent away from my dissertation ... which is the initial reason why I started this blog (and numerous others), but I digress.]

I think that's why I've been fairly aggressive, even aloof and dismissive, at student requests for reviews of their final grades. I feel the pinch of the first deadline, and I need to be focused. I got my last paycheck, my job is done for the semester, and now I have to do my mine. After all, students are not the ones who will hire me. It's a committee of faculty and sometimes administrators. I can be accommodating and friendly to students all I want, but if I don't have those three extra letters after my name, then I will not get hired full-time. And I really don't want to be part-timing for the rest of my life.

As a result of my heightened anxiety due to my deadlines -- it may as well be neurosis -- I have to alter my writing schedule. I'm thinking of a 3 part split in the day: 3 hours in the morning, 3 hours in the afternoon, and 1 hour at night for a total of 7 hours per day. When I was teaching I could only spend, at best, 2-3 hours a day, 4 days a week, which is not much time so this schedule will be a substantial change. But between my time for writing, and time for everything else, I have to choose the former. It's the only way I can meet my deadlines, arbitrary or not.