This is a post of procrastination.

If their radio silence is any indication (which according to the immigration people, it is), then the border agency has not even given my visa application to a caseworker yet. Their lack of efficiency is making me stabby.

I seriously should have just taken a six week vacation at home and done the damn thing from there. Le sigh. Swings and roundabouts.

Anyway.

Despite having a far better sense of what I'm doing with this chapter than I did before, I am completely avoiding finishing it in favor of doing laundry and vacuuming. And writing this post. Maybe if I write about the chapter, I will feel better about sitting down and actually doing it? Let's try that.

I think I've spent the last few months completely overthinking this whole project. As a result, my writing style has gone completely haywire, which is very frustrating since I used to think writing was one of my strengths. But I got caught up in writing lots of random research down without properly contextualizing it and everything became a mess, and so now I'm trying to sort it all out again. So far, it's going pretty well, in part because I'm going back into close analysis of specific texts, which is something I'm more comfortable with. On the other hand, at the moment I have the chapter split up like so:

1. Introduction
2. 'Signs of the Times' and diagnosing the Machine Age
3. Romantic Origins
4. Past and Present
5. Carlyle's influence on Dickens (shamelessly lifted from my MA dissertation)

Which is all well and good, but now I'm thinking that maybe 3 and 4, or 2 and 3 could be blended together into a discussion of origins and a primary text all at once, which might be clearer. I suspect I will have to print the whole 12,000+ words of the blasted thing out to tinker with it, traditional cut-and-paste style. I'm going to have to buy more printer credits.

To conclude, if I can actually make my brain actually behave itself, I'm going to try and sort this, so that I can finish the chapter by tomorrow, which will be really awesome.

In other news: I did not win anything at the northeast poster competition, which is a bit disappointing, but oh well. I still hung out with some cool people, and got a chance to print an edited version of my poster out on the university's dime, so meh. I got a complimentary pen for my efforts. I would have liked a hundred quid more, but what can you do.

Also interesting were the talks about public engagement that were included in the day's program, which got me thinking that I would like to get more involved in that aspect of academia. It's one that is meeting a lot of resistance in the upper echelons of universities, but it's importance is increasingly being recognized, so if I can find myself a niche somewhere in there, that'd be good. Hell, if it means I can combine my graphic design skills with my academic ones, that would be verging on a dream job.

And on a completely different note, I sprained my thumb while at Tynemouth by launching myself up onto a ledge and not bracing my hand properly. I didn't even notice it until it kept hurting a week or so later, but yes, definitely a sprain or a strain. It was a very stupid injury, and now I can't play the piano properly for another fortnight or so. Grar.

Okay, I suppose I should actually try and work now. I'm going to experiment with this split-screen capability Scrivener has to work out this editing/blending plan. This program's superiority to Microsoft Word continues to amaze in new and interesting ways!