Why do I do this to myself.

Check list of my life right now:

1. Finish editing intro chapter.
2. Finish editing Marx chapter.
3. Write and hand in my Annual Review, in which I attempt to convince my department that I haven't been wasting my time.
4. Re-read Marx chapter.
5. Decide the last section of said Marx chapter is completely irrelevant.
6. Scrap section entirely. Panic.
7. Decide that I simply don't have time to fix it right now, even though I know exactly how to, because it will involve lots of research I haven't done yet because it's material I wasn't planning on covering until my third year. Oops. 
8. Cope by writing a cover letter and applying for a second teaching position.
9. Panic again.
10. Fill out forms, and then go to meet people in finance so I can get paid for teaching.
11. Apply for conference funding.
12. Finish editing Carlyle chapter.
13. Celebrate! 
14. Hand everything in with profuse apologies to my advisor, including a) how long this has all taken, and b) how I am scrapping that section in the Marx chapter even though it's all shiny and new while c) promising that I'm going to totally fix that as soon as I'm back from vacation, really.
15. Photoshop therapy all weekend. Plus a manicure. And maybe a massage.
16. VACATION. COME HERE, I NEED YOU.

So far I'm on step 9. Yeah. Although the panic is probably being exacerbated by the three million cups of tea I had this morning.

Stupid step 7. I totally did come up with an awesome way of fixing my Marx chapter today, except that it requires analyzing two texts that are each 400 pages long and then lots of articles about them. Oh brain, why so slow to realize these things? We could have fixed it if you came up with this solution two weeks ago! As it is, that will be the next step in this madness, after I come back from Scotland. 

I suppose it's good that at least I have a next step. Still, I so wanted to be done with these chapters, but now they're just going to haunt me until Christmas or something. Bah.