Hello from the sick bay! I managed to catch a bug. I don’t feel great. I don’t sounds great.

The good news? The Fringe is over. Tourists will start to go home, and my city will quiet down a bit and settle down. This makes me very very very happy.

The not so good news? It is the end of the month and I am going to hit my 30,000 word goal for my thesis.

…which brings me to the writing challenge for the week: take the third line of the last song I listened to and make that the title and the subject of the post.  I was jamming to the new(ish) Paramore song ‘Hard Times’. The third, and the fourth line actually work well for the way I am currently feeling. They are:

Tell me that I’m alright
That I ain’t gonna die

Given that I feel like death, I know that if I went to see the doc right now, she would tell me I am fine. I need water, plenty of sleep and probably stop going to sleep with wet hair. It has been awhile since I’ve felt this crappy, and I am just happy that it is at the end of the summer and that a lot of the hard work I wanted to do on my PhD has been done.

That being said, knowing that I am falling short of my word count has me stressed. I don’t like falling short, and I would love it if my supervisors would tell me that I am doing okay. I had a really good meeting with them this month, but all I could hear is that I am a little behind the curve of where I should be as a third year, and I am constantly worried about how fucked I got in my second year on data collection.

I’ve already made it farther in this programme than I did in the one in California. I think I can even see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But it is what comes after I make it through the tunnel that has me scared. I’ve made no secret about wanting to become a permanent resident of the UK, specifically, Edinburgh. Work visas are hard to get, especially when I am not exactly a specialist in the field. I still have about a year before I really have to worry, but worrying about finding a full time job here in the city is a constant part of my day.

I want someone to tell me that it’s alright, and that there will be a job for me and I can stay in my flat and continue to miss the sunshine.

Until that happens, I am going to sit on my couch, guzzle tea by the gallons and chip away at my word count. Only 60,000 words to go.