Monday evening things

 * Slowly working on the secret project. It's getting close to done. I need to motivate myself better. I want to start something new but I should finish some of the many projects I currently have going

* I also need to clean house. I did a tiny bit this afternoon - said I'd do an hour a day but I got home too late to do that much. What I need to do is set myself a strict timer and work until it goes off.

* I went in today and revised the introduction and wrote the Materials and Methods and part of the Results. I still feel unsure about this paper but I'm telling myself to channel my inner overconfident person (if I even have one) and just do it and submit it and if it gets "revise and resubmit" at least I will get told what I need to change on it. (I do not know, I do not know, why some people can just send stuff in and shrug when they get all kinds of criticism on it back, and I have to have it be nearly perfect and then every criticism is painful to me. I guess I take things too personally)

* Tomorrow I have to go to the field site though and walk around and contemplate how I might set up some treatment plots for the summer just to monitor what happens with the sericea lespedeza and maybe also try planting some prairie mix in prepared plots and see what happens. I wish I had a better plan but I really struggle with coming up with good research questions. I think part of the problem is "ain't no one like me BUT me" in my department, so I don't have a co-researcher to work with me or to bounce ideas off of. (there is another botanist but they are close to retirement and have quit doing research in favor of writing more popular-press type things).

* (Again feeling "I have no idea what I'm doing" feelings about research. I feel that a lot)

* I guess I'm also tired and sad - still messed up by the time change (I didn't eat dinner until 8 pm tonight because it felt "too early" otherwise, I need to get back into a better schedule). And I slept badly - the incision hurts if I lie with my head on my right side (where it is) and the stitches poke into it. And I dreamed about some of the people I've lost in recent years, perhaps because of the staring into the abyss that burying that cat brought on. 

Also thinking about how I have more books, fabric, and yarn than I will use in what remains of my life and maybe I have to start going through now and discarding some things so that whoever comes after me doesn't have to.I don't like that thought.

* Dealing with some rejection feelings again and while I know they're not logical - well, my feelings don't follow logic. I think also this past year (and maybe the six months before it) sort of exfoliated off the thicker skin I'd managed to grow, and I'm back to being stupidly sensitive and easily hurt, though these days at least I'm better about not crying publicly about it. 

I don't know how to fix it. I can't stop feeling. I've tried. I think the best is not to react. But that doesn't fix it for me.