On writing and stress

We're now in the tail-end of our class-free writing period (class-free being that we don't meet for seminar or tutorials, not that we're becoming white trash). Papers are due on the 14th.

On Tuesday I met with my adviser to go over a draft, a meeting in which we said, "Yes, this sucks. Good. Now what do you want to write?" "Well, I think that actually I'm trying to write about how the Constitution is a social contract; I had to talk about freedom at first to get my brain there." "Good. Go write it."

So I did. I did a bit of work on Tuesday, and then pretty much sat down yesterday and said, "I am going to write this." And I did. And it turned out the paper I want to write isn't too similar to what I actually already wrote, so it wasn't so much 'copy/paste/rearrange' but just 'write'. I'd told my adviser I would email it to him Thursday morning, which is today. So I sat and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and I thought and thought and thought and then wrote more. 21 pages, almost all new, in about the space of 24 hours.

Now I have emailed that off, and now I'm sitting here like, 'huh. no writing to be done. odd.'

I can't imagine how I'm going to feel not just once I've turned in the paper (my guess, though, is relieved and very drunk), but once I finish my oral and am truly and honestly done with this paper. It occupies such a huge part of my mind I'm having a hard time imagining not having it to work on.