The Reality

In a completely NON-pessimistic way I just need to report that this day is just not going well...  And because every minute on a Saturday impacts my dissertation timeline, I am realizing I may not meet my deadline.

I am one hour's worth of work away from submitting my 1st case study.  Yet for some reason I feel compelled to write this first... And, technically this is my 3rd case study but various changes in thoughts/processes, etc. have required me to "throw out" the first 2.  I now have 9  more to complete.  If I were to take as long with the next nine as this most recent one took me, it'd take me 9 months just to do the case studies and those are my synthesized materials from which I write my results so I still have at least 6 or 7 chapters to write after that...

And as each day has passed a new work deadline, a flat tire, or my allowing Tim some "Tim-time" has come up and I can't meet my quota for the day.  The more I work on this, however, I realize more elements to the research are needed which will take longer. And with such a tight timeline I just shrug it off and say, "I'll make it happen some way."

How is "it" supposed to happen if I can't even get what is scheduled to happen?  You should see the "proposed schedule" I have for meeting my deadline.  Work on it 4am to 6am and then 8:30pm to 11:30pm.  Now, I will say, I've been lucky to commit to at least one of these time frames on a daily basis about 99% of the time, but my timeline has relied on meeting BOTH of these time frames, which is just ridiculous.   Worse, I fear that as the gap in my actual progress to my proposed progress increases I'll lose my faith in the process.

And it is exactly this "faith" in the process that I've had for the past 3 months.  I have done SO much in the past 3 months to move this thing forward...  Spiritually, mentally and physically I have made some real changes in my life. Wonderful ones, really.  Outgrowth of blessings.

In the end, my secondary deadline of finishing before my birthday will not happen with the expansion of my case studies from 4 in number to 10.  I have a much simpler plan in mind that I need to hash out.  This schedule will by no means take the urgency out of my completion but it will be more realistic.