this is

going to be tedious, perhaps, but I want to keep track of my progress because I'm running out of time. Will this make me more or less stressed out? I don't know, we'll see. As of this moment, I have just under 45 hours until I turn this thing in, which has to include train time, printing time, and other necessities. I thought about switching back and forth between sections, an hour each in a rotation, but I don't want to mess up whatever flow I might get into, so we'll see.

5pm-7:30pm - I have the first four pages of the Pale Fire section how I want them. This might seem redundant because I had the first four pages of PF how I wanted them the other day, but I've rearranged a lot since then, so it needed some polishing. Cumulative page count: 14/50

10pm - Another cup of coffee, two pages of Cat's Cradle. Not horrific, but not fabulous. 43 hrs. 16/50 pages.

4am - wow, that's been six hours? There may have been a bit of a break in there, but I needed it. And I've been really focused (read: nit-picky) for at least the last hour and a half, getting the opening of the Castle section how I want it, and I think it's good to go, so there's another three pages. Which puts us at: 37 hrs. 19/50

Okay, I needed a snack, so I decided to peruse the NYTimes, and found this little fluff piece that totally made me chuckle. (Better than freaking out, right?) One tasty quote: "human beings are unconsciously drawn to people and things that remind us of ourselves." And then, what did I think of? I totally dated a guy who had the same initials as my mother for a minute. Trippy.

8:45am - At the suggestion of my wise friend across the pond, I'm going for a little walk. I also needed her to remind me that I am not writing a dissertation, which she did without asking. She read those 19 pages. She knows. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it. I'm making this way harder than it is. I should be cutting, not adding. I have over 100 pages of material. I can make this thing so tight in the next 24 hours. I can. I just need to do it.