The update: I’m done with school but not done with school. My thesis essay is three weeks late and I’ve not made much progress since the deadline passed; I had just about half the page count done then, in highly unsatisfactory chunks, I don’t have much more than that now.
Most every day for the past two months or so I’ve spent a few hours sitting in front of my Powerbook, watching the cursor blink in and out, in and out, in and out. I can write short emails about my thesis, regurgitating the elevator spiel that I crafted all semester and perfected during the Winter Show, and discuss it with people in depth, even explaining most everything that I should be talking about in my paper, but I can’t seem to write it out. And it’s really fucking killing me—I have to get my resume and portfolio together (both of which have I haven’t touched in three years) find a job, clean my apartment and find a roommate, and I can’t do any of these things yet because I have this huge thing hanging over my head.
The experiment: I haven’t been writing here (or anywhere else; I can barely get myself to reply to emails these past few weeks) because I’ve been trying to write the paper. Since that clearly hasn’t been successful in the least, perhaps starting to post here again and all that entails will get my juices flowing again?
Here’s Tom Coates from earlier today, nailing how I’ve been feeling, “On forcing oneself to do stuff”:

So why does it sometimes seem such a bloody enormous battle to convince oneself to even start doing a piece of work? What kind of stupid fucking evolutionary process ends up with procrastination, paralysis and apparent indolence? I mean, what kind of creature does well in the world by sitting at home in front of a computer for three hours in the early evening trying to motivate itself to write something about set-top boxes?! Where’s the reproductive advantage there?!

Stupid bloody world that should make me be this way and then make me neurotic about it.

He got his trio of set-top box posts done within the day so hopefully I’ll bang my essay out within the week. Wish me luck?