I don't have a thesis, I have a research question

I am bored of my dissertation. So, so bored. I have been working on it every day since the Founding Fathers created the world and I will keep working on it every day until Ghost Abe Lincoln comes back to destroy us all. I get excited about it every once in a while when I try to describe it at a party or something (I'm so much fun at a party!) but then the next day I sit down in front of it all and am bored again.


It's not a feature, it's a bug.
There are several aspects of the productivity-type software suite* that I am using for said dissertation which make me angry. First, in Numbers, there's no text-to-columns feature. I really need to do text-to-columns, basically five times every day. I gave up completely and switched to a separate open-source spreadsheet editor instead because this makes me so furious.

Second, you can only alphabetize things in Pages if the things are in a table. I don't want it in a table, it's my bibliography! Let me sort the lines, you stupid program! I use some sort of nerdy add-on download thing instead, but what a rip-off. What kind of word processor can't sort alphabetically? A stupid one, that's what.

Third, the ways that you are allowed to specify where figures go, in relation to each other and to text, do not please nor satisfy me. Plus I think there is some sort of fault in either my computer or my edition of the software, so that half the time when I check a box, it checks or unchecks itself repeatedly in defiance of my wishes.

Far from becoming accustomed to these inconveniences, I find my anger grows each time I encounter any of them. I would switch to something else if they weren't all just as bad or worse. Woe, woe is me.

*not the big main evil one, the secondary next-most evil one with the irritating capitalization in its name. I was using LaTeX (which also has irritating capitalization but is otherwise much nicer) for a while, but the rules and regulations and personal preferences of my Dissertation Reviewing Institution are such that this was unworkable in the long run. I will switch back as soon as I see Ghost Abe Lincoln swimming up the burning Potomac and I know my dissertation is over, for sure.


It's not funny, it's dangerous
I moved everything into storage (or into the back of my truck). Step One: Accomplished. Also I injured myself innumerable times due to heat and fatigue and clumsiness and spite (the spite being on the part of various corners and edges, not me). Fletcher, while discussing the differences and similarities between our physical appearances, remarked that "we both got yellow hair and we both got lots of booboos". Indeed we do.

Then I hit the open road! Or if not exactly that, then at least I hit the slow-moving very full road to Arlington where I stayed last week, before getting back on the same not-so-open road to come crawling back to Constitution City.

Now I'm back to the District, which is such a relief because it made me very anxious to spend so much time in an actual State. What if someone expected me to vote about something? How would Ghost Abe Lincoln know where to find me if the end of the world were at hand?


This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
Which it probably is. All things considered, the signs have been pointing more and more firmly towards Apocalypse for at least the last several thousand years. The sooner the better, I say. I'm tired of writing this dissertation.