A guilty secret

Yesterday, I didn't do anything. Well nothing in relation to the PhD. I woke up feeling shall we say slightly wounded from my escapades the night before. I did put 'library search' on my to-do-list but it never came to anything. Today, however I am intending to do quite a bit. There is the new literature review to get cracking on and I am really excited about some of the reading I will have to grapple with over the next few months. I intend to make a nice long list and then divide it all up into themes, which will also help with the actual writing of the review. 

It does occur to me though how quickly researcher guilt descends. One day I had off. One day where I didn't pick up a book, or put pen to paper or even give some thought to my data collection. I have heard people say that they never stop thinking about their research - I think that is in part academic pretension and partly answering back to the little voice of the niggling guilt that lives within us all. There are times when I do find my mind wandering and thinking about my research when I am doing something else, this is only to be expected when you spend so much of your time focussed on something. However, I have times when I don't think about it all - during the Coronation street omnibus or whilst singing karaoke - which is entirely appropriate. It interests me though that having spent a day not doing anything on the research it does feel a bit like one is turning up to double maths having not done the homework. 

One of the major differences between a long piece of research like a PhD is the lack of the sense of completion. Nothing gets 'handed in' or marked and can then be laid to rest, it is relentlessly continuous. This is of course, also one of the absolute joys of research that you get to stay with a project, spend time getting to know it, work on it, change it, but it does mean that when you have a day off it makes it harder to justify to yourself. Even now I am thinking that today I will somehow have to redeem myself after yesterday and will put in an extra hour or so to relieve the guilt. Perhaps though I was lying about not thinking about it all yesterday, I did stand my cup of coffee on 'Foucault and the Government of Disability' - surely that counts for something? No?