I felt like doing a vlog in my office today. I’m trying to be more spontaneous and less self-conscious and perfectionist about what I post on here, so instead of doing my usual thing of leaving it on my phone and never sharing it, I thought I’d be brave instead. Brave is my word for 2024, after all.

Enjoy!

Hello, and welcome to my office! Here’s my inspiration wall behind me. I just feel like doing a video today just to break my brain out of its creative rut. Do you like my T-shirt? (laughs) Mario Kart is my favourite way to unwind at the moment in between all of this PhD-related overwhelm.
I just wanted to record, for posterity more than anything, because I just had a very insightful conversation with my wonderful husband who just gets all of the ups and downs of this journey. I am in the final months of my PhD and it's been a long, long couple of years bringing this project to its conclusion and I thought I was just about there with it. I thought, you know, to apply my oft-repeated marathon metaphor because it's the closest experience that I've had in my life that even comes close to what the PhD has been like, so to just milk that metaphor a little bit more, I thought I was going to have a downhill finish to this race. It was certainly looking that way.
And then a few weeks ago, it was suggested to me that perhaps I needed to change a few things, a few fundamental things, about my thesis. And they are exciting changes that overall will improve the argument and strengthen it and just make the whole thing work a bit better, which is obviously something I'm very keen to do. But it will involve quite a bit more work at almost literally the 11th hour. And so it looks like I'm going to have an uphill finish to this marathon rather than a downhill one.
And when Tom said that, all of a sudden I could understand why I was feeling so exhausted! Because I have run the intellectual equivalent of 24 miles and I was ready for an easy finish. But instead, the last two miles are going to be uphill all the way.
And that is life, sometimes. Sometimes we get an uphill finish when we'd rather have a downhill one. But if you've trained, and if you stay strong ,you can get through it.
So, wish me luck as I proceed…uphill!

Last year, I was the grateful recipient of a Residential Fellowship at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writer's Centre in Perth, Western Australia. I spent two weeks there last August working on my PhD novel. You can read all about my experience here. You will see I still enjoy using the marathon as a metaphor all these years later. But, I argue, it is most apt. In the months that have elapsed since my return the parallels between the two experiences have amplified. I am definitely at the point in the race where it is, as writer Fiona Kelly McGregor put it in A Novel Idea, “a matter of stamina, of technicalities, and of getting the job done.”

Also, Perth in August is lovely! Balmy warm days, expansive skies and an awesome annual secondhand charity book sale that frankly would be worth flying back for each winter, providing one brought an empty suitcase…which I did not.

read about my ksp experience here

video transcript