Writing = Puking

Yes that's right, kiddos, Auntie Annika has yet another theory of life she'd like to throw out there (right after she stops referring to herself in the third person). I am in the midst of my final week of Semester One here at the fine University of Otago. While I don't have finals because all my classes are year long, etc etc, I do have a whopping paper due tomorrow/today/whenever Friday morning is. I have been writing this paper for a full one and half eternities, I swear to God. Writing has just gotten harder as the years have gone on. Sure, it was easy when all I had to do to impress my first grade teacher was write a Halloween story that had a villain named, Frank N. Stein. Ingenious, I know. Now, I have to sound all... smart and crap. I don't like writing like articles. I barely like reading research articles; heaven help me the day I start sounding like one. In order to appease the academic gods, however, I succumb to the desired writing style, which leads me into my latest theory of life.

Writing a dreadful paper is like having the flu or any illness in which you puke. You just sit there, disabled by the general "icky" feeling you have. Then all at once, blech - a bunch of words spew up onto the page and you feel instantly better. But after a few minutes have passed, the paralyzing sick feeling re-enters the scene. You realise that like the bad oysters you had last year, there is just so much more that has to come up before you're ever going to feel better. So after a few days of blech, blech, bleching you finally feel drained, exhausted, and hoping you never have to feel that way again. You swear to be more careful about what you eat (the research you'll do) and you'll be sure to be prepared by taking extra vitamin C (doing your readings all on time and being prepared), but sure enough, you find yourself in the same bloody position just a short time later.

Hope you've enjoyed my true life analogy; forgive me, but I must go spew up the last of this little flu before I pass out, exhausted, into my bed.