My Poor Brain

The human mind is a strange beast. Just when I think I have it figured out, it produces behaviour which completely stumps me.

For the last few days, I have not been myself. Unhappy, moody, foul-tempered, tired and troubled, I think the events of the last month or two finally caught up with me.

In my infinite wisdom, I have spent the past month or so trying to finish my PhD dissertation and the research work thus associated, move into my new apartment and make it livable, teach two new courses in DIT and see a certain Flaming Redhead.

It has been a busy time, but being a man, I refused to accept that this was stressful. Suppressing my worries and concerns, it all made its way to the surface this week. At around 0100 on Friday morning last, everything exploded to the surface and I had a freak-out.

At one point during the aftermath, I thought it may have been a panic attack, but it did not bring on any of the usual symptoms.

That said, using "la puissance de le Wikipedia":

A panic attack is a period of intense fear or discomfort, typically with an abrupt onset and usually lasting no more than thirty minutes. Symptoms include trembling, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sweating, nausea, dizziness, hyperventilation, paresthesias (tingling sensations), and sensations of choking or smothering. The disorder is strikingly different from other types of anxiety, in that panic attacks are very sudden, appear to be unprovoked, and are often disabling.

I definitely remember the trembling and the paresthesias, but nothing else. I was not debilitated in the aftermath. I literally sat at this desk, did not move for a while, and my brain completely freaked out. It was a bit scary at the time, but once it passed I was fine. I figured it was probably a good idea to go home.

Of course, the NiteLink home precipitated another adventure, but that is a story for another time.

For those of you out there who are worried about me, please do not be. I am fine. If I am honest, it is the consequences of stupid bravado: "Mick Cooney does not get stressed, so Brain, you shall suppress everything", etc.

I have not been myself over the last while though. Little things were really starting to bother me, my routine is all over the place, and I have not played any football in about two months (apart from one game at the beginning of October when Spartak were badly stuck for players - I was horrifically out of shape, but played okay).

I think the root cause of all of this is my PhD. Uncertainty is a killer, and the feedback from my supervisor has been minimal over the last few years. He now works for IBM and has not been around. It has been tough. No-one else in the Maths Department knows anything about what I do, so I was left to my own devices.

Thus, it is possible that all my work is a complete piece of shit. Once I submit, you go through a viva, and are examined by an Internal Examiner (an academic member of staff from within the institution), and an External Examiner (an academic member of staff from outside the institution). The theory is that you defend your thesis from questions they ask. In practice, at least in Trinity, you talk about your work and the Examiners determine if you know what you talk about.

I am in the fortunate position of knowing what I am talking about, but I do not know if anything I have developed is any good. The work has to be original, and only a certain amount of my work is. I have no idea if the amount of original work I have done is in any way sufficient to grant a PhD.

This is not a good place for the mind to be in.

I have been at this for six years now. It really is a disgraceful amount of time to take, but circumstance has been against me. I have been doing others things, productive things, but nothing conducive to getting some letters after my name.

Compounding my anxiety was the fact that my one truly original piece of work did not work. At all. Miraculously, this changed last night. To be fair, it still is far from perfect, but it is getting results that vague approximate what is to be expected, and that is good for me.

The excitement I felt was strange. Hope mixed with fear in equal quantities as I re-ran the simulation and found that it was actually giving data. To say my mood lifted cannot capture exactly what happened next.

Suddenly I was no longer jaded, and actually came into the office today with a vague sense of excitement. I have not felt that way about my work for a long, long time.

Of course, the initial adrenaline rush subsided as I left the office late to go meet friends. They went to Hogan's shortly after I met them. As always, it was thronged with people. My fatigue and lack of party spirit brought my hatred and contempt of people to the fore. I am rereading Transmetropolitan (a comic series by Warren Ellis about a gonzo journalist in the near future) in my downtime, so I empathised with the misanthropic protagonist, Spider Jerusalem.

Tragically lacking a bowel disruptor (fans will understand), I decided the most prudent course of action was simply to go home.

I submit soon.