BAH

[aesc]

Today it occurred to me that all of my latest endeavors are mired in sinkholes of futility. This isn't precisely true, but I have nothing that seems appreciably near completion; sgabigbang is slogging its way through the major revision and will be picked at, in the manner of a zebra carcass, over the next month; my art has been hexed by a Photoshop that has taken to crashing on a whim; I despair of ever finishing, much less comprehending, even the most basic of the philosophy my dissertation wants; the articles are in various stages of being dismantled and reassembled into something that might, eventually, be presentable.

I'm sort of at the point where my brain has decided that, if I'm never actually going to finish anything, then I might as well find as many things to not finish as I possibly can. I had two ideas for some cover art today: both need to wait until I can get my sweaty mitts on a drawing tablet, but this hasn't stopped me from looking for stock and preliminary stuff and sketching things out. Of course, things will be finished and I know I'll be thrilled/relieved when they are, and the sooner I concentrate the sooner they will be done, but there's so much and it all seems hopelessly far away from even the hope of being completed.

So I'm writing this instead. And, as a reward for listening to my plaint, or, you know, being smart and ignoring the cut, have some John Sheppard. Hello, John.



In other news: To add to the futility, I drove down to Wolfeboro in the searing heat today, only to be bitterly disappointed by the degeneration of the town bookstore. It used to be awesome for travel and nonfiction, but now the selection is about half the size of what it was, and nowhere near the quality. What happened?!?!?

.eta: On the bright side, I have been watching Serenity and Firefly, and Jewel Staite is the most adorable thing. Also, I love Wash and for this reason am deeply resentful of Joss Whedon because I had to overcome my somewhat irrational dislike of him to watch Serenity and look what he went and did, omgwtF.

.eta2: For some reason, I was browsing around the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary at Perseus, and looked up hiatus. In classical Latin it could mean "longing" or "desire," and I think it's sad we don't really have that usage anymore.

I have a very great hiatus for John Sheppard. Sigh.

Comments

[hilarytamar.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry. I've always loathed that stage of projects, where some of the fun things are done already & now you've got all the fiddly bits, which just aren't nearly as inspiring. *sends you John with caffeine, a drawing tablet & a pep talk*

Also, randomly: has Perseus been working for you lately? I've been getting blank pages more often than not; if I reload often enough, things will usually come up, but not always, and the mirrors are no better. The homepage promises it'll all be fixed soon, but it's been saying that for a while. Grrr.

[aesc.livejournal.com]

I've always loathed that stage of projects, where some of the fun things are done already & now you've got all the fiddly bits, which just aren't nearly as inspiring.

Yes, yes! I remember the absolute hardest part of my thesis was writing the last chapter, because I had thought about it so much and I already had about 110 pages of writing done, did I really, seriously need to write any more?? I mean, seriously???

has Perseus been working for you lately?

I've always had that problem with blank pages coming up on searches (and pages for relatively short entries taking years to load). And I think that notice on the homepage has been up there ever since I started using the site, lo these many years ago; IIRC they did switch servers because the site traffic was overwhelming, especially on the Tufts servers, but I don't think that's done much of anything.

[hilarytamar.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've had the blank pages before too, for years; it's just that they're now constant, and persistent across any number of refreshes. And they've that notice there too for years, as you say – it's just that I'd thought this one was a new!improved!different! notice. In any case, it seems quite zippy this morning. Here's hoping it lasts.

[aesc.livejournal.com]

I also have the hard copy, and I admit there have been times when Perseus is being temperamental that I realized I would have spent a lot less time looking up the word in the actual physical dictionary than swearing softly and fervently at the blank/endlessly loading page on my browser.

[hilarytamar.livejournal.com]

They're about six feet away from me even now, my happy little OLD resting comfortably underneath an LSJ, but it's so much work to stand up better to embrace the technological age. Or something. (After a while even the morphological analysis tool stops seeming worth it: "fine, I'll just *work it out* on my own, then." And just as soon as you've hunted the form down in the recesses of the footnote to the appendix, the page loads. Oy. But I shall stop spamming you with the Lament of the Classicist now. Suffice it to say you have my deep sympathy. I mentioned I was sending over Sheppard with a back rub, right?)

[aesc.livejournal.com]

Heh heh, my first Medieval Latin professor would be so horrified by this conversation. He occasionally used to catch people out because LS only covers usage up to 300AD or so and didn't offer alternative spellings, so if you couldn't translate a word or ignored a medieval definition of it he would fix you with a look of quiet, withering disappointment and ask, "Did you look it up in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae? Or, given that we are translating Bede, The Dictionary of Latin from British Sources?"