Back again

I was on hiatus. Now I am back in action.

Working a lot on the paper for the B. Phil. A lot of ideas are coming together very quickly.

It's weird how, as the deadline approaches, certain parts of writing a paper become obvious. Not in the funny way. Not in the way that you realize you can't be lazy anymore. More like, a strong sense of reality kicks in...intuitions about what is manageable and what isn't.

It's not that before you were deluding yourself at some deeper level. It's more like how you believe a good luck charm works. You will go through a lot to hold on to your good luck charm. You really think it works. But if you have to make a choice that wagers a lot on your good luck charm pulling through, then suddenly it becomes obvious that your good luck charm isn't reliable.

When I'm writing my paper, I'll wonder if going down certain alleys are feasible. Should I look into this point? Should I look for more sources on this topic? Should I email so-and-so with a question? Should I put these points in this order to make the point better, even if that order was not my first impulse?

At the beginning of the paper-writing, these questions can be paralyzing, because in actuality they are legit and their are lots of avenues to explore. And it is hard to know where the margin of exploring/experimenting/investigating is. Because realistically--unless you do the same thing often enough to have rules-of-thumb--, you rely on a feeling of where that margin is.

For me, that margin sense is very weak and confusing at the beginning. That feeling of where the margin is becomes stronger as the deadline approaches, though. The best outcome would be if I truly believed that the paper were due one week before it is due.