Tired, Deconstructed, Picking up the Pieces...

I am tired, tired, tired of working around 16 hours a day on this dissertation. It's coming along, I know, but it's quite discouraging.

My aunt, uncle, cousins, cousin's daughter are all waiting for us to go spend some days with them in Nashville but I cannot travel before I finish. I mean, at least mostly finish.

Right now I'm trying again to pick up the pieces of whatever is left of my fifth chapter which I FOOLISHLY send to my third reader while it was still in an early draft form. So, she totally deconstructed it, writing whole paragraphs and pages, even writing nice things like this (talking about some of the theory parts which she totally disagrees with):

"I also don’t see why you need all this; it’s certainly not what you do in your other chapters – and here we are getting past halfway in this chapter and you still haven’t said a word bout the actual [subjects], only about the FACT that they exist at all. When did that become your focus? Is that really what you want this chapter to be about? Does it fit into your overall thesis if this is its focus?"

HOW STUPID of me to send her unfinished and incomplete work! Now I have to pick up the pieces and move on. I have to realize that comments like these: "nonsense! I don't agree with this..." are directed not at me, but at the authors of the quotes that I scattered around without commentary because it was a draft.

Just writing about it makes me feel much better. I should probably go to bed and work like crazy tomorrow AGAIN... and then, perhaps, we can be on our way to TN soon.