Yep, that’s me. On the verge of a small anxiety attack. I don’t know why, but this happens to me all the time when I’m about to finish a project. I’m nearing the end of the proposal and I feel like it is utter crap, completely incoherent, says nothing new, is strewn with grammatical errors, and generally makes no sense. I fear someone will read it and think, does this woman even have a third grade education? Was that a comma splice I saw? Is she communicating with aliens?

This is a lot like the way I felt writing the dissertation the first time and writing cover letters for jobs. I mean, after I write the proposal, I actually have to write the dissertation. Like a cover letter where I might actually have to do what I said I could. See. There’s a fragment right there. Can’t write for shit, can I?

It’ll be okay, eventually, but gah. gah. double gah. Oddly, I never feel this way in preparing presentations. I like presenting. I have a presentation coming up and I’m not at all worried. It’s been bubbling in the back of my head for a while. I’ll work on it, deliver it. No problem. Not so with writing. Oh, and for some reason, this feels different from other papers I’ve written. There’s something about it. It’s so big, maybe, reaches so far (or tries to). Gah. I don’t know.

I also don’t know why I’m sharing this with the very kinds of people who will be asking some of those questions in the first paragraph. I think I just wanted to purge it, to not have it in my head anymore. And I wanted to look at my anxiety in the light of day. Maybe it will go away now.