social zombie
I have just consciously realised that I’ve become a social zombie.
While I can manage pleasant innocuous conversations, such as:
you: How are you?
me: I’m fine. How are you going?
you: well thanks. isn’t the weather lovely?
me: yeah… it’s nice out in the sun.
that’s about all I can manage.
I can’t quite bring myself to be interested in anyone, or anyone else’s life. My mind is either too preoccupied with the all-imposing, all-embracing, never-ending nature of my own work, i.e. the PhD, or I’m actively trying to blank out my mind, albeit temporarily, to the extent that I can’t activate my cerebral capacities to engage in anything more than the most mundane of conversations.
Conversely, I also don’t want to talk about myself right now. My life at the moment rotates around the PhD and that is far too depressing and stressful a subject to even broach. There are few things that might stand independently apart from the PhD, not even my relationship since any discussion of that will inevitably lead to discussions about the future and the future, unfortunately, is inherently bound up with the PhD. You might suggest “shopping”, an activity that I have previously very much enjoyed and revelled in but sadly, given the priority that needs to be accorded to the PhD right now, I can’t say that I’ve actually gone on a “proper” shopping trip in ages. I can barely squeeze out time to go buy groceries let alone indulge in a luxurious shopping expedition. If and when I do manage to find time to wander around the shops, the experience has been less than satisfactory for quite a while now given how distracted, nay colonised my mind is by the PhD.
So I find myself a social zombie, unable to converse, uninterested in asking about “you”, preferring instead to just sit and stare in silence.
Hey, I stumbled upon your blog through some blog aggregator. I’m going to go through PhD as well, starting in August, and I’m experiencing deja vu from your descriptions of hell from my Master’s thesis =P
But anyhow, sending you good vibes and strength, you’ve come this far now, it’s just one more step and then you can do whatever the hell you want =D Just one more step!
it is a miracle, given our inabilities to talk about “us” that we manage to converse at all.
and that hour in t2 was blissful, and the only thing that colonised my mind was a the relative merits of russian caravan over gorgeous geisha…….
Jun-E: one word of advice - DON’T.
You will only realise that this is the best advice you will even get when you are in your third or fourth year but by then, you would have put in all the sunk costs and it would be too late…
Matt: I want more teapots!
you shouldn’t put Jun-E off, she could be doing a comparative analysis of hot clubs in ASEAN. As we know, that could be fun…… as long as she steers clear of the words “liberalisation”, or “socialisation” she may well be fine…………..
but i concur with the sentiment