postponement

I was tagged by the wonderful Schmutzie to do one of those 6-quirky-things-about-me memes, which I might get to some day, but not today. Today I am procrastinating on the meme in order to post about how my procrastination on a Big Decision is leading to procrastinating on my dissertation, as well as procrastinating on doing basic household chores and errands.

It's a lot of procrastinating; try to keep up.

So I'm writing my dissertation, and it needs to be finished, like, last week. This is so that I will have a reasonable chance of getting it read by my committee, approved, and defended before I start a Master of Library & Information Science degree in the fall. It's coming along, slower than I'd like, but it's coming.

Or it was, until yesterday.

Now I'm trapped in a kind of mental glitch-in-the-matrix loop where I can't move or do anything*. This is because I have to make a Big Decision. I know I should go ahead and make the Big Decision, because I'll probably be paralyzed like this until I make it, and waiting on it is not going to make it any easier -- and could, in fact, make things much more complicated.

Thing is, I need to decide where I will be pursuing my MLIS. I've narrowed it down to two choices: You Be See, and Chicville U. You Bee See accepted me first, and I threw myself into looking for housing in their notoriously expensive coastal city. It's a city I would love-love-love to live in, because I have never lived near the ocean, and because it's a vibrant and interesting city.

Chicville U is in a city that it, by almost everyone's standards, just as vibrant and interesting as You Be See's city, though without the ocean. It is also far cheaper to live in, my little brother is doing a Ph.D. in engineering at Chicville U, one of my good friends is starting a postdoc there, and I am friendly with a number of grad students in their English department.

Both MLIS programs are accredited and well-thought-of. And clearly the smart choice is Chicville, where I know people and where I will pay half as much to rent a place that's twice as nice as anything I could find in You Be See's city.

So why am I having such a hard time making the Big Decision?

I need to decide pretty fast, too. I found an Awesome Apartment in Chicville, for which I could probably secure the lease online. The place is vetted by a friend of a friend, and the landlord seems completely awesome. The photos of the place are really nice. I wouldn't have to travel to apartment-hunt, and that might leave me enough disposable income this summer to travel to my friend's wedding in Toronto. It is in a trendy neighbourhood in Chicville, 20 minutes to the campus, surrounded by interesting restaurants and shops, and I'd have 2 bedrooms all to myself for the price of renting a room in someone's basement at You Be See. Why do I hesitate?

To be honest, there are some crazy psychological reasons for me to be drawn to You Be See that I won't get into now (you're welcome). And getting a lease for the Awesome Apartment and putting a down payment on my tuition at Chicville U means that I am definitely not going to You Be See, which is strangely hard for me to accept.

So I postpone making the Big Decision, and hope that the Awesome Apartment is still there when I get around to looking into a lease. And, in the meantime, I stare at my dissertation without writing a damn thing, and time marches inexorably on, narrowing the window I might have to complete a summer defense. And the laundry piles up, and I haven't cooked anything in who knows how long, and the dust bunnies in the corners are turning feral.

I need a good swift kick to the rear to get me moving, is what I need. Can you order those online?

*...except blog, apparently, and make and consume copious amounts of tea.