Emerging from the black pit of despair

I started this blog a few years back to push me to write. I was planning to write about my PhD and the dancing about one has to do to meet the challenges of working in higher education. I wanted to push myself to write more and to write better. But from the paucity of entries in the last year you can see I’ve found it difficult – very, very difficult. I have in fact found writing anything at all almost impossible.

Let’s recap the last 12 months: blog entries – nothing; literature review – nothing; methodology chapter – about two paragraphs; academic papers – nothing; drafts of anything for supervisors – nothing; creative writing – nothing.

So what has caused this horrendous writer’s block, and how have I finally managed to emerge from it? The cause has been rather simple: I fell into the black pit of despair. My confidence as an academic and writer were undermined, by being treated less than respectfully in almost every aspect of my work. My contributions have gone largely unacknowledged and unappreciated and my new ideas rejected out of hand.

Sadly the heartfelt appreciation of those I directly support in my work has not been enough to outweigh the constant picking away at my confidence. This led to a spiral of lack of commitment, performance at less than my best, and consequently further lack of confidence. For the last six months I’ve struggled every day to get out of bed and go to work, and eaten copious quantities of chocolate (my drug of choice) to get through the day.

What has helped is the constant support of my friends. Friends who’ve let me cry on their shoulder as I work through the current situation and the links to my early experiences, and who’ve provided constant encouragement to keep going. My PhD supervisors have been amazing too, constantly encouraging and never criticising me for the lack of output.

A couple of things recently have helped me climb out of my black pit of despair. First, I started feeling the need to create, and writing seemed an avenue to do it. Second, my work counsellor suggested I write about my life – not as a reflective exercise, but because she thought it was interesting enough to share. And finally, I had to write an abstract for HERDSA 2017. One little abstract that on a good day I could push out in about an hour. Not this time. It took weeks of angst, days of attempts, and finally 5 hours before the deadline I just forced myself to write something! Anything! Until it was done.

So now I’m a little warmed up. I’m still on the edge of the pit, and no doubt there will be more struggles before I finish my PhD, but I have decided that I WILL NOT STOP. That I will persist no matter how often I fall back in that black pit of despair. That I will keep writing for my blog. That I will tweet. And most importantly that I will ask my friends for help when I need it.