the reading. there's so much.

Some day I'm going to have a PhD. In the meantime, I'm feeling bogged down by doing all the reading it takes to get a PhD. Ugh. Since I'm taking this summer course, I won't have any break at all until Christmas. Every single week between now and then I'll have multiple books to be reading. Even now, when I'm spending my weekend at a history conference listening to lots of history papers, I also have a giant 900-page book on the Civil War to be reading by Wednesday. And in a couple weeks when I go on a vacation, I already know it won't feel especially vacation-y because I'll have lots of reading to be doing. If I'm not reading, I'm feeling guilty about not reading.

I don't mean to be complaining. Just venting a little. I've chosen this lot in life. I'm okay with it. But still, it takes a lot of time that could be spent doing more fun things. Or just relaxing.

I will add, however, to the whole getting a PhD thing, that even though the dissertation part really scares me as far as time management with my full-time job goes, attending conferences like these does make me look forward to the chance to do my own research and write down my own ideas and feel like maybe I can contribute something to the field. But I won't do any of that for another few semesters. Because there's still so much reading to do first.