Unfinished

Life For the first time this year there was a computer network problem at the university which meant that unless you'd logged in before a certain time, you couldn't log in at all. So although I'd managed to hammer through four hundred words of my essay in the morning since I'd logged out, I couldn't continue after lunch. I resorted to pen and paper and noticed again how much I was used to the write/delete culture of the word processor. I managed to type the passages up when I got home, fighting through the words I meant to use and those I'd crossed out, with the usual notes here and there to remind me at a later date where to put footnotes and turn the language into something approaching English. But even though I also managed to add in a paragraph of extra explanation, I still feel unsatisfied, as though because my work time was curtailed I've failed somehow. Like one of those conversational moments when you have a point to make but he group has moved on to something else before you can interrupt so you have to forget about saying it because it makes no sense. Even though I know that's crazy.

Sometimes those notes can be an art form or if I leave it too long obscure or incomprehensible. In one of the French film essays I had the stop gap phrase 'Mention Freud' for weeks before I did anything with it and by the time the moment came I'd totally forgotten exactly which aspect of the good doctor's work I was supposed to be talking about and how it related to the topic. I realised after two days then spent hours trying to work it back in because I'd written around the subject so much. Dangerously I still drop the 'Mention Freud' phrase in now and then to remind me that I need to just write this stuff up front rather than leaving it until I'm 'in the mood'. I say dangerously because I hope I never forget that it's a joke and quote some Sigmund in an area were he's not related. But then, to be honest, he always seems to anyway.