Absence, of Myself, from Myself, from the World

This week it has been hard to justify, even to myself, im stillen Kämmerlein, what the use of anthropology is, and what its methodological advantages, if any, are, in relation to a project like mine. I find it hard to see what I should be doing for the little time I have got left on the field, and I find it enormously difficult to face people in this state of being. I alternate between hitting the wall with my head to think clearly, and giving up, watching films I never wanted to see. Part of me just wants to hibernate, preferably until 2009. Another part just wants to live, in the here and now, and not always think, oh need to remember this as it happens, to write it down. The PhD gets in the way of living, for now.
All this is enormously destabilising, and makes me bite my nails and curse my consequential re-fledgling shyness. It feels like social life around me has no interest at all, goes (more than ever) into all directions. What is worse, it cannot capture my being, for the moment. Life-as-lived-here would need to ‘get to me’, but I feel my brain is woolly, I am more passive than I’d like to, I cannot seem to find the questions that would need to be voiced. I avoid. I hate my phone. I stare at the page, and forget to note down millions of things. I do not understand my scribbles. I am unsure about what words I need to use in English to express what I mean. I wonder about things that I cannot solve here and now, theoretical framework, structure of argument, number of chapters. I cannot take in what happens. I fail to discern the events that matter. Consequently, there is little eventfulness, of consequence, on the surface. My daydreams tell me otherwise, but when I rush to note it down, it is gone. I feel under- and overstimulated simultaneously.
I went to the mountains to get my concentration back. To think in the quiet, with only the fire and the wind rustling my thoughts. I walked and the regular pace of the steps eased my breathing. I even felt happy. On return I found, however, that my focus was still gone, and that I wanted to do anything but attend to the confusion. I told David that I was becoming world class at procrastination, then I went to my neighbour and broke down crying for no real reason in the middle of a conversation. As a consequence I felt ashamed of my own weakness, and my obsession to emulate no less than a supergirl, and the way in which les tout petits soucis seemed, at that moment, life-threatening. Who can I tell here, without shame of my own privilege, my position, my self-imposed project of little importance?
Neither has there been an obvious, event-like reason for this ‘wholesale’ questioning. If I try to give it some perspective: it is true that something like it has accompanied me for the entirety of the PhD project, but it peaks at certain times. Why now is a difficult question, and to be quite frank, I have no idea. Again I can feel myself being much less of an actor than I want to be, much more a product of personal history, enriched by circumstances, moods of season, acts of bacteria and exposure to northern breeze. I read somewhere that postgrads have stress levels similar to soldiers in battle, which I find entirely plausible. I shall learn to manage them better. I find we should have gotten some proper training for this, not just classroom-based, but practical. Furthermore, I think lone anthropology should be abolished. It would be much better to have teams of people, I think the dynamics (of all kinds) would be much better both for the project and the researchers involved, especially beginners.

Stress
ORIGIN Middle English (denoting hardship or force exerted on a person for the purpose of compulsion): shortening of distress , or partly from Old French estresse ‘narrowness, oppression,’ based on Latin strictus ‘drawn tight’ (see strict )