Creature of Habit

Today I decided to skip my yoga class because the deadline to submit a conference paper is tomorrow and it still needs a good amount of work. As fate would have it, I didn't manage to do any work after that and returned from uni in a funk. And I felt lousy for having missed my yoga class. Its not like I leave every yoga class feeling elated, although that has happened on occasion. I think what it is is I am a creature of habit as well as a fitness junkie, so any unanticipated change in my exercise routine which results in me missing an intensive workout makes me feel like crap. If it had been an anticipated change I would have swapped things around to make sure that I got in an intensive workout on another day. As it happens, I still did a reasonably intensive workout but that did little to lift my mood.
In what other ways am I a creature of habit? I have two fried eggs and two toasts for breakfast everyday. I cook chicken every weekend, and during the week I alternate between rajma and cauli flower and chole and brinjal. Who says you cannot routinize variety? Spontaneity requires time and effort, and I can't be bothered. My food schedule is varied enough without being a pain in the butt. Why am i this way? I would like to believe that a PhD is so consuming that you crave ease and simplicity in the other areas of your life, especially the day-to-day survival stuff. But, maybe I am just a stick in the mud. 

Creepy Until Proven Otherwise

Today, one of my friends in Holland told me that she was considering sharing an apartment with an Indian guy. I told her to be careful and to assume he was a creep until he proved otherwise. And, I didn't feel bad saying that. Maybe it is the effect of #MeToo. I know I am perpetuating a stereotype  of South Asian men as creepy and/or geeky, a stereotype that I have personally faced the consequences of. But the recent flood of #metoo stories has showed that there are a lot of creepy Indian men even, or especially, in the privileged circles that I inhabit in India. This is not to say that creepiness is a uniquely Indian male phenomenon. Not by a long shot.  But, it seems like many of us urban upper-middle-class Indian men who have been exposed to the West have managed to internalize a toxic combination of Indian and Western misogyny. Both are awful in themselves but truly horrible when put together. Men who think that they have broken away from Indian patriarchy and consider themselves "woke" or progressive, even feminist. But, the sense  of entitlement runs deep. To see oneself as immune from centuries of patriarchal conditioning, to see oneself as special, is the pinnacle of entitlement. It absolves us from introspecting and examining our behaviour towards women. As a consequence, wokeness is seen as deserving of rewards. It becomes a credit card without a spending limit that can be encashed for sexual favours. 

Shorter Days

Today was the first working day after daylight savings ended, and it felt weird. It was dark well before I finished teaching my tutorial at 5:45 pm and I had to cycle through two parks while keeping my eyes peeled for dogs and pedestrians.When I reached home and sat down with a cup of tea while chatting to my housemate, a lethargy came swiftly over me. I thought I would enjoy the darkness and slower pace of winter evenings, but the transition is still discombobulating. I thought a yoga session would perk me up, but today was one of those rare days when yoga did nothing for me. With the shorter days, I realize I will have to be more productive during the day unless I want to cycle back in the pitch dark every night. While I love the dark, it is too unsafe to ride my cycle without a light, and that beats the purpose.
I am still not used to being in a place with changing seasons. The days go from being too short in winter to being too long in the summer very quickly and the intervening period when days and nights are well balanced is woefully short. But at least I sleep better in the winters. Last summer was particularly bad, not least because of the tumultous event in my personal life.

Daylight Dissavings and Two Years in England

The clocks went back last night and it was dark by 5 pm. I commemorated the official start of winter by doing a "Cosy Yoga" session this evening. I can't remember the last time I did this session, but it was possibly in April. There was no incentive to be cozy during the unseasonably warm summer and the mild autumn that followed, but temperatures have dropped quite sharply in the past few days.
During the session, I suddenly remembered that it was also exactly two years since I first arrived in England, which unleashed a flood of emotions. What a two years it has been! When I arrived here, I hadn't fully recovered from my first "wobble". Little did I know the second bigger wobble, which would send me scurrying home and force me to confront my demons, was just a few months away. I remember I spent the first few days with my aunt in Brighton. My mind was mostly occupied with finding a place to stay within the first week while I stayed at an AirBnb. And here I am, two years later, still in the same AirBnB with  no intention of moving out. British Summer Time ended two days after I arrived in England, and on my last evening in Brighton it was dark by 5pm. I remember feeling a pit in my stomach. The next day would be the start of my new life in England.
Life since then has gone nothing according to plan and I am so glad that it hasn't. I am a different person than I was two years ago, or maybe I am the same person, but minus a lot of existential angst and guilt. I wonder what the next two years will bring.

Glastonbury

My housemate and I visited Glastonbury today. The main attraction of this Somerset town is the Tor of Glastonbury, which is a tower on  a hill with panoramic vistas. But, Glastonbury is more famous as an  abode for paganism and witchcraft. We visited a few shops which sold pagan merchandise, which mostly consists of books, incense, clothes and household decorative items. It was like stepping into another world, and I was struck by how elaborate it was. It is one thing to create what the world would call an alternate reality, but it is another to build it up with such attention to detail. These people were not garden-variety hippies, who are a dime-a-dozen in Bristol. They have their own traditions, practices and myths--their own world, which co-exists with the "real" world. Of course, that they can immerse themselves in this alternate world while continuing to exist in the "real" world is puzzling. These are not monks in a remote monastery nor are they members of a persecuted sect. They are mostly white, and judging by the prices of the merchandise, quite well-to-do. Sects or cults which are populated by the well-to-do are seldom persecuted.
But, who am I to judge it or dismiss it as consumerism masquerading as mysticism and otherworldliness. There are far worse ways of spending money and if this lifestyle helps some people sleep better at night, more power to them. 

Weekend

Its Friday evening and the end of a grinding week in which I was more productive than I have been for months. But my pile of work seems as large as before. At the start of this week, I got some clarity about the next course of action from my PhD supervisor and it involves copious amounts of reading. In hindsight, the course of action should have been obvious, but that is the thing about good ideas. Their glows extends into the past as well as into the future.
The good thing about being swamped with work is being swamped. Existential angst goes out the window. I am might die poor and lonely but I still have a million things to do over the next few months. My poor lonely death can wait.

Schadenfreude

Last week, I read an article on schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure in the failures or misfortunes of others. More than scahdenfreude, I often fail to feel sorry enough for the misfortune of dear ones and find myself not sharing in their joys. I used to feel guilty about it too, before I embarked upon changing my relationship to guilt.
It is easy to dismiss scahdenfreude by saying misery loves company. But, one need not be miserable to feel schadenfreude. To fail is human and one need not feel guilty for being reminded of the humanity of others, especially those we admire, or even envy. I would rather feel a momentary dash of scahdenfreude than judge people and see them fall in my estimation following a failure. And schadenfreude is also a humbling reminder of our own humanity.
Also, as the article points out, it is perfectly possible to feel both schadenfreude mixed with sympathy. In fact, as humans we seldom experience emotions as pure unadulterated forces of the heart. We experience emotions as a tantalizing mix of different and simultaneous feelings which are in flux. For instance, love is often laced with envy, lust, resentment, mirth. Expecting to feel unadulterated emotions and berating oneself for not feeling the appropriate pure emotion is a recipe for internal turmoil. The labels that we give emotions are abstractions that help us make sense of our complex reality. But expecting reality to fit into these boxes and into just one box at a time is not a great idea.
Of course, this is not a free pass for bad behaviour under the influence of strong emotions. We have control over our actions--there is a world of difference between feeling jealous and acting jealous. We also have control over the language we use to process our emotions. Changing the language we use to describe our emotions can sometimes blunt their raw force.

You Are What You Teach

Who is an economist? I have never had a satisfactory answer to the question. It has always seemed like economists identify themselves by  the methods they use rather than the object of their study. After all, many other social scientists and even some physical scientists study the economy. But, if you repose faith in formal modelling and econometric testing you are an economist, no matter if  you are studying possible correlations between divorce rates and preferred sex positions. Many other heterodox economists I know don't consider themselves economists even though the economy is the primary object of their study. 

On the other hand, I am teaching a course in economics to undergrads this semester. It is badly structured and we are mostly teaching them neoclassical economics which is riddled with logical holes. But, I have realized that I would rather be teaching that than any other subject. Of course, I would prefer to teach them heterodox schools of economic thought, but some economics is better than no economics. Does that make me an economist? Because I prefer to teach economics even if my research might not qualify as economics?

Walking Into Nature

Today, I went for a MeetUp Internationals event after about seven months. When I was new to Bristol--both in phase 1 and phase 2--I thought Meetups were a good way to meet new people. I would go with them on walks but not on the pub meet-ups thinking that there would be less pressure to socialize. But I later realized that the walks were day-long affairs which required one to be social and make small talk for a good part of the day. To be sure, I did enjoy some walks and had a few interesting conversations. But, all I had in common with most of them was that we were foreigners, and not a very diverse group of foreigners at that. After my initial enthusiasm for making new friends in Bristol waned, I stopped going for the Meetup events.
But, today's event was a guided walk to encourage a mindful connection to nature and to fellow walkers, and since it was just a few hours long, I decided to go. I had a decent enough time, enjoying some activities and finding others a little woo-woo. But, I didn't feel any connection or kinship with the others even though they were decent folks. I also realized how little stamina I had to initiate conversations or to make small talk. As one gets older, one loses the drive to mould oneself into a shape that appeals to society. The onerous emotional labour that such a process entails doesn't seem worth the effort. One learns to avoid situations that exacerbate one's insecurities and make one feel small. The warts and flaws that we fought so hard to fix when we were younger, start to seem more bearable, even endearing. Isn't that what growing up is all about? Trying to make peace with oneself?

Happy Birthday To Me

Today, I turned one year older and I celebrated with characteristic reticence. I don't like being the center of attention and birthdays are the one day when even the most ordinary lives are held up as special. None of my past birthdays have been especially memorable, and I say that without a trace of bitterness or envy. I have a hundred problems in my life, like every other person, but the lack of raucous birthday celebrations is not one of them.
Birthdays and the holidays are two occasions when there is considerable social pressure to celebrate in a certain way to prove that you are not a lonely misfit. Boisterous birthday celebrations are a marker of social currency, which is quite a tedious ask if you are the wallflower types.
I am not a curmudgeon, or at least I like to think I am not. I enjoyed speaking to family and friends today, but I enjoy speaking to family and friends anyway. I had vague plans to go to an Indian restaurant for dinner, but I realized that I would be doing that just to prove to the world that I was celebrating my birthday. Concluding that it wouldn't make any difference to anyone's life if I dropped the charade, I swiftly abandoned the idea. No one is immune from loneliness and insecurity, but the least one can do is to reject social norms that give fuel to such emotions.
Another reason I don't like birthdays is because I feel like I am carrying a secret when I am around people who don't know its my birthday. This, even though I am quite hesitant to tell anyone that its my birthday. For some reason, not telling them feels dishonest, a dishonesty that might be punished with the horrifying spectacle of people singing "Happy Birthday" for you. 

How Men See Women

Okay, another post on #MeToo but today I read an article I just couldn't ignore. It is not often that you read an article that puts into words what you had a vague instinctual awareness of and takes that thought much further. I am going to quote from the article:

As a smart and funny woman, who is a conventionally non-hot type, I have seen the barely disguised glazed look of feigned cocktail party interest in the eyes of many a male filmmaker-writer-musician type while I was talking about cinema, law, culture or any other area of mutual interest... I have understood, at first with anger, then with amusement, that men are not interested in what women have to say... A man who does not see women when he is not interested in sex with them is not going to see women when he wants to have sex with them either... every story one reads always features the internal moment of assault, what I’ve begun to call the moment of rape: the moment when the woman realises that this man does not see me as a person. 

The article goes on to talk about consent and "liberal" sexual norms before returning to the subject of how men, and the world in general sees women. 

We will have no consent till we also have a culture which loves women, which teaches us to love women, to really, really see them — not as examples of their gender, as victims or supergirls, but as self-contained beings of brightness and power, unpredictable charm, complex inner lives and fascinating opinions. 

The question is how do we men see a woman whom we don't want to have sex with? Do we see her as full human beings or just something of little interest which has to be tolerated? Because how we men see women we are not romantically or sexually interested in is a good guide to how we see women in general. This is not just a question about our behaviour towards women but a question of vision, a way of seeing, which is a pre-behavioral stage. In my own life, I am seeing what I think is a case of a man turning cold towards a woman after realizing he doesn't have a chance with her. That is, of course, infinitely better than him reacting with anger or harassing the girl. But, such an attitude reduces women either to trophies or to wallpaper, and neither is a great thing to be. And this is not just a moral issue. At the risk of sounding "woke", in my experience, seeing women as full, complex and self-contained human beings opens a whole new world of deep and enriching relationships, platonic and non-platonic. 

Making Peace With The Past

I read this agony aunt answer to a question by a woman whose boyfriend had lied about something in his long past. It chimed with what I have been thinking about actions in our past that fill us with shame or at least regret to this day. All of us have wronged people in the past and many of us might not have made amends. In some cases, the people we wronged might not even be aware of it and might still  be on friendly and trusting terms with us. So, what is to be done in such situations, if anything at all?
There was a line in the column that really struck a chord with me: So long as the only harm, if there is any, is to ourselves, I'd argue that we have a right to keep close to our chests whatever we choose, including less savoury behaviour. Of course, one might argue that it is not always easy to ascertain whether the harm is only to ourselves, but in our hearts of our hearts, one knows. Does this sound like a blanket amnesty, a convenient ruse for avoiding confessing to your mistakes? Well, at least for sensitive people, the guilt of having wronged someone is usually immense, so if you are such a person but you don't feel particularly guilty about some past action, I would say let sleeping dogs lie. Forking out a confession which  distresses the person who didn't even know they had been wronged in a desperate attempt to salve your conscience is not an act  of  great moral courage, in my opinion. It is just stupid. And an important caveat--you are allowed to let it be only if you have changed your behaviour since and can say, with some confidence, that you would never do that again. In other words, if that act is firmly in your past.
I have a long and rocky relationship with guilt which I am trying to change since last year. I remember my last meeting with my counselor. I was in a situation with someone that was causing me a lot of guilt. After hearing me out, she told me that I had done nothing wrong and I was actually being gaslit by this person. She also told me that if one is in such a situation, there are only two options. Either remove yourself from that situation (if possible, and it was possible for me, in this case) or consciously make an effort to stop feeling guilty. 

P.S.: It might be obvious that this post is based on something I have done in the past. But, since I have made peace with it and changed, I am not going to  talk about it.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

This morning, I suddenly remembered a book that I had read a long time ago titled, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" about an English boarding school teacher. I felt a strong urge to read it and I picked it up from the library this afternoon. Maybe because the #MeToo movement in India is affecting me more than I thought it would. Maybe because all the stories about outright sexual predators and sexual predators masquerading as woke men had worn me out. I wanted to read about kind, gentle and sensitive men who were comfortable with their sensitive natures, whose sensitivity was not a burden for the women in their lives. I've had enough of sensitive child-men who lash out at the women in their lives when they are hurt. And, of  course, the emotional labour of caring for such men has to be carried out by women. Women care for other depressed women and women care for depressed men.
I am also a sucker of nostalgia, and have always had a soft corner for authors who do nostalgia well. One of my favourite authors, Ruskin Bond, is a master at nostalgic writing. He is also (going by his memoirs) one of those kind, gentle and sensitive men who is (or has grown to be) at ease with his sensitive nature.
I remember I first read Goodbye, Mr. Chips, as a 11-year-old on our family vacation in the southern-Indian hill-station of Kodaikanal. We were staying in a grand guest house with a large garden, and our neck of the valley was always shrouded in mist. Misty climes and a book soaked in nostalgia made for a heady combination, and I was hooked.
I realize that I might not enjoy the book as much as I did when I was 11, or at all. Maybe I will struggle to identify with a white middle-class school master from the 1930s as I now have a great awareness of race relations. But, at least, the act of borrowing the book from the library felt good.

Teaching

I always thought I would be a good teacher, but now I am not so sure. I am still confident that I would be a good lecturer--I'm good at breaking down complex concepts into more digestible bits as well as structuring content so that it flows smoothly. But there is so much to being a good teacher than explaining stuff to students. Getting students to engage with the class is a bigger challenge and I am not sure I do a good job. I have also realized that I do a lot of teaching in tutorials, which is probably not the point of tutorials. I am not entirely sure what the point of tutorials is but I am sure it is not meant to be a mini-lecture. A lecture is a monologue whereas a tutorial is ideally supposed to be a dialogue among students mediated by the tutor.  When you lecture, you push the students to understand a concept from your perspective rather than encouraging them to think critically. 

Today, I filled in for someone who was filling in for my supervisor, and I struggled. I realized I hadn't even noticed that the two questions of the tutorial were near-identical. I realized it was a discussion-oriented tutorial but I didn't do a good job of steering the discussion. I tried asking them a few questions but that seemed to confuse them even more. Since it was a topic  I wasn't fully familiar with, I was on shaky ground as it is. And, to be honest, I was not adequately prepared for the tutorial. I turned the last bit of the tutorial into a mini-lecture and I was making up the lecture on the  fly. Which is possibly  fine for a seasoned hand, but as a novice, I struggled. I don't know if the students noticed my stumbles, but I know I did. I should have done more, although I would have had to do a lot to be prepared as it is a new topic for me. 

I have great respect for courses that push students to think critically, because in economics it is so much easier to teach formal and tidy mainstream economics rather than its alternatives. 

Truth and Reconciliation

Another #MeToo post. Everyday brings another tide of stories, some truly horrifying. It will take some time for us, men especially, to come to terms with the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in our societies. We will have to reflect on our behaviour and acknowledge our complicity in patriarchy and misogyny. Hopefully, after that, there will be a conversation about our vision for men. A truly radical and progressive feminism must liberate both men and women from constricting gender roles. Healthy attitudes towards relationships, both platonic and sexual, don't come automatically to most people. They didn't come to me even though my own family is extremely progressive. It is only in recent years that I can claim to have a truly healthy attitude towards relations with the opposite sex, and by that I don't just mean attitudes towards harassment and sexual assault. Its the ability to see women as people in your head, to not see every attractive woman as a potential sexual partner, even if you are not someone who acts on these impulses. This has to be taught, not just in school classrooms but through culture. I am not talking about a society-wide cultural shift here, just in my urban upper-middle-class bubble, where most of these stories are coming from. Both women and men have to play a part in this cultural shift, in healing our broken gender relations.
But there can be no reconciliation without truth, and right now it is the time for truth. Reconciliation will come later.

Novels and Social Commentary

Last weekend, my book club met to discuss a book by a young English author whom some of us had also met at a book reading. The book was okay but not a very engaging read for me. I skimmed through it until I reached the climax, which wasn't bad.
In the discussion, I said the book had too much social commentary that wasn't woven into the story but seemed like it had been ladled on top. Some of the others said that that was one of  the things they had enjoyed about the book.
I like social commentary but not in my novels. A novel is a human story first and foremost. I like novels where the characters speak for themselves and don't act as conduits for the author's political views. One of favourite novels--the  Grapes of  Wrath--is unabashedly political and leaves no doubt about the author's political leanings. But the reason I like it is its a great story and the characters are rich and complex who inhabit their epoch completely. 

More #MeToo

Another day, and more allegations. I am broadly supportive of the recent movement but some of the allegations don't count as sexual harassment, much less assault, or at least not in my book. Some married men have been outed for hitting on women, with their phone conversations posted on Twitter for all to see.  Going by the screenshots, the men didn't persist after being rebuffed an neither were they abusive.
This a gray area for me. Yes, these men are powerful and in some sense were trying to exploit their power. But they didn't have direct power over the women they targeted. The thought of powerful men trying to leverage their power to score with women is not a pleasant one. But, then, are relationships across a power differential proscribed? And, if you take the power differential out of the picture, then outing these men is an act of moral policing. Attempted adultery is not grounds for public defamation. On the other hand, leveraging power for sexual gains is something only men do, or so I  imagine. Surely, this must be problematized. The thing about leveraging power for sexual gain (as opposed to, for example, leveraging looks or charm) is that one is never sure whether one is leveraging charisma that comes from the power or the implicit threat of using that power against the opposite person, if jilted.
Also, the didn't  take "No" for an answer is a tricky area. I imagine few people give up after being told No once. They persist at least for  a bit and try to convince the opposite person, and if they are half-decent they do so without threats or blackmail. So, how many NOs before you can say he didn't take No for an answer?
I was just talking to a friend from India, and he said a lot of the cases involved men being clumsy in their attempts to flirt, rather than being predatory. All I know is women in some circles are trying to renegotiate the boundaries of  permissible sexual and romantic conduct. This renegotiation will be messy and there might be some undeserving victims. It might entail powerful men having to be prepared for public shaming if they choose to leverage their power for sex.

#MeToo

The #MeToo movement has belatedly come to India and more specifically to my (erstwhile) corner of it--the English language media. Women are outing serial sexual harassers on Twitter and some publications have also carried stories about them. A few people I know of have been named. It doesn't come as a surprise to me that such men exist, but I had never imagined that their doings would come to light.  Entitlement to women's bodies seemed like an assured perk for successful males and that didn't look like it was about to change, especially not in hierarchy-conscious misogynistic India.
I don't mean to sound sanctimonious--my behaviour with women has  not always been exemplary. There have been some cringe-worthy instances and a few that I was downright ashamed of. However, I made amends in those cases, and I have always taken No for an answer.
I don't expect any of my friends to be outed as sexual predators--that would be a huge shock since all my close male friends have a lot of respect for women, or so I believe.
But the balance has shifted. Some women (in some privileged circles) are no longer prepared to pay the mental, emotional and sometimes physical price for male sexual entitlement. Maybe some cases are about men misjudging the moment rather than actively preying on women. But, why should women have to pay the cost of these men's misjudgements? Some women are demanding that men hold themselves to the same standard that they (these women) hold themselves, and there is nothing wrong with that. It might seem like a revelation  to  some men that they don't need to try to screw every women they fancy. That it is possible to be sexually attracted to someone without doing anything about it because the price--professional, personal, emotional, mental--of acting on it, for you or for them or for both, is too high. That the urge to act on every sexual urge comes from a tremendous sense of entitlement. Most of us do not manage to hook up with most of the people we fancy. That is just the way the world is.

When The Body Speaks

When the body speaks, one eventually has to listen. I have been having a troublesome physical symptom for the past few weeks and was mostly ignoring it. Its a classic anxiety symptom that I have had before, but one which could also indicate a serious medical condition. I was hoping it would go away by itself as they usually do, but its gotten worse over the past few days. So, its finally time to listen.
I have been exercising harder than usual to take my mind off the events of the past few months. That, and being busy at work has worked for the most part. But, maybe I've been pushing myself too hard on both the professional and physical front, and my personal life has been, lets just, say eventful.
Now, its time to move down a few gears on the exercise front and remove some stressors from my life. Identify what is not serving me and let go off it, as Adrienne says.
With experience, one knows exactly what to let go off, what to change and what to keep. Such situations can sometimes bring extraordinary clarity about life. When one is forced to prioritize one's well-being,what really matters and what doesn't becomes apparent. 

The PhD Talk

I gave the "What I wish I had known ..." talk for the new PhD students this afternoon. I hadn't rehearsed it enough so I forgot to say everything I had planned, but there were no major omissions. I also pulled a colleague along for the reception later. When I joined the PhD programme, I dreamed of being part of a community of scholars who were fast friends and spent many a cheery hour plumbing the depths of our  intellects. That dreamed died long ago. I get along swimmingly well with the people in my PhD room and count some of them as close friends, but we are not intellectual bedfellows. Our intellectual interests (and ideologies in the case of some colleagues) don't align as much as I would like.
I long ago gave up trying to make friends in the university outside my PhD room. When I went along to the reception I had little expectations of meeting someone whom I would hit it off with. And, sure enough, I didn't meet anyone like that. So, why did I go? Because not everything one does needs to for a particular outcome. Sometimes the act is the outcome. I strongly believe we should have a closer PhD community, and while I can't be bothered to rally the troops for this cause, the least I can do is show up and have myself counted. 

Busyness

Can busyness be learned? I don't mean the act of being busy but the feeling of being busy. Over the months, I have found myself increasingly describing myself as busy. I have exemplars such as the administrator in my graduate school who took almost two weeks to write a two-line letter for me pretending, the whole while, to be as busy as a brain surgeon. Which makes me wonder--how do people in hectic and high-pressure professions such as neuro-surgery function? Is there an innate personality difference between them and people who keep moaning about how busy they are? Or maybe busyness, like many other things in society,  is socially constructed. I feel there are people who can reject claims on their time by claiming to be too busy, such as my grad school administrator, and those who cant, such as low-paid workers. Busyness is very much a white-collar concept.  Could slaves or serfs ever get away claiming to be busy?

Distraction

When I was battling my demons, one of my biggest struggles was how to keep myself occupied. Friends and family would keep telling me that working would lift me out of the morass. I agreed, noting that my issues had surfaced during a long period of idleness. But, my boredom and my depression fed off each other lustily and I found it very difficult to break that cycle. 

It was only after returning to my studies in England did boredom finally stop being an arch-enemy. I got busy with work, and then super-busy for  few months, and although my workload has leveled off in recent months, there is still a lot to do.

I can't imagine how I would have coped with the events of the past two months if I didn't have a lot to do. I wouldn't describe my personal life or professional life at the moment as rocky, more like challenging. But I find myself able to focus well at work and be quite productive. I used to think that writing can only be coaxed out not forced out. But, I do find myself forcing it out and it seems to be working. You can romanticize the research process all you want, but at the end of the day much of it is about sitting at your computer long enough. I suppose pouring yourself into work is a time-honoured way to distract yourself from personal issues.