Blue Monday

Today is supposed to be the  most depressing day of the year. It is the middle of winter, Christmas is over and people have been back from long holiday long enough to contemplate the year ahead. I don't care about Christmas and I don't particularly dislike winter but the past few days have been a little blue for me. Today, I had a meeting with my supervisor for my bi-monthly bollocking. It wasn't a bollocking this time, so to speak, but I was told in no uncertain terms that my completion target was very ambitious,given where I am in my PhD. If the point hadn't sunk in, she added that the work I had done so far was not bad by any means, but I still had loads to do and my pace of work hadn't been inspiring. She also said that I still wrote too much like a journalist.
I have never considered myself a slow writer (I used to work for a news wire, for god's sake). So the thought that I am a slow academic writer is sobering. Maybe I am too early in my career to judge whether I will or won't be a prolific academic, but there is at least the possibility that I won't. So far, with typical privileged male confidence, I had assumed I would. And, the bit about my writing being too journalistic stung too. I do have a tendency to use the existing literature as a prop to say what I want to say, rather than to actively engage with the literature. I thought I was getting better at it, but obviously not as much as I had imagined.
Anyway, blue Monday will be over in a few hours. With a new day, comes new hope.