My patience is extremely thin. I screened two phone calls today because I did not want to deal with talking to those people. I called my parents and was on the verge of snapping at my mom because she wanted to nag me by telling me what I should pack for my China trip (which btw is not until Oct 19). I asked her why we have to talk about the ratio of short-sleeved to long-sleeved shirts I should pack NOW, a month before the actual trip?? Why can we not talk about this three weeks from now?

I also got very frustrated with another phone call after my parents, this time with a good friend. My very-far-from-being-complete thesis proposal (heck, it is hardly even started) is not something I want to talk about right now.  I know he meant so well, but the more we talked (he talked), the more frustrated I got because I just really wanted to hang up the phone and actually go work on my proposal instead of talking about it.

Panic is definitely setting in. I was driving around earlier today wondering why I can’t feel a sense of urgency unless I am a day before the deadline. I wondered what the threshold advance-notice was for me to start panicking about something. A test, a paper due, I feel no sense of urgency until the night before, and I was starting to be afraid that I would also not feel the urgency of this thesis proposal until the night before, at which point, it is already too late because there is no way I can write this thing in a day.

But I needn’t have worried. Panic is setting in right now.

**ADD**: I found this little segment from an article in Psychology Today, thanks to keltheyounger’s link:

“There are many depressogenic factors operating in our culture. Information overload is one. Since 1945 we have accumulated at least as much information as we had throughout history until then. The more information there is, the more we end up essentially skimming the surface. This leads to a style of thinking in which we see only the big picture and miss the depth of detail. As a result, when we are faced with difficult problems, we do not recognize the many small steps that solutions typically require; things feel overwhelming and insurmountable, leading us to give up before we even start. “

Wow, that last sentence just about sums up how I feel right now. I want to quit before I even get started because I am so intimidated by this daunting task of writing a proposal. The article the above paragraph came from is called “The Art of Avoiding Depression.” Let’s hope that I don’t get depressed over this whole thing.