Overwhelmed by exhaustion, Friday was pretty bleak. My back hurt, I couldn’t work up the energy to start editing the next 5 chapters (one of which was missing) and life in general was a gloomy contrast to the lovely April sunshine. Worst of all: I felt like there was nothing left that I wanted to do. Since this is a bad sign of depression and burn-out, I took it seriously, and started making a list to see if that was true. Here it is, a list of “stuff to do once life isn’t dominated by the thesis”.

• Learn more about making web-pages, and set up my own.
  
• Badger or bribe somebody into making a Mondrian-inspired skin for my blog. (I have made a sketch and it will look great.).
  
• Write more articles on blogs, preferably cooperating with Jill. We should be located in Athens, Melbourne, New York or – well, why not – Bali.
  
• Take riding lessons, perhaps in Melbourne or Bali.
  
• Work on the asthma information project the department is undertaking, the game-part of it.
  
• Make an easy system for PR and information about Game Studies, and write a suggested structure for a discussion-group adjunct to the journal.
  
• Buy a big, popular, silly computer-game and play it for hours and hours.
  
• Write an iconology of said game: using Panofsky. The title should be: Games, Cathedrals of the Third Millennium.
  
• Start painting again.
  
• Search old floppy-disks and see if I can find the file with the children’s book the kids and I almost finished writing 7 years ago.
  
• Edit my poems.
  
• Get back to cooking, not just reading recipes.
  
• Start reading up on subcultures. Remember to discuss methodology with Jan Fredrik.
  
• Plan a Lom-School Seminar: User-oriented online research, expressions of gender, power, pleasure and the dark side. This would go well with my plans for more adventurous cooking.
  
• Paint the kitchen.

Looks like I’ll be busy. At least this indicates that there can be life on the other side of the dissertation.