Another Sleepless Night

I thought sleepless nights were a thing of my past. I used to periodically stay up until 3am ruminating on something and then brain dump on my blog in order to help myself fall asleep. But, I haven't done that in such a long time...until now. I've been in bed for the last two hours trying to fall asleep, but to no avail. So much has been happening in the last two days that I can't get it all out of my head and I'm too overwhelmed. I went to a TA orientation, of which there is nothing too significant to report except that I noticed a handout with the important dates regarding graduation. Shock and horrors to find that I the deadline to apply for a fall graduation is next week. Then I discovered that the deadline to request a doctoral defense meeting is October 23rd, with the final day to actually defend being November 6th. And the following week is the deadline to submit a final copy of the dissertation to the graduate school. Working backwards, I realized my idea to conduct a structural equation model with the data that I did have was way too ambitious for that schedule. So I took a few moments to freak out and hyperventilate until I realized that maybe I could use the article that I just finished writing last week on the same dataset; but, which is preliminary to the SEM project I had planned to do. The article could be adapted to dissertation format and 20 pages could be added in the next couple weeks. This might actually be feasible. I'm so overstimulated by this and wishing to talk to my advisor to figure out next steps, such as when I should relate to my committee this not-so-tiny change in protocol. And whether this idea will fly....

Sigh...I don't think that was enough of a brain dump to make me fall asleep. While I'm awake, I might as well get some work done.