Cycling - that sport I cannot forget.

Imagine you're flying at an altitude of ten thousand kilometers, that's a really good place to start wondering about things from years back, especially when you're reminded of those years by a tiny cream container. Remember the days when Milram actually won stuff? Those were the days. I think the start of Milram coincided with my last days actually caring a lot about cycling. It all makes me want to say "do you remember those days when FDJ was still full of Aussies? When Nicolas Jalabert still raced and his brother, Ja-ja, was all proud of him in his commentaries? Those days when Thomas Voeckler held that yellow jersey for as long as he could? When it was still US Postal (or even Motorola) and George Hincapie was totally recognisable in his dark blue jersey and glasses?" So many things have changed, heck, even Little Thomas L. changed the way he spells his name, now it's Löfkvist, but who cares, for me he'll always be Little Thomas L. I could talk about so many sports that have changed... tennis, there is no longer a Tim Henman to cheer for. Bode Miller actually used to win stuff, while being impressive on the slopes overall. We had to hope that OM would stay in the Ligue 1, now we're actually keeping our fingers crossed that they win it. Changes, changes, changes. ( +3 - the Milram that started it all and some pastry and sky ) Yeah, this is me getting all nostalgic on a Sunday morning.

And I have no editor telling me what to do.

(Zenit. Fuji 200.)

I am starting to doubt my ability to ever finish this written part of my thesis. I know what I want to say, I know which results I should include and yet I cannot seem to get it written down the way I see it in my head. I've been rewriting the same parts over and over again, I get stuck at the most improbable bits. I wish I could just copy/paste whole passages of other people's works as I've seen countless others do before me and call it a day and a "state of the art". It is scary in the end, trying to convey three years of my life in a single written work. I can already feel that I will have a major post-partum breakdown the moment I defend my work. Three years. At this point that's more than 1/9th of my life. And I am having more and more doubts about the real contribution my work can bring to the field. I can't even rationally tell if they're justified or not, at this point I can only keep on going and keep on believing. Screw this. No really, screw this. The doubts. The rewriting. The tons of scribbles with random ideas on scraps of paper. The ideas that others tell me to explore. The hope that one day I'll be on that stage, defending the work and it will be over. And yet the more everything goes on, the more I realise that if I had chosen another path, everything would have probably been much more stable and much more defined... but it wouldn't have been something for me.