Guilt riddled as ever

I have been a lousy blogger lately. I finally checked into my blogger account today and realised that my last post was from mid-November, right about the time when I started working on the paper that has been keeping me up at night ever since. So, I haven't forgotten about you and it wasn't my intention to take a break this long, but my attention has been needed elsewhere.

I am working on a rather significant revision of a paper that was supposed to be submitted about ten days ago. I worked more or less nonstop for two weeks in order to make the deadline, but kept getting sidetracked by last minute meetings, urgent administrative decision-making and permission requirements for next years field season. I got an extension for a loosely defined deadline sometime asap and hope to get it off my hands tomorrow (but don't be too surprised if the manuscript is still chasing me around come Tuesday).

In addition to all the external distractions I also somehow lost the superpower that allowed me to get up at six in the morning and work till I dropped late at night somewhere around the original deadline. So for the past week I have been going about the writing at a more leisurely speed and prioritised to attend a planned family event including two full days of travel, a two day scientific meeting, a Christmas-cookie-baking day, Christmas tree shopping and finally catching up with my blogging peeps. The paper will get done eventually.

btw: I have been tagged for a couple of memes during my absence. I will get to these. Thanks for tagging me. I also have some really interesting follow-up to the blogging about science discussion to share from the project meeting this week. Hopefully I will get around to this soon.