Palfrey's life

My mind is in so many pieces right now, and I need to vent. What I really need is a pub, some friends and a cold pint of cider. Or at least the promise of such. I don't think the drink itself is even really necessary, just a hell of a lot of fond memories associated with it. LJ is keeping me sane, but just barely. There is a whole bunch of things I need to do, and every time I get *one* of them done, more appear, and the list never seems to get shorter (I've for example just realised my mobile has been off all day, and so my parents won't have been able to ring me, and that's gonna stress them, as they know I've been stressed. I really don't need to talk to them right now, because there's so much they don't know that I'm not willing to tell them) I've had elongated stressy times before - the c/w hells of my BSc for one - but in each there was 1) a known ending, something you could plan for and more importantly 2) others in the same boat. Someone to share with. There's *no-one* here I really want to talk to. There's no-one even slightly close. In bris, I could think of at least half-a-dozen people offhand (and that's without trying) that I could talk to. Most of them are on IM, and I talk to them at points, but it's not even close to the same. This is stuff I want to talk to someone about in person.

Last time I vented about all of this, I was told to hang on in there. I'm sure I will be told the same again now, but let's give y'all a bit more context here. There are 2 different bits of c/w that I'm doing for my MSc right now. They're probably both very late, but I *don't* know. Neither of them have a clearly defined hand-in date, and one of them doesn't even have a hand-in procedure. These things I would consider a basic prerequisite for a c/w. Now, here's the thing. I'm doing a PhD. Which works out a lot of the time like a job in certain ways (certainly at this stage of it). I work approximately normal work hours. I'm in there working on various things for it all day, and then when I come home I'd like to just collapse and relax. My weekends/evenings should mostly consist of watching movies/TV and playing computer games (or actually going out and doing something interesting if I *ever* have a social life). Except, unlike a job, it doesn't quite end when you leave the office. I have this other work to do, and no social life to speak of, and I'm going slowly but steadily mad. And you wonder why I want to up and leave this. The only thing stopping me is the number of people now relying on me in different ways. Marinus at TNO - he's relying on me to write this implementation of T-MAC for TinyOS, and I've got a presentation to do there on Wednesday re: Localization techniques for Ad-hoc sensor networks; Koen - I'm still adding to the garbage collector implementation for Asterix, he'd really like to see me get as far as writing a paper on some of the work I'm doing, and start to progress towards a coherent target for my research; myself - I'd like to get through this. If it wasn't for the damn MSc crap, I'd probably be in a lot better state. I could sit and watch all the assorted media I wanted to at weekends, guiltfree. It's not what I'd really call a social life, but while I work on that, it'll do to keep me sane. Or it would, if I had the damn time.

So I'm stressed to hell and back, and there's no-one to share it with. Everyone here is the only remaining option - I'd *much* rather be talking about this to someone in person (*any* of you for starters), but there's no-one I can talk to here. I know the choice I made, the sacrifice I'm making - trade friends, trade home, trade my old life - in exchange to get to do something I wanted to do. I'm just not sure. I don't really care about the Dr. title, and I can satisfy my impulse to add something back to the world with my existing free-software work. So, why continue? Sheer fucking momentum is about the only reason I have right now