Perhaps, I had set myself way too many?
Perhaps, I wasn’t productive enough?
Perhaps, I could’ve done better?
These are thoughts that haunted my brain almost every single day last month. What I failed to recognise at the time was that I was having a ‘mid-PhD crisis’. July was the official half-way mark for me; I honestly cannot believe it has been 18 months! I knew that feeling the mid-PhD blues was a thing because I had read about it here a long time ago; but I just didn’t realise I was having the symptoms, until recently.
I also ran into a major statistics problem which has taken me a long time to figure out. It wasn’t that I didn’t try. I was trying to recover from the situation I was in, but I was feeling quite unmotivated. On top of that, I was under the weather for a couple of days which added to my misery. I felt cold, sleepy and lacked energy more often than usual. I started wondering if it was due to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) AKA the ‘winter blues’. I could see that my drop in productivity levels was starting to take a toll on my health. I knew I needed to push through and just keep swimming, so that’s what I tried doing. Happy to say, I have somehow recovered from my ‘mid-PhD crisis’ and was able to change my mindset! But I don’t want to talk about this just yet as I feel it is still early days. I am certainly not where I want to be, but I am in a much happier space, will reveal more on my next post :)
In other news, I’m still cooking lots of soup due to the cold. But I’ve tried a few different things this month to help me uplift my spirits! Here are my July eats:
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Apple and cinnamon porridge, topped with walnuts and almonds
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Morning toast with homemade ricotta, banana and chia seeds
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Green, yellow split lentil cauliflower and carrot soup, with leftover lamb
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Homemade ricotta, walnut and pear toast
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Avo on toast with pepper, chilli, lemon
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Linguini with avocado, pesto, pea and parmesan
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Banana, walnut and chia seed porridge
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Big batch of mixed lentil, celery and carrot soup
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Veggie and prawn stir-fry using pretty much everything I had at home (cauliflower, broccoli, beans, carrots and pea)
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Roasted Brussel sprouts with EVOO, pepper and chilli
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Strawberry, chia seed and peanut butter porridge
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Italian soup mix with green beans, carrots and celery
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Hoki green curry with green beans
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Lentil soup with carrots and beans, topped with leftover roast chicken
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