Is a PhD worth missing summer?

I haven’t written a blog in a very long time. I've been writing other stuff. A big fat thing called a PhD thesis. However, the past couple of days have been like walking through sand. I can actually see my thesis as a finished product but realising it has become gruelling. I want to write but for some reason my brain stops working simultaneously with walking out my front door. So why do I feel this way? Is it because I lie awake too long excited about what I want to say and then cannot function the next day from lack of sleep? Is it the heat (it’s pretty damn hot here right now)? Is it the air-conditioned windowless room I write in? Is it that I am afraid to *put it out there*?

I think  all of the above play a role but you know what I reckon the main factor is? I miss my kids. I’m sitting here in my air-conditioned, windowless room and playing with strategies for untangling my thoughts and weaving them back together trying to meet a self-imposed deadline wrapped up in a much needed living allowance. I’m taking advantage of my husband’s leave and holiday visits from Gran and Gramps to distract Christmas lolly fuelled limbs and needy little sticky faces and from my absence. God, I miss those faces (tearing up a bit).

I’m missing summer days in the pool, smelling like sunscreen, chlorine and salt. I’m missing dripping mango down my arms, smearing frozen blueberries across my face and spitting watermelon seeds across the lawn. Sucking on ice-blocks. I’m missing breathing in the stillness and humidity and the anticipation of a storm. I’m missing the green. God, Brisbane is green at the moment. I am missing having an active role ingraining summer into my children’s DNA. All for a bloody PhD.

Still, it’s only one summer. My children are young. There are plenty of summers left and I still have weekends. Next summer you’ll be able to call me Dr.