Headaches, Disappointments, Taxes, and Worries

Not a very positive weekend I'm afraid - I spent almost all day Easter in bed with a splitting headache (odd how many of those I've had in the past year since making a 1 point landing on my head from the top of the Ranger Wall in Sandhurst), and didn't even leave my room except to go to the bathroom and get a bite to eat. Cambridge is really lonely right now since its the term break, and I've decided that I never want to be a hermit since I have definitely been feeling lonely and bummed with everyone gone. It's nice having my own room and everything, but it gets depressing when the only time I see people is when I head to the grocery store or the library.
My work is progressing in fits and spurts of extreme productivity and extreme doing nothingness, I can only hope that if I continue to plug away at things they'll come together, because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about - although it has definitely kept me up late nights when I should be sleeping and instead feel the heavy weight of panic. I don't think I'm cut out to be an academic, these long library hours are not fun and there's so much I'd rather be doing than work. In a way, I miss the pressure cooker that West Point was because I think it kept me in line and the challenge kept me going. I'd almost say I'm disappointed to have spent the year here, but I know I'd have regretted passing up the opportunity. However, I think more and more I realize that I've done some things because they're the things I'm supposed to have wanted to do, and indeed, I wanted them, but I find out afterwards that they're not quite as fulfilling as I would have expected. Two prime examples of this are going to Navy on exchange and winning the Gates and the year at Cambridge. Now, if Rebecca or Mrs. Allen read this, you are the reasons I don't regret going to Navy because you made it worthwhile, but I always felt coming back that it put a speed bump in my progression at West Point and I missed out on getting to know people when I should have, but it's too late to have regrets and I try to focus on the good things. The Cambridge academic experience has not lived up to my expectations either, and I think in large part this is because the program I'm in doesn't seem quite sure what to do with all of the MPhils, and without a clear end state, how can things ever really get where they're supposed to go? I don't know the answer and I don't think they do either. I miss the focus and willingness to spend time with cadets that the instructors had at West Point; I always played up that aspect to my friends at civilian schools as they told me of lecture halls with a hundred people, but now I realize just how true it was. While we don't have huge lecture halls here, the majority of the lecturers here seemed to view us as an imposition on their time to complete their research, and I can't ever really remember feeling like a burden simply because I showed up asking to be taught. Oh well, c'est la vie I suppose, and disillisionment is always hard to take.
On a positive note, I should be getting my federal tax return in a few weeks since I finally managed to file after tracing down an errant W-2 from my DITY move. Things were definitely more complicated this year than it has been in years past, but I guess that's the way things are going to be from now on and I should just accept it. Still, it's awful realizing just how much I pay in taxes now that I'm actually making money. I think it's funny though, that taxes help to pay the budget for the military, and the budget for the military includes my salary, and I pay taxes on my salary.... seems rather circular, but that's life again, I suppose. Things don't necessarily make any sense.
Time has a way of speeding up or slowing down just when you want it to do the opposite, and I suddenly find myself at the end of March, staring at my dissertation deadline of 6 June, and I am so terrified that I won't be able to finish on time. If the deadline weren't until August or the end of July like many of the other courses, I'd be golden for sure, but I'm just hoping to be able to wrap up research in sufficient time to allow me to write up the results. May is going to be one crazy month - I'm not looking forward to it at all - and April hasn't even started yet. I wish I were clairvoyant and could look forward and know that everything is going to turn out A-OK, but I'm not and so there's a little cloud of worry that's been hanging over my head and refuses to leave, and come to think of it, probably won't leave until sometime this summer when I know everything is completed.