A friend told me, "When the thesis is over, you'll feel sort of empty, you won't know what to do with your time. You'll miss the work and the writing." And now I'm thinking. Will I really?

Writing a thesis is anguishing. And part of the thesis-writing angst comes from the fact that writing the thesis is anguishing. Thus the angst is feeding itself - endlessly. The writing itself may be either continuous or in spurts, frantic or non-existent, but the angst is always there. Persistent. Ominous. Huge.

And once it's finished - yes, yes, good news, I've finished, it's done!! - what remains is not emptiness. It's lightness. Freedom. The angst is gone, and now the space it occupied is revealed to be not empty, but wide and open. Ready to be filled with anything I want - and what a happy thought!

The space of angst becomes time - free time or busy time, according to each moment's need and preference. Time to do so many things that had been forever postponed to a vague and nebulous distant future 'post-thesis'.

Even time to write blogs.