My unusual PhD-survival tactic

And burnout is deeply insidious ...

So! My PhD was 'quite' hard. Every day, it felt like facing a wall of flames. For four years. Not counting the previous 6 years of BSc, PGDipSci, and MSC.

Or the 14 years in two abusive relationships. Or the cancer (the cancer was literally trivial in relation to the other stuff, but a superb wake up call to the fact I couldn't keep working ALL THE TIME!)

Anyhoo, to help me cope during my PhD I came up with this quaint little visualization. I created a PhDragon.

Obviously dragons are fireproof. So I was extremely nice to my PhDragon, and in exchange I would carefully do a little dragon-liposuction - suctioning off a little dragon fat. I'd then smear myself with this fire-proof dragon fat, and I could walk thru the flames - I could feel the heat, but was unharmed.

One day I was having a little visualization around this and something quite unexpected happened. I emerged from the flames, and there were my beloved and deceased grandparents - who I miss so much it hurts - and they were crying and laughing and saying; "we've been waiting for you!"

Amazingly, I've flirted with burnout several times since.

There's a moral in here somewhere.