the Modern

after a visit to the anachronistic Stiles farmers market on 52nd, a quick duck into the Modern (Museum of Modern Art).
Well I've done myself in and committed to writing an article for a book on country risk, due this summer, which I can't imagine would be of interest to anyone not in the field. I'd contributed an article to the first volume. So if experience is a good guide this will mean a sequence of: 1-2 weeks playing with ideas; 2 weeks testing these ideas and plunging into frantic despair when the ideas don't pan out or I find the data I'd like doesn't exist; 2 weeks scrabbling around desperately to find alternatives; 1 week of patting myself on the back for coming up with ideas I can live with; 5-6 weeks of dithering (faffing?); and then 3-4 weeks of despair as I finally knuckle down to work, slightly overshoot the deadline, and become convinced that it's a negative contribution to the literature, but then circle around to thinking it's maybe, probably okay.
And it's not even what I do for a living (writing articles, that is).