Where is my motivation?

"where is my motivation? no time for the motivation..."
~Green Day "Longview"

i've been thinking of this line a lot lately. i really need a project...a research project, that is. one to base my dissertation on. so, i have the basic idea...now i actually have to get going on it...but i don't feel motivated in the slightest. maybe this lack of motivation stems from never seeing my advisor. when i was an undergrad, i saw my advisor nearly every day, since i worked in her lab and had classes in the same building, so i saw her a couple of times a day even when i wasn't working. the little things really kept me going...just talking to her about my plans for the week, what needed to be done, seemed to keep me motivated. tiny questions about what i had written so far kept me from putting it off too much, even if i did manage to procrastinate a little. but given the opportunity, i can put things off forever. living in mobile and not on dauphin island, only having one class at the sea lab this semester (where dr. v spends most of his time), i just never see him. so he can't make the little, "so, how's that idea coming?" comments nearly often enough. emails are not sufficiently threatening! i need that thing he does where he looks down at me over his glasses and asks what i've been doing...not that he's "looking down at me" like i'm a peon or anything. he's just very tall, and i'm on the short side (~5' 3") so to look at me, he naturally has to look down.

or maybe i can't blame my lack of motivation on never seeing dr. v. maybe i'm just being lazy. maybe i've started to enjoy not having every minute of every day scheduled a little too much. it's just so much easier for me to do the actual work than it is to do the writing and planning that comes before the good stuff (the going out in the field, getting muddy, spending hours in the lab processing samples). ahh, there's my dilemma. if i don't get on with doing the writing and planning and scheduling a committee meeting (and having something to say to the committee at said meeting), then i can't get to the fun stuff. ok, i think i just found my motivation. i need to email dr. v and set up a meeting with him and anne and tim (committee members - and anne's my undergrad advisor). i at least need to talk to all of them at once...run the basic idea by them, maybe it's crap and i don't know it. i'm sure that they know things that i don't. ok, i need to get up and do stuff...i do have a class today. and i did promise jamie that i'd go over and help her pack...ok. going to make coffee, take a shower, get ready to sit in my geological oceanography class for 3 hours. yikes, that sounds brutal. but it's the trade-off for only having class once a week. alright, i'm really going now.