Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Another war, another burst of national idiocy

Depressed about all the hoopola going on right now with the Dixie Chicks (whatever happened to free speech?), I browsed around and finally on the above article. Good stuff. It echoes some of my sentiments, anyhow.
Here are a few bits from posts in my swing dance forum that got me thinking:

What are you going to study in grad school?
Do you hate your job because of the specific tasks you need to perform, or is it more the idea behind what you are doing (i.e., nobody reads it anyway and it's at grade school level; not an effective use of your training to be a writer)?
When I feel unmotivated to do the excruciatingly boring parts of my job (grading papers often comes to mind), I set mini-goals for myself and reward myself afterward. I also find that procrastinating until the very last minute creates enough tension to keep things interesting. :) With that extra fire under my butt, I am amazingly efficient.
...
If you are at the end of your procrastination rope and are inundated with projects, that may be also leading to lack of interest in your job, 'cause it's overwhelming right now.
Can you organize each project into stacks (or folders, if they are online) and stack the most pressing one on top and just start muscling through (with lots of treats standing by for each time you complete one)? That's what I try to do with my ocean of work (which you will note I am not doing right now). If the most pressing project is too overwhelming, I sometimes start with the easiest ones in order to just get some feeling of accomplishment going (checking things off the checklist feels good).
...
Anne

This is good stuff for me to keep in mind when I go back to work or school, and even now on a daily basis. I really suck at breaking things down. I'm not great at motivating myself.

Blah.
I was away this weekend. While I was gone, three men forced their way into an apartment here and robbed the owners at gunpoint. There was a rash of car break-ins. Several cars were stolen. The plates off of some cars were stolen and replaced with other stolen plates.

Crazy.

Happily, my car was sitting in Capitol Hill. Not the best place for a car, necessarily, but apparently much better these past few days than the lot at my apartment complex.