Brand, Spanking New--Well, Sort Of

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Cloudy, Moonlit Night

The Critic

 
Half past dead of night,

     awakes early morning sun

to inspect my words.

 

 

Divide and Conquer

I’ve made some progress regarding the number of projects I’m balancing, but it has been difficult. Ultimately, I had to sit down and list the things I’m doing before prioritizing them.

It’s not as if I hadn’t already done this: in fact, I live by lists and time lines and schedules; however, things were a bit different this time.

This time, I made my list, set my priorities, and then—oh god—then, I built my schedule for the next three weeks around working on only the top two priorities. (This means I’m currently pretending the other five super-important, really-beneficial, totally-interesting projects do not exist.)

Generally, I consider all of the top-priority things I have to do and spread my time evenly among them, but lately, this has created some significant mental chaos as I grind slowly through so many things I feel as if I’m running through mud.

So, I made up my mind: the top two things get my attention and damn the rest for now.

Talk about frustrating: I was in a constant struggle with my brain over the other things until I bought myself a tiny notebook into which I have given myself permission to jot down the things that are busily throwing themselves at me about all of the abandoned projects—abandoned is their word not mine—the result was a lot of distracting note taking at first, but for the last day or so, my brain has given me a break and allowed me to focus on the only two projects that currently exist in my world.

Free Rice

A few days ago, oasiss stopped by my blog and left some nice remarks, so I had to take a gander at what goes on over at Zatetic.

There’s some fun happenings over there: not only can you snag a recipe for ice cream, but also, you can ponder the intellect of some of our modern-day heroes.

I know what you’re thinking: what do ice cream and athletes have to do with rice? Well, nothing, but the Zatetic blogroll included a link to FREE RICE, and there was no way I wasn’t going to see where that led, so off I went.

I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll just say three things:

1. Test your word knowledge.
2. Make a difference.
3. Do both for FREE.

Picture Perfect

STOP. Thief!

How can February be nearly one-third over? Who grabbed the remote control on my life and hit the fast-forward button?

The last time I looked, December was meandering to a close, and the hint of New Year’s possibilities was just around the corner.

Then things went dark: for four days the first time and just over one the second. Snowed in and without power, things slowed to a crawl, and while inconvenient at times, the taste of the past made the experience worthwhile.

Then there was the first good illness of the year: hello emergency room and five-hour-wait-to-be-seen which was followed by the four-hour-wait-to-be-released which added up to my very first (and hopefully last) twenty-seven (27) hour awake-the-whole-time “day.”

I lost the rest of that week recovering from the sleep I’d missed and caretaking, but HOW DID I GET HERE: to the 9th of February?

Oh, and did I mention the Julia Fordham musical loop that keeps going though my head?

During my 20th century graduate work, I learned to multi-task like a madwoman. I think I turned the corner when I developed the ability to read three books simultaneously while keeping each compartmentalized in my brain. This has bled into my I’m-not-a-student-anymore but-I-still-go-to-school-and-have-homework life (often referred to as teaching). I suspect part of the time-warp I'm experiencing is due to the number of really cool projects I’m working on: I’ve got handfuls of stuff to do each non-teaching day, and most of it is satisfying work, so I wake up at 5:30 ready to dig in, and other than breaks for little things like exercise and food and bathing, there’s no stopping me. Suddenly, it’s 7 at night and the pets need my attention, and dinner is overdue, and and and. . .

I'm beginning to suspect projects are not like books or assignments: perhaps they are best handled independent of one another; however, the thought of setting a few of them aside for any length of time makes me want to scratch my eyes out.

At least if I did that I’d miss the calendar pages whizzing off the wall.