and the next and the next and...

[aamcnamara]

One of the things I like about myself is that, if I have a long and dreaded list of Things To Do and some time to do them in, I can sit down and just do them.

Oh, my attention wanders sometimes, but I can always catch myself when my mind wanders away, say, "No, Alena, we are doing this now" and set myself gently back on the path. The first step is always the hardest.

Sometimes, of course, the next thing is not something my brain is ready for, so I do a different thing. But I do something, and then I do another thing, and another. And then somehow I have just been sitting here all weekend, writing essays and math papers and novel critiques, emailing professors, talking to my parents, doing physics homework. Being ridiculously, disgustingly, determinedly productive.

I scheduled in off time for myself, sure. (In which I made a terrible notacake--vcmw, I tried adding buckwheat flour but I was changing too many things at once and it failed.) I know my limits. That is part of the beauty of it: knowing when you will just slip through your fingers again, be away and over the fields, and watching yourself go.

... sometimes I really hate being Responsible (don't make me be Beezus, I want to be Ramona!), but y'know, sometimes it is really handy. After all, it's not even dinner on Sunday, and my List is nearly empty.

Comments

[jesstherobot.livejournal.com]

That sort of productivity is a marvelous and rare trait! I am very envious. I am the worst procrastinator, and I have the world's shortest attention span, so even when I manage to get myself started doing work, chances are pretty good that thirty minutes later I will be goofing off again.

I am not, however, envious of your escapades in microwave cooking. I am impressed, certainly, by your ingenuity, but I am also grateful for my full-sized oven in which I can put cakes. (and notacakes.) yes.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I sort of got trained into it, I think--I was unschooled for years as a child and had to structure my own time--but I suppose if I hadn't initially had a proclivity in that direction, those years wouldn't have helped.

To be perfectly frank, I wouldn't mind a full-size oven in the slightest, but they shut down the kitchens on campus after students kept leaving them messy and gross, so you make do with what you have. On the other hand, I experimented with an oven for eighteen years. (Well, all right, not quite eighteen, as I didn't start baking as a newborn infant, but you get the idea.) The challenge is kind of intriguing, anyway.