Friday. Start!

It's the beginning of the long, Memorial Day weekend.
I'll be at the office the entire time. My friend/colleague has gone on
vacation leaving me to cover. That's fine. Plenty of quiet, potential work hours.
To help get into the right mood I put down hourly goals onto a post-it note. Here's what I have for today, Friday:
7p - wash face
8p - photocopy articles
9p - write in blog(s)
10p - take diet pills

So far, so good! It's 9p and i'm on track to successfully completing my tasks. Having said that I've not done any academic reading, thinking or writing today. I'd like to blame the noise and rattle of the office cleaning crew. But, no. My own laziness. A headache's been quietly storming the gates in the last few hours. That could be keeping me from serious mental anything.

Tomorrow my goals are a lot less (or more?) lofty. Three hours on each project for a total of six academic-hours in the larger 10-hr industrial work day here at JCI. In three hours I know how much I can accomplish. What I need is some way to psych myself for the work ahead. Some cheerleader for positive attitude. Now that I've written down my goal in a public, not-easy-to-ignore space it's not an option to later give excuses. C'mon Don! You're not dumb.

Reading about the profession does not make you a professional.

NO FAIR! NOOOOOOO!!
NO FAIR NO FAIR NO FAIR! ACK!
I'm the cute-but-demon kid from "Pet Sematary" after being killed by my daddy: no fair, no fair!

Three hours ago I logged into Blogger to write this post. Instead, I've been reading "Rate My Students" blog.
For three hours I avoided writing both my academic stuff and this blog --- about writing my academic stuff. Somebody, somewhere give me credit for good intentions. Or extend the pavement on this slow road to hell.

Why does writing have to suck so hard? My undergrad adviser said (to herself, though I was in the room only 4 feet from her face) "writing is so much fun. it's the research that I hate". Okay. Now, let's flip those adjectives and try empathising with Mr Martin. Research? SPACE CAMP AWESOME! Writing? Meh. Writing is like getting bad Thai food. By virtue of its Siamese-ness, the food rules; but, if its bad you eat it anyway because it's Thai food and Thai food is awesome. Repeat. Writing really is wonderful, I know this already. It sharpens or discredits ones ideas, puts your mind into the intellectual sandbox where the other minds are losing contact lenses or scraping off boogers in the nearby grass. You know, fun! But, shit. I can't get excited about the sandbox. Especially bad is knowing how much fun being in that sandbox can be. Imagine that your whole (well, reasonable adult) life you went ape-shit over pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving, oh man. Fuck football. Pie. Then around your 28th birthday you're like "meh, i'll pass on the pie" and your relatives give a look more appropriate to your announcing "10 bucks that my vagina is as soft as Karen Peterson's, the 4th grader down the block."

I used a lot of metaphors up there.

Don't question me.

The law requires I write something immediately upon creating the blog.
We Russians believe in affirming and living the law. I'm not Russian.

But i'm gonna! Write. Not be Russian.