I wonder if they spelled it "adderall" to make sure that "ADD" was prominantly featured in the name of the drug.
(at 2:20) I've written this during the course of an afternoon. I took Adderall with lunch today to see if it helps me to get through the mountain of grading I've fallen behind on. Hopefully it works. I took it an hour ago. It's had time to kick in and I can tell that it has because I can feel the sort of light rushy feeling that it tends to give my body. However, I've made it through precisely three microthemes before deciding I should chronicle it and shifted to this instantaneously. Score 1 for the ADD, 0 for the Adderall.
(at 3:02) I've finished grading the last few microthemes, alphabetized and sorted through two stacks of microthemes so that I can hand them out more easily during class tomorrow, and graded 2 papers. I feel like I'm having a hard time writing with a pen - my brain wants to write faster than my hand is capable of moving and my handwriting is smaller than usual. I keep having to cross things out because I'm trying to go too quickly and end up missing letters. I'm wondering if it will be legible to anyone else. It's legible to me, but I'm used to my writing and know what I'm saying. However, I've gotten through those papers fairly quickly and didn't get distracted in the middle of each like I usually do. Score 1 for Adderall, I think. I'd like to be writing more clearly. Will try and focus on that as I keep going.
(at 4:04) I now have 7 papers graded and have just figured out that I have 3 papers on my email that I need to grade as well. However, I'm a third of the way through, so that's a bonus. That also means I've graded 5 papers in an hour. Dude. +5 or something for Adderall. Back to grading.
(at 5:04, which strikes me as funny as it's been precisely an hour) I've graded 11 papers and figured out dinner (which will be pizza and hopefully, if Brownie picks some up, some beer), which is a bonus because that means I don't have to deal with cooking or cleaning up afterward. I want a break, but I keep telling myself I should push through while this stuff is still in effect so that I can be done before Vampire Diaries tonight. Also, who on earth thinks it's appropriate to quote from THE BACK OF THE BOOK to support an argument about a text? Adderall 1, student 0 *headdesk*
(at 6:09) I'm tired and I wish I were done with this but I've got three more physical papers and three papers online that still need to be graded. I'm feeling braindead and tired of repeating the same things (i.e., explain your quote so I know what the hell you mean by quoting it, and try and have an actual thesis please). So it occurs to me that I've been doing this for four hours and am entitled to a break. At the same time I think well, I may as well keep going.
(at 6:46) I'm done with all the papers except for the ones I received via email, which I need to download so I can grade them later. However, that's 18 papers graded with substantial marginal and end commentary, plus the microthemes done and everything sorted and ready to hand back tomorrow.
Basically, I have to admit that the Adderall does help when I'm trying to get through piles of shit that I'd rather not deal with. It did help cut down on the mental chatter and relunctance to try and focus that usually makes grading take a good two or three hours longer than this particular set of papers has taken me. I'm really glad that Adderall is one of those "turn on, turn off" type medications rather than something that I need to let build in my system (like an antidepressant) - mostly I'm glad that I know the effects will wear off soonish and I'll be able to think a little more like myself. I'm too tunnel-vision like this to have anything interesting to say. But I had a productive afternoon. I'll be interesting some other time.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
a propos of a quote
"I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. ...Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to." - Huxley, from Brave New World (er, p. 70 in the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, because if I don't put all that info in I feel wrong)
Mostly: "Can you say something about nothing?" (I'll ignore my interior monologue telling me to launch into some sort of bullshit "What Is Nothing?" type pseudophilosophical diatribe and move on) -- I run around in circles with this and I'm going to try and see if I can sort through this in a manner that anyone else might find comprehensible (i.e., all of this is so tangled in my head that I'm not sure I'll be able to get it out in under-40-word sentences, but doing so will nonetheless be the goal).
Issue number one, which will be returned to: words are hugely important. I feel like I should be doing my best at all times to use them well, especially as I spend most of my time ripping apart words. Good writing, really really wonderful effective writing, is probably not as rare as I think it is (as in, I need to get my head out of academic books). The last time I got really wrapped up and soaked in words that somehow wove themselves into me was when I finally read His Dark Materials over the summer. Fucking amazing. I couldn't pull myself away, I couldn't put the books down, I actively fought having to stop reading for anything other than food. I felt like my brain was firing all over the place, emotions were ripping through my body, and when I finally did finish I felt simultaneously fulfilled and drained and wonderfully satisfied. So a week later I picked the books back up, determined to go through and figure out to whatever possible degree how the hell he did that. That lasted for about a third of the Golden Compass before I got just as sucked in as I had the first time, and I ended up polishing off all three books in a matter of days yet again. I think part of my fascination is in picking apart Pullman's reading of Paradise Lost, but part of it comes in trying to figure out how he managed to balance his interpretation of Paradise Lost with everything else he has going on, and how he managed to get me so wrapped up in the Lyra/Will relationship that the end of the Amber Spyglass reduces me to tears every time. I suppose it's all in the subtleties, but it can't completely be. When I'm reading any of those books, I never stop and think "FFS SRSLY?" at either a bad phrase or some inane plot twist. I never stop and think. I get so wrapped up that I actually forget that I'm reading. To be able to write like that would truly be something incredible.
To come back to the quote and my own writing then, I suppose my ultimate goal would be to write something that would allow the reader to forget that they were reading. (and to this point I'm finally glad for once that I'm making myself blog, since that is literally the first time I've been able to think that) To do this, then, would take pretty much a total paradigm shift in how I think about writing. Academic writing forever forces the reader to remember that they are reading - theorists in particular are fond of shoving together words or breaking words up (his/story for history comes to mind). The whole idea ends up being a way to remind the reader that the encounter with a particular text is an act of interpretation which requires work on the part of the reader. That's all good and fine or whatever (perhaps headdeskingly pretentious) to do, but I hate reading like that and I fervently hate writing like that. I feel like dissertation writing is somehow an assumption on my part, a role that I don to please necessarily critical readers. It also ends up feeling like a whole lot of writing about nothing.
To write then, to write for real rather than according to some criteria that I don't want fully to ingest (for fear that if I do, it will take over me completely), requires that I write about *something*. Hence the decision to do NaNo in November: an attempt to find something to write about that is somehow more violent, more intense (as though anything could be less intense than ripping apart mechanisms of institutional change in some manuscript no one else has heard of). But then the question comes up of what to write of, and I find myself again with nothing. Or not really nothing, but something plotless. I felt like I should write about something I feel like I (partially) understand - relationships - but I can't do full-on romance without the snark sneaking in and I don't feel like I really want to write a "lookitmebeingallironical" type novel because then I'll just feel like a douche. So romance as a genre is out. But I still want to write about relationships, so I'm shoving all writing attempts for the moment under the guise of "fiction" and will, I suppose, try to stop categorizing it beyond that until we see whether or not I actually end up writing something worthwhile.
I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, to be honest. I mean, yes to everything I've just said, but I don't harbor any real fantasies that anything I write over the course of the next month will ever see paper or a publisher or anything. The few attempts I've made at a short story sound more like Stephenie Meyer than Philip Pullman. Maybe I'll just title the novel Practice or something. If I want to do anything real with writing, practice is what I need. So I will tell myself that this next month is practice, and that it doesn't need to have a goal beyond that.
Mostly: "Can you say something about nothing?" (I'll ignore my interior monologue telling me to launch into some sort of bullshit "What Is Nothing?" type pseudophilosophical diatribe and move on) -- I run around in circles with this and I'm going to try and see if I can sort through this in a manner that anyone else might find comprehensible (i.e., all of this is so tangled in my head that I'm not sure I'll be able to get it out in under-40-word sentences, but doing so will nonetheless be the goal).
Issue number one, which will be returned to: words are hugely important. I feel like I should be doing my best at all times to use them well, especially as I spend most of my time ripping apart words. Good writing, really really wonderful effective writing, is probably not as rare as I think it is (as in, I need to get my head out of academic books). The last time I got really wrapped up and soaked in words that somehow wove themselves into me was when I finally read His Dark Materials over the summer. Fucking amazing. I couldn't pull myself away, I couldn't put the books down, I actively fought having to stop reading for anything other than food. I felt like my brain was firing all over the place, emotions were ripping through my body, and when I finally did finish I felt simultaneously fulfilled and drained and wonderfully satisfied. So a week later I picked the books back up, determined to go through and figure out to whatever possible degree how the hell he did that. That lasted for about a third of the Golden Compass before I got just as sucked in as I had the first time, and I ended up polishing off all three books in a matter of days yet again. I think part of my fascination is in picking apart Pullman's reading of Paradise Lost, but part of it comes in trying to figure out how he managed to balance his interpretation of Paradise Lost with everything else he has going on, and how he managed to get me so wrapped up in the Lyra/Will relationship that the end of the Amber Spyglass reduces me to tears every time. I suppose it's all in the subtleties, but it can't completely be. When I'm reading any of those books, I never stop and think "FFS SRSLY?" at either a bad phrase or some inane plot twist. I never stop and think. I get so wrapped up that I actually forget that I'm reading. To be able to write like that would truly be something incredible.
To come back to the quote and my own writing then, I suppose my ultimate goal would be to write something that would allow the reader to forget that they were reading. (and to this point I'm finally glad for once that I'm making myself blog, since that is literally the first time I've been able to think that) To do this, then, would take pretty much a total paradigm shift in how I think about writing. Academic writing forever forces the reader to remember that they are reading - theorists in particular are fond of shoving together words or breaking words up (his/story for history comes to mind). The whole idea ends up being a way to remind the reader that the encounter with a particular text is an act of interpretation which requires work on the part of the reader. That's all good and fine or whatever (perhaps headdeskingly pretentious) to do, but I hate reading like that and I fervently hate writing like that. I feel like dissertation writing is somehow an assumption on my part, a role that I don to please necessarily critical readers. It also ends up feeling like a whole lot of writing about nothing.
To write then, to write for real rather than according to some criteria that I don't want fully to ingest (for fear that if I do, it will take over me completely), requires that I write about *something*. Hence the decision to do NaNo in November: an attempt to find something to write about that is somehow more violent, more intense (as though anything could be less intense than ripping apart mechanisms of institutional change in some manuscript no one else has heard of). But then the question comes up of what to write of, and I find myself again with nothing. Or not really nothing, but something plotless. I felt like I should write about something I feel like I (partially) understand - relationships - but I can't do full-on romance without the snark sneaking in and I don't feel like I really want to write a "lookitmebeingallironical" type novel because then I'll just feel like a douche. So romance as a genre is out. But I still want to write about relationships, so I'm shoving all writing attempts for the moment under the guise of "fiction" and will, I suppose, try to stop categorizing it beyond that until we see whether or not I actually end up writing something worthwhile.
I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, to be honest. I mean, yes to everything I've just said, but I don't harbor any real fantasies that anything I write over the course of the next month will ever see paper or a publisher or anything. The few attempts I've made at a short story sound more like Stephenie Meyer than Philip Pullman. Maybe I'll just title the novel Practice or something. If I want to do anything real with writing, practice is what I need. So I will tell myself that this next month is practice, and that it doesn't need to have a goal beyond that.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
15 minutes
I hate how I often think "ooo, I should blog about _______" when I'm not near my computer and then go completely blank when I am sitting at my computer and able to type away. This is probably part of the reason behind my lack of blog posts (beyond teh lazy). So in an effort to get myself back to writing at least as often as I was over the summer, I'm enforcing a 15 minute a day blog session every day this week. We'll see if I come up with anything worth pontificating about.
I had a cold or sinus infection type deal a week and a half ago while I was in Kansas and while I've finally gotten over it to the point that I was able to go out on a run yesterday, I still keep feeling moments of too-tired or really weak or whatever which tend to come in waves and which for some reason have been throwing me into mild panic attacks. I'm sure I'm probably still getting over the illness to a degree or whatever, but I could do without the accompanying "what if I pass out and break my head" panics that come with it. I suppose what I'm really saying is that I'm more tired than I think I should be and that I'd like for the panic attacks to FOAD.
I'm teaching Brave New World this week. I usually enjoy teaching it, but my class last year thought the whole dystopic society in the novel sounded a) roughly like what we're headed toward and b) excellent. The biggest issue for them was that Bernard was "an emo whiner" and that they didn't see why there should be any sort of glorification of emotion when that gets in the way of getting stuff done. This is so antithetical to my general state of mind (i.e., the point of sadness or emotion is to work with it and learn from it) that I was genuinely shocked into not knowing what to do or say. I'm trying to come up with responses to this general sort of sentiment in case I encounter it with this class tomorrow or any other point during the week. So far I'm not getting very far with this. One of the reasons I feel like maybe I shouldn't be a teacher when it comes down to it is that when they express things that take me completely off guard, I feel like it takes me too long to recover - I don't want to quash their ideas entirely, and I don't want to come across as though I think my stance on an issue is the only valid one, but I really ought to be better at challenging them into a deeper train of thought than I am - aka me sitting there flabbergasted doesn't bode well for my ability to help lead them into a better understanding of anything. At the same time, if I'm sitting there absolutely flabbergasted by what someone has just said and what many others are agreeing with, chances are someone else in the room is just as shocked as I am but less willing to say anything about it. So maybe I should express the shock. Or maybe I should take a bath and think through how to deal with this so that I can express something more productive than shock.
I wonder what the hell type of job I'll have in a year. I hope I *have* a job in a year.
I had a cold or sinus infection type deal a week and a half ago while I was in Kansas and while I've finally gotten over it to the point that I was able to go out on a run yesterday, I still keep feeling moments of too-tired or really weak or whatever which tend to come in waves and which for some reason have been throwing me into mild panic attacks. I'm sure I'm probably still getting over the illness to a degree or whatever, but I could do without the accompanying "what if I pass out and break my head" panics that come with it. I suppose what I'm really saying is that I'm more tired than I think I should be and that I'd like for the panic attacks to FOAD.
I'm teaching Brave New World this week. I usually enjoy teaching it, but my class last year thought the whole dystopic society in the novel sounded a) roughly like what we're headed toward and b) excellent. The biggest issue for them was that Bernard was "an emo whiner" and that they didn't see why there should be any sort of glorification of emotion when that gets in the way of getting stuff done. This is so antithetical to my general state of mind (i.e., the point of sadness or emotion is to work with it and learn from it) that I was genuinely shocked into not knowing what to do or say. I'm trying to come up with responses to this general sort of sentiment in case I encounter it with this class tomorrow or any other point during the week. So far I'm not getting very far with this. One of the reasons I feel like maybe I shouldn't be a teacher when it comes down to it is that when they express things that take me completely off guard, I feel like it takes me too long to recover - I don't want to quash their ideas entirely, and I don't want to come across as though I think my stance on an issue is the only valid one, but I really ought to be better at challenging them into a deeper train of thought than I am - aka me sitting there flabbergasted doesn't bode well for my ability to help lead them into a better understanding of anything. At the same time, if I'm sitting there absolutely flabbergasted by what someone has just said and what many others are agreeing with, chances are someone else in the room is just as shocked as I am but less willing to say anything about it. So maybe I should express the shock. Or maybe I should take a bath and think through how to deal with this so that I can express something more productive than shock.
I wonder what the hell type of job I'll have in a year. I hope I *have* a job in a year.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Yes I AM going to write in this thing
Ideally, I think I'd spend 15 minutes a day scribbling in this thing. I can't for the life of me figure out why this isn't happening, as it's not exactly like I don't have 15 spare minutes to scribble here. I'd probably have less time for this if I were, say, working on my dissertation, but as I'm not I can't figure out why I'm not doing more of this. So I will type while I'm trying to figure out dinner and while I have a cat smashing my arm down and not wanting me to get up and being very sweet and purry.
Let's see. I finally got out on the first run I've been on in two weeks because of the non-hamthrax that kept me benched for a while. A+ for getting out, C for the actual run. I only made it about two miles and had to walk a few times. My calves are killing me right now.
I had a giant alcohol-fueled meltdown on Brownie last night because I feel like everything in my life is on hold until he gets a job and I can start trying to find one, because that feeling is intensely frustrating, and because he's so busy with his dissertation and so anxious about it that I feel like I never get to spend any real time with him. And because the whole idea that he'd calm down once the job applications were in fell immediately by the wayside in that it's now "I'll calm down once I get another revision of my introduction turned in" which holds off him "calming down" for another week or so. So I flipped out last night from several months of holding all the frustration in and then informed him that if we move somewhere for his job and I hate it there, then it's my turn to decide where to move and we're doing it. He was actually okay with this. For all the ridiculous stress he's putting on himself over this job thing, he seemed remarkably okay with moving on to something else if I'm miserable wherever we go. I'm alternately like "well, good," or "really? You think you could give up a tenure-track job that easily?" and being remarkably unsure about that. I'm also feeling bad for dumping so much of my stress and frustration on him since I think he's stressed out enough without my emotions running rampant, but I think all in all it's good I told him.
Also, I've been thinking about it and I don't think that everything in my life really is on hold, even if I'm frustrated career-wise right now. I might actually start up dissertation work at some point, and I have an almost-plotless novel to write in November which I'm really kind of excited for. And I'm laughing at myself that I'm excited to write creatively for once but far too chickenshit to tell anyone IRL except for Brownie that I'm attempting to write at all, and too chickenshit to tell even Brownie exactly what it is I'm going to attempt to write. I have a hard time calling myself a writer even as an amateur-for fun type thing.
Dinner, I *think*, is going to be a bag of mussels steamed in a garlic-tomato-wine broth with bread and a thing of spicy tomato-covered goat cheese. And maybe some spicy sauteed spinach or something.
Let's see. I finally got out on the first run I've been on in two weeks because of the non-hamthrax that kept me benched for a while. A+ for getting out, C for the actual run. I only made it about two miles and had to walk a few times. My calves are killing me right now.
I had a giant alcohol-fueled meltdown on Brownie last night because I feel like everything in my life is on hold until he gets a job and I can start trying to find one, because that feeling is intensely frustrating, and because he's so busy with his dissertation and so anxious about it that I feel like I never get to spend any real time with him. And because the whole idea that he'd calm down once the job applications were in fell immediately by the wayside in that it's now "I'll calm down once I get another revision of my introduction turned in" which holds off him "calming down" for another week or so. So I flipped out last night from several months of holding all the frustration in and then informed him that if we move somewhere for his job and I hate it there, then it's my turn to decide where to move and we're doing it. He was actually okay with this. For all the ridiculous stress he's putting on himself over this job thing, he seemed remarkably okay with moving on to something else if I'm miserable wherever we go. I'm alternately like "well, good," or "really? You think you could give up a tenure-track job that easily?" and being remarkably unsure about that. I'm also feeling bad for dumping so much of my stress and frustration on him since I think he's stressed out enough without my emotions running rampant, but I think all in all it's good I told him.
Also, I've been thinking about it and I don't think that everything in my life really is on hold, even if I'm frustrated career-wise right now. I might actually start up dissertation work at some point, and I have an almost-plotless novel to write in November which I'm really kind of excited for. And I'm laughing at myself that I'm excited to write creatively for once but far too chickenshit to tell anyone IRL except for Brownie that I'm attempting to write at all, and too chickenshit to tell even Brownie exactly what it is I'm going to attempt to write. I have a hard time calling myself a writer even as an amateur-for fun type thing.
Dinner, I *think*, is going to be a bag of mussels steamed in a garlic-tomato-wine broth with bread and a thing of spicy tomato-covered goat cheese. And maybe some spicy sauteed spinach or something.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Cliches
At some point I will remember that going to Kansas to visit anyone for any reason whatsoever inevitably ends up being something along the lines of $600 once I get out there. Always. This time I went out for a wedding of a good friend. The wedding was great, the reception moreso: it basically functioned like a giant reunion for my old college crowd (the pictures of which are now on facebook). We're seriously getting old here - while I managed somehow to stay out on Friday night until 2 for the first time in so long I seriously can't remember, the reception went until about 10:30, a few of us went out and grabbed a quick snack after, and I was back at my parents by midnight. People, I am not even thirty yet. Sometimes I really miss college.
The oddest thing about the trip was Friday before I went out - everyone was in town by Friday dinnertime, so I was expecting a giant group of us to get together, have dinner and play. All of that fell through - I ended up only meeting up with one friend and his boyfriend at 9 or so - and so I found myself sitting around for most of Friday early evening online and chatting with my mom and basically feeling lonely and out of the loop. I'm used to feeling like that where I am now, just as I'm used to the fact that the vast majority of my social life atm is online, but it was a really weird feeling to have that happen back home, where I generally expect to be hugely busy all the time. Brownie wasn't out in KS with me either, which compounded the lonely feeling, and I'd failed to manage to get together with any of the friends that still live in the area because everyone was too busy and I was getting over a cold. It was like going home and being a stranger to everyone not in my family. Things got better once I got out late Friday and the wedding on Saturday was a blast, but I can't count the number of times I thought "I hate adulthood" while I was there. Anyway, even the lonely and isolated bit wasn't bad since it helped me figure out how to start bringing the NaNo novel to an end.
I know that all sounds like a giant "you can't go home again" or "growing up sucks" type thing, but I don't mean it to. I think part of why some of the lonely/isolated feelings were resonating so strongly with me was in how I remembered those feelings being a much more considerable part of my life in high school or college than they are now. Not to sound maudlin, but I don't think I ever fully felt at home when I actually lived there, so it shouldn't surprise me that I often don't feel at home there now.
So I got home Sunday night and was greeted with the coming of Monday's mail by the arrival of a BPAL order and some samples of CB I Hate Perfume scents from a lovely wonderful online friend. It's almost stupid how much new smellies make me happy. Also: I just discovered that a new Editors album came out last week, so I've now downloaded that. It sounds like the Editors spent six months drinking with Depeche Mode and then decided to record it. I'm generally in favor of this.
On the ADHD/dissertation front: I now have enough legal speed to keep me awake through 2011. I should take one and dissertate this afternoon but I just. don't. want. to. because burnout. so I'm contemplating grading instead, or perhaps being completely academically non-productive and spending the afternoon testing smellies, listening to the Editors and fleshing out the NaNo outline some more (i.e., figuring out town layouts and so on).
The oddest thing about the trip was Friday before I went out - everyone was in town by Friday dinnertime, so I was expecting a giant group of us to get together, have dinner and play. All of that fell through - I ended up only meeting up with one friend and his boyfriend at 9 or so - and so I found myself sitting around for most of Friday early evening online and chatting with my mom and basically feeling lonely and out of the loop. I'm used to feeling like that where I am now, just as I'm used to the fact that the vast majority of my social life atm is online, but it was a really weird feeling to have that happen back home, where I generally expect to be hugely busy all the time. Brownie wasn't out in KS with me either, which compounded the lonely feeling, and I'd failed to manage to get together with any of the friends that still live in the area because everyone was too busy and I was getting over a cold. It was like going home and being a stranger to everyone not in my family. Things got better once I got out late Friday and the wedding on Saturday was a blast, but I can't count the number of times I thought "I hate adulthood" while I was there. Anyway, even the lonely and isolated bit wasn't bad since it helped me figure out how to start bringing the NaNo novel to an end.
I know that all sounds like a giant "you can't go home again" or "growing up sucks" type thing, but I don't mean it to. I think part of why some of the lonely/isolated feelings were resonating so strongly with me was in how I remembered those feelings being a much more considerable part of my life in high school or college than they are now. Not to sound maudlin, but I don't think I ever fully felt at home when I actually lived there, so it shouldn't surprise me that I often don't feel at home there now.
So I got home Sunday night and was greeted with the coming of Monday's mail by the arrival of a BPAL order and some samples of CB I Hate Perfume scents from a lovely wonderful online friend. It's almost stupid how much new smellies make me happy. Also: I just discovered that a new Editors album came out last week, so I've now downloaded that. It sounds like the Editors spent six months drinking with Depeche Mode and then decided to record it. I'm generally in favor of this.
On the ADHD/dissertation front: I now have enough legal speed to keep me awake through 2011. I should take one and dissertate this afternoon but I just. don't. want. to. because burnout. so I'm contemplating grading instead, or perhaps being completely academically non-productive and spending the afternoon testing smellies, listening to the Editors and fleshing out the NaNo outline some more (i.e., figuring out town layouts and so on).
Thursday, October 8, 2009
WOAH FOCUS
The cat whose vomit I just cleaned up is now being MsCuddlecakes. It's sweet, I'm glad she's feeling better, but it's kinda gross all the same.
I tried the Adderall today. I ended up cutting the pill in half since I've never had anything like it before. I feel uncomfortably like flying, like my blood pressure is a little off or whatever, and like I'm breathing much deeper than usual. I've also:
1) gone through Brownie's writing sample for his job applications, which is 23 pages of an argument about Bacon and Donne and which I finally, for the first time, feel like I was paying enough attention to grasp fully and thus to comment effectively
2) written a letter of recommendation
3) given my class a huge list of paper topics
4) forgotten lunch because I was concentrating on the first task I mentioned, remembered lunch at 4 and finally ate
5) cleaned up cat puke :
6) worked on my NaNo outline
All of this since I got back from a meeting at about 1:15. My normal afternoon would have involved getting through about half of number one, giving it up as a bad job, forgetting about number two completely, waffled about even bothering with number three, would not have even begun to forget number four, would have done number five anyway because it needs to be done, and would have considered six but wouldn't have actually typed anything out. If it weren't starting to get dark out and if Brownie weren't on his way home with pizza, I'd be going on a run right now.
On the whole, I feel like my brain is working as fast as it usually does, but only on one track as opposed to having 6-10 going simultaneously. If the rest of me would settle down, I think I would like this stuff, at least on days when I have a ton that HAS to get done. Honestly, I prefer my crazy jumping-around butterfly brain - I'm comfortable with it and I feel like the random jumps and constant mental chatter make me more creative than I've felt like I've been today. I think the Adderall makes my brain work like other people think it should, rather than how it actually does. Like I've just been 'normalized' or something. I'll have to process that more later, I think.
Anyway, none of this should be construed as a "this drug is awesome go get some" type thing, and I feel like I should reiterate that I have this because I have a prescription for it and the diagnosis of the "disease?" "condition?" it "treats?" (maybe "affects").
It strikes me that I should write about the pros/cons of ADHD (as it affects me, anyway - there are different forms of adult ADHD and I can only talk about the experience I've had with mine). But that will have to wait until after pizza, which just arrived.
I tried the Adderall today. I ended up cutting the pill in half since I've never had anything like it before. I feel uncomfortably like flying, like my blood pressure is a little off or whatever, and like I'm breathing much deeper than usual. I've also:
1) gone through Brownie's writing sample for his job applications, which is 23 pages of an argument about Bacon and Donne and which I finally, for the first time, feel like I was paying enough attention to grasp fully and thus to comment effectively
2) written a letter of recommendation
3) given my class a huge list of paper topics
4) forgotten lunch because I was concentrating on the first task I mentioned, remembered lunch at 4 and finally ate
5) cleaned up cat puke :
6) worked on my NaNo outline
All of this since I got back from a meeting at about 1:15. My normal afternoon would have involved getting through about half of number one, giving it up as a bad job, forgetting about number two completely, waffled about even bothering with number three, would not have even begun to forget number four, would have done number five anyway because it needs to be done, and would have considered six but wouldn't have actually typed anything out. If it weren't starting to get dark out and if Brownie weren't on his way home with pizza, I'd be going on a run right now.
On the whole, I feel like my brain is working as fast as it usually does, but only on one track as opposed to having 6-10 going simultaneously. If the rest of me would settle down, I think I would like this stuff, at least on days when I have a ton that HAS to get done. Honestly, I prefer my crazy jumping-around butterfly brain - I'm comfortable with it and I feel like the random jumps and constant mental chatter make me more creative than I've felt like I've been today. I think the Adderall makes my brain work like other people think it should, rather than how it actually does. Like I've just been 'normalized' or something. I'll have to process that more later, I think.
Anyway, none of this should be construed as a "this drug is awesome go get some" type thing, and I feel like I should reiterate that I have this because I have a prescription for it and the diagnosis of the "disease?" "condition?" it "treats?" (maybe "affects").
It strikes me that I should write about the pros/cons of ADHD (as it affects me, anyway - there are different forms of adult ADHD and I can only talk about the experience I've had with mine). But that will have to wait until after pizza, which just arrived.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Compocalypse Averted
Thank FSM for tech support. University on a Hill's tech support was partially staffed during Fall Break, and so (again, thank FSM,) I have my lovely wonderful laptop back. Because my laptop borked itself, it's been renamed Beeker until I come up with something better. I didn't lose anything (thank FSMxinfinity) and am celebrating by going out tomorrow to pick up an external hard drive. Mom said she'd buy it for me so that I don't have to wait for payday. I love her for this even though it makes me feel like I'm 12. At almost-30, I feel like I should have the type of job where buying an external hard drive shouldn't have to be a "wait for payday" type thing because it really isn't that expensive. Realistically, it wouldn't probably be a big problem if I hadn't spent monies on the BPAL update Friday night, but whatever. It still would be.
I've figured out that I'm going to bookend my NaNo novel with obscure fairy tales - one as a prologue, one as an epilogue. I was going to work them into the novel itself but I think I prefer it this way. I thought this over in ridiculous quantities of detail while knitting during my computer-free weekend. I need to come up with a title, too, but that's probably going to be a near-end-of-project type thing - I SUCK at coming up with names. I either overcomplicate things or I try (and fail) to be witty.
Does anyone know if it's possible to do strikethrough writing on this thing? Bolding and italics aren't enough, and I don't know html well enough. I think I'll be googling later. (Sidenote: I love that "google" is a verb now.)
I now have an official prescription for Aderall. I'm scared of the stuff, to be honest, and not entirely convinced I'm going to fill it. Psychopharmaceuticals and I have a really mixed history. I may see if I can do a partial fill and test one before I commit to having it around. I think my problem is that my brain is already on spin cycle 24/7 - the concept of dumping speed in on top of it makes me vaguely nauseous. I also kind of feel like I should try it to see if it helps me focus enough to finish the stupid dissertation. I'll report on findings when I gutsy up enough to test the stuff.
Also, I just realized that I started every sentence in the paragraph before this one with "I." I'd fix it to make it sound better, but I'm tired, Keith Olbermann just started, and I suppose it's fine to leave the paragraph as testament to my solipsism.
I've figured out that I'm going to bookend my NaNo novel with obscure fairy tales - one as a prologue, one as an epilogue. I was going to work them into the novel itself but I think I prefer it this way. I thought this over in ridiculous quantities of detail while knitting during my computer-free weekend. I need to come up with a title, too, but that's probably going to be a near-end-of-project type thing - I SUCK at coming up with names. I either overcomplicate things or I try (and fail) to be witty.
Does anyone know if it's possible to do strikethrough writing on this thing? Bolding and italics aren't enough, and I don't know html well enough. I think I'll be googling later. (Sidenote: I love that "google" is a verb now.)
I now have an official prescription for Aderall. I'm scared of the stuff, to be honest, and not entirely convinced I'm going to fill it. Psychopharmaceuticals and I have a really mixed history. I may see if I can do a partial fill and test one before I commit to having it around. I think my problem is that my brain is already on spin cycle 24/7 - the concept of dumping speed in on top of it makes me vaguely nauseous. I also kind of feel like I should try it to see if it helps me focus enough to finish the stupid dissertation. I'll report on findings when I gutsy up enough to test the stuff.
Also, I just realized that I started every sentence in the paragraph before this one with "I." I'd fix it to make it sound better, but I'm tired, Keith Olbermann just started, and I suppose it's fine to leave the paragraph as testament to my solipsism.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Complaining
So I hate Windows Vista. Friday night as I was update-stalking BPAL and chatting and listening to Pandora and playing Spider Solitaire and so on, everything in laptopland was fine and dandy. I closed my laptop around 1 and went to bed.
Saturday afternoon when I got back from a run, I opened my laptop. The icons were all the same, and all where they should be. My first sign of impending terror was that my wallpaper was GONE. It is emphatically not a happy thing to be expecting to see a wonderfully sardonic xkcd strip and find yourself confronted with "supergeneric default wallpaper one." Also, everything I had opened up - iTunes, spider, the novel outline, a chunk of a novel chapter, my email - was all closed. So I clicked on iTunes. It said "now configuring iTunes." I sat there and waited in dawning horror as it finally configured and there was NOTHING. I have 1400 songs - not as many as some but quite a few nonetheless. ALL GONE. Shaking, I opened my documents. EMPTY. Photos? POOF. This is when the screaming panic set in.
Eventually, Brownie decided we should call my dad, who, being a supergeek, is wise in the ways of Windows. He made me reboot, which I had been terrified to do in case it made the loss of everything permanent. It came up saying my user profile wasn't loading correctly (um, no shit). So Dad told me to find a real geek since he didn't want to attempt to walk me through everything on the phone, and that everything would be fine and calm down.
So I've sort of calmed down in that I know everything is apparently accessible and that I will in fact be okay. At the same time, of everything on my computer, all that's backed up is one dissertation chapter and half of the dissertation introduction. There's another half chapter and a shitton of notes that aren't backed up at all. My music isn't backed up. My photos aren't backed up. My novel work isn't backed up. None of my old papers or anything else is backed up. I have recipes and knitting patterns and crochet patterns and all sorts of shit that could just disappear forever. Lesson learned: BACK SHIT UP. I'll be buying an external hard drive when I get paid next Thursday. And using it.
I cannot believe how dependent I am on my laptop. It feels like half my life is inaccesible to me. I mean, I can still log on to the various websites and online things that I need by using Brownie's computer, however irritating it is that I can't just click on a bunch of links in my favorites and be pre-logged in and whatever. It's extremely strange to me that there's a forum that I frequent which I don't know the address to, so that I could only get to it by clicking on a link to it in the siggie of another person on a different forum. I couldn't remember my password for this blog - I had to go through and create a new one. All of this is just irritating, but it's basically fine. The real heart attack is the writing on my laptop that is currently dead to the world.
The weirdest thing - probably the most telling, and the part I should be paying the most attention to - is that the fact that the dissertation may have up and disappeared was the thing that I was least concerned about. It wasn't my first thought - it wasn't actually my third. The thoughts went in order of novel, music, pictures, and then dissertation about two minutes later. Most of that time was devoted to freaking the fuck out about the novel. It's the novel start I'm planning on using for NaNoWriMo - I have a few chapters more or less okay for the moment (about 15,000 words total), and was planning on using NaNoWriMo to flesh out and write the vast majority of the rest of it (i.e., the writing I have done so far won't be counted toward the 50,000 word goal). The idea of losing those chapters is stomach churning. So (to wrap it back around)(yes, I do have ADD) I feel like I should have cared more about the dissertation than the novel as it's the dissertation which would land me a Ph.D., whereas the novel isn't realistically likely to do anything for me. And yet I didn't much care about the dissertation. I know I'm that burnt out, but I guess the degree itself doesn't really mean much to me anymore. This, however, is a different post, which I will write when I'm ready.
So other than that, I've had 4 panic attacks since the initial horror of possible compocalypse (to borrow a term from Cleolinda)(and holy shit, her actual compocalypse blows mine to bits), drank a goodly bit more than strictly necessary Saturday night, and probably need to go on a run, which I'll do when I get done here. My current institution of higher ed, wherein lie the particular geeks who can fix dear laptop for free, is on fall break, meaning no one is around to fix my laptop until then. So Imma knit a scarf instead, and try and think through the rest of the novel outline that I cannot type since I cannot access that document. I hate this.
Saturday afternoon when I got back from a run, I opened my laptop. The icons were all the same, and all where they should be. My first sign of impending terror was that my wallpaper was GONE. It is emphatically not a happy thing to be expecting to see a wonderfully sardonic xkcd strip and find yourself confronted with "supergeneric default wallpaper one." Also, everything I had opened up - iTunes, spider, the novel outline, a chunk of a novel chapter, my email - was all closed. So I clicked on iTunes. It said "now configuring iTunes." I sat there and waited in dawning horror as it finally configured and there was NOTHING. I have 1400 songs - not as many as some but quite a few nonetheless. ALL GONE. Shaking, I opened my documents. EMPTY. Photos? POOF. This is when the screaming panic set in.
Eventually, Brownie decided we should call my dad, who, being a supergeek, is wise in the ways of Windows. He made me reboot, which I had been terrified to do in case it made the loss of everything permanent. It came up saying my user profile wasn't loading correctly (um, no shit). So Dad told me to find a real geek since he didn't want to attempt to walk me through everything on the phone, and that everything would be fine and calm down.
So I've sort of calmed down in that I know everything is apparently accessible and that I will in fact be okay. At the same time, of everything on my computer, all that's backed up is one dissertation chapter and half of the dissertation introduction. There's another half chapter and a shitton of notes that aren't backed up at all. My music isn't backed up. My photos aren't backed up. My novel work isn't backed up. None of my old papers or anything else is backed up. I have recipes and knitting patterns and crochet patterns and all sorts of shit that could just disappear forever. Lesson learned: BACK SHIT UP. I'll be buying an external hard drive when I get paid next Thursday. And using it.
I cannot believe how dependent I am on my laptop. It feels like half my life is inaccesible to me. I mean, I can still log on to the various websites and online things that I need by using Brownie's computer, however irritating it is that I can't just click on a bunch of links in my favorites and be pre-logged in and whatever. It's extremely strange to me that there's a forum that I frequent which I don't know the address to, so that I could only get to it by clicking on a link to it in the siggie of another person on a different forum. I couldn't remember my password for this blog - I had to go through and create a new one. All of this is just irritating, but it's basically fine. The real heart attack is the writing on my laptop that is currently dead to the world.
The weirdest thing - probably the most telling, and the part I should be paying the most attention to - is that the fact that the dissertation may have up and disappeared was the thing that I was least concerned about. It wasn't my first thought - it wasn't actually my third. The thoughts went in order of novel, music, pictures, and then dissertation about two minutes later. Most of that time was devoted to freaking the fuck out about the novel. It's the novel start I'm planning on using for NaNoWriMo - I have a few chapters more or less okay for the moment (about 15,000 words total), and was planning on using NaNoWriMo to flesh out and write the vast majority of the rest of it (i.e., the writing I have done so far won't be counted toward the 50,000 word goal). The idea of losing those chapters is stomach churning. So (to wrap it back around)(yes, I do have ADD) I feel like I should have cared more about the dissertation than the novel as it's the dissertation which would land me a Ph.D., whereas the novel isn't realistically likely to do anything for me. And yet I didn't much care about the dissertation. I know I'm that burnt out, but I guess the degree itself doesn't really mean much to me anymore. This, however, is a different post, which I will write when I'm ready.
So other than that, I've had 4 panic attacks since the initial horror of possible compocalypse (to borrow a term from Cleolinda)(and holy shit, her actual compocalypse blows mine to bits), drank a goodly bit more than strictly necessary Saturday night, and probably need to go on a run, which I'll do when I get done here. My current institution of higher ed, wherein lie the particular geeks who can fix dear laptop for free, is on fall break, meaning no one is around to fix my laptop until then. So Imma knit a scarf instead, and try and think through the rest of the novel outline that I cannot type since I cannot access that document. I hate this.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Good job, self
First, quite random thought: if I'm referring to myself as "self," it needs to be lower case to distinguish it from any babbling I may end up doing about KU basketball, as their head coach is Bill Self - he would get the capitalized version.
Second thought: I started this blog with the intention of writing in it. So far, that has led to one post and this bit of brain dribbling now. The last few days have been busier than usual, but I'm disappointed that I haven't gotten back to this before today. I'm going to try and make more of an effort to post at least every other day - it really shouldn't be too difficult to find 15-30 minutes to bang something out, right? It's not like I'm working on my dissertation or anything.
Third thought: I may need to find some smileys. I've gotten so used to smileys from forum life that I find myself almost disappointed when I can't use them as sentence punctuation.
I've decided that in lieu of dissertation work, I'm going to spend November trying out my first-ever NaNoWriMo. I've got an idea I've been playing with for months, but which has very little in the way of actual writing. So I'll start writing it and see what happens. I wonder if anyone ever does much with the writing after they've finished.
Maybe I'll post more while stalking the BPAL update. I'm taking off to go see Zombieland right now.
Second thought: I started this blog with the intention of writing in it. So far, that has led to one post and this bit of brain dribbling now. The last few days have been busier than usual, but I'm disappointed that I haven't gotten back to this before today. I'm going to try and make more of an effort to post at least every other day - it really shouldn't be too difficult to find 15-30 minutes to bang something out, right? It's not like I'm working on my dissertation or anything.
Third thought: I may need to find some smileys. I've gotten so used to smileys from forum life that I find myself almost disappointed when I can't use them as sentence punctuation.
I've decided that in lieu of dissertation work, I'm going to spend November trying out my first-ever NaNoWriMo. I've got an idea I've been playing with for months, but which has very little in the way of actual writing. So I'll start writing it and see what happens. I wonder if anyone ever does much with the writing after they've finished.
Maybe I'll post more while stalking the BPAL update. I'm taking off to go see Zombieland right now.
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