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Weekend Update Extended Remix
Aug. 31st, 2014 04:24 pmSo it's the end of August...the end of summer vacation, the time to head off to college, the end of Q3 and the start of Q4, or just the end of another month, depending on who you are and what you do. It's a long weekend with Labor Day letting us get away with one last day of slacking off.
Our apartment is near a few schools, both high and elementary, so we've been seeing a lot of neighborhood kids getting ready for the new semester (or already disappearing off the streets and into the schools--I never know when the first day of school is around here). It got me thinking about the various things I used to do over the course of my school years.
Each year I'd start off with a weak but well-intentioned goal of "doing better this time out". I'd end up doing my usual slightly-above-average grades, but I could never quite push myself to ace the courses. There's many and varied reasons for that--inattention, distraction, emotional issues, frustration, boredom, what have you--but I managed to pass each semester and move on to the next grade. I graduated in the top quarter of my high school class and somewhere in the middle of my college class. As long as I didn't stay behind.
I recently thought about some of my personal tics and habits when it came to school. By fourth grade I was one of those people who wanted to have their desktop clean. A little compulsively so, to be honest, but I would get twitchy if I'd accidentally marked the desk with a pen or something. And in a fit of irony, the inside of my desk was embarrassingly cluttered. I mean cluttered, stuffed with homework and papers and what have you dating back to the beginning of the semester, so much so that at one point when the teacher wasn't looking, I moved some of it to an empty desk across the room. It was wacky mixture of obsessive cleanliness and compulsive hoarding, come to think of it. My bedroom was always a mix of clean and clutter, depending on where you looked. It pretty much explains my music collection--always in alphabetical and chronological order (and cassettes almost always rewound back to the beginning), and always growing. [Thanks to my collection being nearly all digital, I have no reason to obsess over the order, as my music software does it for me. I have had a years-long project going on where I've been cataloging my entire collection, though, but I'm taking my time on it. I'm two-thirds through "R" at the time of this writing, and it will probably be completely caught up by early next year. It's both an exercise in obsession and tempering the same.]
During the HMV Years I had the schedule of Wednesday comic runs across the state and the daily longhand writing before my shift. During the Yankee Candle years I had the schedule of the same comic run and the Newbury Comics cd purchasing, and writing the trilogy on a daily basis (usually 7-9pm). I kind of lost direction for a few years when we moved out to California, but I'd say once we moved again to the Richmond District in 2009 I got my groove back. My job has been 7:30 to 4pm without change. We hit the gym by 4:15. We have dinner upon return. By 6:30 or so I'm in Spare Oom, ready to write until about 8pm.
I still get a bit OCD about things, but I've managed to balance everything out. I'm okay with letting some things sit for a while. My writing time fluctuates but I always manage to get around 600 or 700 words a night, more if I'm in the zone. I let things pile up and then do a mass cleaning. My desk is relatively clean, but I do have the need to tidy up now and again. I miss some writing sessions, and I get lazy and distracted during some as well. But I'm okay with that.
It's also why I have the calendar whiteboard for my writing--if I didn't set myself a schedule, well...I'd get stuff done, but at a much slower rate, and I'd forget to do things for weeks at a time. I don't follow it to the letter, but use it as guidance. And it being September tomorrow, I've decided I shall start fresh again with a new schedule.
I'm returning to the Busy Creative Schedule of Many Things, because I want to work on a lot of output again. Adding music, drawing and poetry one or two days a week, journaling every day (or at least every weekday), timely posts at my two WordPress blogs, working on Two Thousand as my primary project during the week and Walk in Silence on the weekends. Posting pictures, especially now that I have my shiny new camera. We will (hopefully) be getting back to the gym schedule again, after a month of rarely going due to one thing or another (read: two weeks in the UK, me dealing with a slight cold, and just plain laziness). September is San Francisco's summertime, and the weather is gorgeous. Not to mention football is back in season!
All things to look forward to.
Our apartment is near a few schools, both high and elementary, so we've been seeing a lot of neighborhood kids getting ready for the new semester (or already disappearing off the streets and into the schools--I never know when the first day of school is around here). It got me thinking about the various things I used to do over the course of my school years.
Each year I'd start off with a weak but well-intentioned goal of "doing better this time out". I'd end up doing my usual slightly-above-average grades, but I could never quite push myself to ace the courses. There's many and varied reasons for that--inattention, distraction, emotional issues, frustration, boredom, what have you--but I managed to pass each semester and move on to the next grade. I graduated in the top quarter of my high school class and somewhere in the middle of my college class. As long as I didn't stay behind.
I recently thought about some of my personal tics and habits when it came to school. By fourth grade I was one of those people who wanted to have their desktop clean. A little compulsively so, to be honest, but I would get twitchy if I'd accidentally marked the desk with a pen or something. And in a fit of irony, the inside of my desk was embarrassingly cluttered. I mean cluttered, stuffed with homework and papers and what have you dating back to the beginning of the semester, so much so that at one point when the teacher wasn't looking, I moved some of it to an empty desk across the room. It was wacky mixture of obsessive cleanliness and compulsive hoarding, come to think of it. My bedroom was always a mix of clean and clutter, depending on where you looked. It pretty much explains my music collection--always in alphabetical and chronological order (and cassettes almost always rewound back to the beginning), and always growing. [Thanks to my collection being nearly all digital, I have no reason to obsess over the order, as my music software does it for me. I have had a years-long project going on where I've been cataloging my entire collection, though, but I'm taking my time on it. I'm two-thirds through "R" at the time of this writing, and it will probably be completely caught up by early next year. It's both an exercise in obsession and tempering the same.]
During the HMV Years I had the schedule of Wednesday comic runs across the state and the daily longhand writing before my shift. During the Yankee Candle years I had the schedule of the same comic run and the Newbury Comics cd purchasing, and writing the trilogy on a daily basis (usually 7-9pm). I kind of lost direction for a few years when we moved out to California, but I'd say once we moved again to the Richmond District in 2009 I got my groove back. My job has been 7:30 to 4pm without change. We hit the gym by 4:15. We have dinner upon return. By 6:30 or so I'm in Spare Oom, ready to write until about 8pm.
I still get a bit OCD about things, but I've managed to balance everything out. I'm okay with letting some things sit for a while. My writing time fluctuates but I always manage to get around 600 or 700 words a night, more if I'm in the zone. I let things pile up and then do a mass cleaning. My desk is relatively clean, but I do have the need to tidy up now and again. I miss some writing sessions, and I get lazy and distracted during some as well. But I'm okay with that.
It's also why I have the calendar whiteboard for my writing--if I didn't set myself a schedule, well...I'd get stuff done, but at a much slower rate, and I'd forget to do things for weeks at a time. I don't follow it to the letter, but use it as guidance. And it being September tomorrow, I've decided I shall start fresh again with a new schedule.
I'm returning to the Busy Creative Schedule of Many Things, because I want to work on a lot of output again. Adding music, drawing and poetry one or two days a week, journaling every day (or at least every weekday), timely posts at my two WordPress blogs, working on Two Thousand as my primary project during the week and Walk in Silence on the weekends. Posting pictures, especially now that I have my shiny new camera. We will (hopefully) be getting back to the gym schedule again, after a month of rarely going due to one thing or another (read: two weeks in the UK, me dealing with a slight cold, and just plain laziness). September is San Francisco's summertime, and the weather is gorgeous. Not to mention football is back in season!
All things to look forward to.
