Given that I’m too bruised to venture into public, I told myself that this week I would finish one of the projects I took on earlier in the summer. The client gave me an open deadline – basically finish it when I get round to it – but obviously I don’t get paid if I don’t do work.
P has been busy this week too – he’s supervising some postgrad students’ theses – so it seemed like a great opportunity to work.
Alas, it was not to be. The reasons were three-fold.
- I got a bad night’s sleep – kept rolling over onto my poor battered-and-bruised side.
- I had a bad morning – I found mould on my favourite jam and I made an atrocious cup of coffee. Seriously. Worst ever. I managed to burn it and get half of the grinds into the cup.
- I made a cake.
The cake was (is) wonderful. It’s a chocolate cake with raspberry cream filling and bitter chocolate ganache on top. But the cake will not pay for all the furniture I have bought since moving house.
Tomorrow, I will write. I swear.
Gosh. I really have procrastinated!
I have achieved some things though. I have moved house, twice. I have been discharged from therapy. I have learned a new database language…
Other things are still the same. I am still with P. I am still insecure. I still doubt that I will ever get anywhere with my PhD.
But, I’m almost happy. I say almost because I found out this week that I need to have another surgery on my jaw; the metal plates they used to reconstruct it are causing a lot of issues. Basically, my body is rejecting them, which is ironic because my immune system is usually pants. It doesn’t defend me against anything. Except the metal plates which are meant to be there and that only 8% of people react to.
I’ll be 30 in about 6 weeks time. I hope the surgery is done with by then. I doubt I’ll be free of braces, but at least I’ll be well on the road to mandibular perfection. I don’t expect to get my jaw fixed and be magically happy, but the little changes that have been coming over the past few months give me confidence that I will start my 31st year with a positive frame of mind.
I plan to come back, sometime, and write. I’m just not in a writing place right now. I have a lot keeping me distracted (PhD, my business, P, surgery related things) and it’s just been hard finding a few hours to give this some proper thought.
I will be back, hopefully sooner rather than later!
OK so my intentions don’t always materialise in actions. I’ve got a major case of procrastination at the minute. MAJOR. Nothing is getting done.
Going to try and sort myself out this weekend. Something’s got to change.
Remember when you were a kid and drank your milkshake too quickly? And you got a major headache because it was so cold? Remember how your brain used to go fuzzy? That’s what my brain has been like for days.
I only have 2.5 days left here. But I have so much to do, and it’s impossible to get motivated. I’m too tired to think in a straight line and I know I have to write two reports but all that I can think of is the weird dream I had last night, where I tried to leave work on my last day but work turned into a department store and I was arrested for trying to steal a bra from our web manager (who is a man)… I have no idea.
Anyway, point is, I need to do work but can’t. I know the next 2 days will be horribly stressful if I don’t make a start now, but that threat isn’t enough to kick my brain into action.
I’m just too tired for this, and the prospect of rest isn’t even on the cards now because next week I’m off to Ireland for 5 days because I promised my parents, then I have a few days off then my friends from France are coming to visit and I feel obliged to hang out with them because they’ve come all this way, then I have another few days then I promised I’d go home to see my sister before she goes to China for 6 months… so by the time I actually get a rest it will be almost August. And then I’ll have to start thinking about my PhD more seriously and planning my research.
I know it’s my own fault because the prospect of being alone with my useless, neurotic brain is too terrifying – so I keep putting things in my diary to keep me occupied, but really I think a few weeks with just myself is probably what I need. Too late now though. I’m doomed.
I moved the desk from the spare room into my bedroom last week, with the plan of actually using my desk for work rather than storing stacks of paper I haven’t been motivated to recycle yet.
Today I am ‘working from home’ and, because I only have 1 week left at work, actually need to achieve something. So rather than use my laptop in the living room (full of distractions like America’s Next Top Model repeats on Living) I have moved it into the bedroom and plonked it on my desk.
The desk is by the double windows, which I have hung voiles in front of to shield me from curious eyes across the road. So, right now I am sat at a desk facing two windows, which look onto the street, staring out at people walking by. I am getting no work done. I feel a little like Carrie Bradshaw, only not gorgeous or creative (but I do have a MacBook).
Anyhoo.
My dad often tells me about this teacher he had at school who used to get his words mixed up. I can’t remember what subject he taught – I think it was something like Latin or Irish or something. Anyway his classmates were a bit raucus from what I gather, and wound the teacher up something rotten. One day near Christmas the teacher lost his temper and yelled at them,
You have deliberately tasted one whole worm!
meaning, of course, to say “you have deliberately wasted one whole term”. I used to laugh my head off when my dad told me this as a kid, and it still brings me to a good hearty chuckle these days.
Anyhoo, a contact I have at another organisation sent me a link to a web cartoon yesterday evening. I laughed lots. So today I spent the entire morning today clicking ‘random’ to get more sketches. More laughs followed. My boss saw me giggling into my coffee and asked what I was looking at. I knew I was caught red handed, so showed him. He stifled a smile (being too big and serious to find maths jokes funny) and said, trying not to laugh,
Suzy, have you meant all spawning doing that?
That made me giggle more, and he marched off, losing the battle with his sense of humour. Sometimes little things can make my day a little bit brighter (if not more productive).
Furthermore, today I am wearing my cashmere jumper. This makes me warm, thus content – despite the fact I am in my horrid workplace and it is bucketing cats and dogs outside. Simple pleasures.
I’ve only managed to do 2 boxes. I have way too much stuff. Books are the biggest culprit – I have 4 boxes full of books, and I still have 2 entire bookcases to empty. I de-cluttered recently and purged a load of books so the ones remaining I do actually want to keep.
I could just be ruthless though. I could get rid of all the books I’ve already read. Non-fiction I like to keep for reference, and I need all my textbooks for my PhD, but fiction? Does it need to stay? I don’t know. Decisions decisions.
(Of course this is an ideal excuse for procrastinating when I should be organising, tidying and packing.)
The IT department in my workplace is somewhat over vigilant. Everything is blocked (strangely, except this blog – so far) for being “inappropriate”. Even some of the Scottish Government website is blocked. Bizarre.
Anyway I’ve always wanted to be able to listen to the radio while I’m working, but the sound was disabled on my computer. The other day I was tinkering about in the C: drive and was trying to find the Control Panel. I didn’t, but I did find a volume control thing. I couldn’t open it, so just forgot about it and went about my business.
This morning I came into work and turned my PC on, and magically the sound icon has appeared in my System Tray! So I managed to disable the mute, stream 6Music and entertain myself all morning. Ironically, I have actually acheived something today. Yes readers, I did some work.
Thus, I have achieved a minor victory against the IT department, but an even greater victory against my penchant for procrastination. Hurrah.
P invited me to his flatmate’s birthday drinks night on Saturday. I like the flatmate, so I went along, and actually had a great time. And, I didn’t have to go back on my promise not to spend any money because I found a tenner in my ‘Euros’ wallet (which I got out for going to France this weekend – already paid for). Hurrah.
I hardly talked to P all evening. I spoke to the flatmate and his friends, who were all lovely people. I made minor smalltalk with P but he had a bit of a cob on so I just ignored him mostly. I did feel a bit bad when I was going home though – I gave the flatmate a huge hug but actually didn’t say anything to P. To be honest I don’t really care; I’ll deal with him when he stops being a grumpy old man.
At one point during the evening I shuffled across chairs and groaned because my legs were sore. “Horseriding?” P asked. I shook my head. “Running then?” Nope, I told him, wrong again. I said I’d been rollerblading. The flatmate said “I really didn’t have you as someone who went skating. That’s uber-cool.” I was rather impressed with myself until the flatmate followed it up with “Do you ever think you do too much stuff?” and this sparked a conversation about what I actually do. The flatmate – who was by then quite drunk – said that it was very “middle-class” of me to do so many things: He thought it was just showing off, doing things for the sake of looking cool. I challenged his opinion, saying I didn’t really have a big social life, so doing stuff was my escape time. He accepted my reasoning and we had a laugh about it, and I didn’t take it personally anyway because the flatmate tends to speak without thinking when he’s been drinking.
Anyhoo, it stuck in my head and yesterday I was thinking, do I do too much? Am I a jack of all trades and master of none? Does it matter? Currently, I do:
- drawing
- painting
- piano
- singing
- tennis
- skating
- running
- horseriding
- snowboarding
- salsa
- ballet
Is that too much? Thing is I enjoy it all. And I’m not obsessive about any of those things – mostly I dip in and out throughout the months. And I don’t procrastinate with my hobbies either, and that’s a huge deal.
Whether I do too much or not, I don’t know really. But my hobbies make me feel better, for a while, and nobody should begrudge me that.
I’m feeling really low today. I feel like I have so much on my mind. I can’t think straight and I’m struggling to motivate myself to do the things I think I should be doing. I’m procrastinating constantly and it’s probably making things worse, but I’m so stressed with work and money and the future that I just can’t make myself do things.
I want to withdraw from life at the minute. I just don’t want to do anything. I want to hit the pause button and wait for this to pass, but there’s no such thing. Guess I just have to keep going and muddle through.
