What if I make a plan? How would that be?

What did I do on my paper yesterday, you ask?

Nothing, I say.  Nothing.

What did I do on my paper today?

You got it.

What will I do on my paper tomorrow?

No, really, I'm going to work on my paper tomorrow.

My goals for tomorrow are:

1. Do a short edit of someone's application and send him an email summarizing said edits.
2. Oh man did I leave my laundry in the laundry room and not remember till now?
3. The door is, like, locked.
4. Tomorrow morning I need to dry my laundry.
5. Clean some parts at work.
6. Solder some parts at work.
7. Spend some time workin' on my paper.
8. Go to a roller derby practice for potential recruits.
9. Eat.  Don't laugh, this takes for-effing-ever.
10. Shower.

Will all that happen?  Can all that happen?  Laundry will not take much time.  I think I should only spend a short amount of time editing, because looking at this list ...

The work stuff is simple, but will take a while.  Three hours?  Yeah, more than three hours.  Let's say four hours, which may be reasonable provided I don't decide to expand my work-project list.

I'll need to eat before and after work, but need to leave two hours between my last meal and derby, which means I'll need to eat a solid lunch at 1 PM.  Uh, so if I want to be done with my at-work portion of the day, I need to be in the lab at 8 AM?

Problem: it would be really nice to be able to come home at noon, make lunch, eat lunch, spend an hour (half-hour?  please?) getting my gear together, and then either nap or work on my paper.  Ideally, I'd not have to do any work after derby and spend that time lazing, cooking, and/or reading.  And showering, dear gods, the showering.  But even if I get all my at-work work done in the morning, that means not spending much time on my paper and screwing over my friend.

Okay, how about:

1. In to the lab at 9 AM to do three hours of work.  I think I can get the essentials done if I don't do some of the futzing I was planning on.  (Thank you, Adderall!)
2. Head home at noon to make and eat lunch.
3. Give myself until 2 PM to do lunching, hearding derby gear, making a map to get to the practice space, and editing my friend's application.
4. From 2 PM to 2:45 PM, either work on my paper or nap.  Depending on which feels most essential at the time.  I'm guessing it'll be nap.  We'll see.
5. Derby (2.5 hours), shower (1 hour if I include figuring out what to do with my smelly clothes), eat a bunch of food (maybe one hour?).
6. So now it's going on 8 PM and if all has gone well I'm not ravenous at this point.  But if all has gone well-ish, I will be tired.  It's still early enough to deal with laundry, so I should do that.
7. How do I do anything other than finalize my current Amazon order and then chill on the sofa with a cozy blanket reading my new book on the impact of Brown v. Board of Education?

Also, this list means that I've neglected to locate the certificate that says I really do own my car.  Which I think I needed a few weeks ago.  I really feel I should get on that.  I suspect I'll be a bit jittery pre-practice, so maybe instead of trying to work on my paper, I should do some attacking of my filing cabinet.  That would reduce the freak-out potential of Monday.

Also, this list ignores the boxes that I need to mail.  But that's okay.  That can wait for another day.

Also, this list does not include any time working on my paper.  Hmm.

I feel like I need a crazy awesome reward with which to bribe myself into a few hours' paper work after derby practice.  Like, crazy awesome.  I get to not have celiac for a day?  I get to feel nice about the progress I've made?  Awwww, I'd like to feel nice.  Not sure there's enough junkie-style serotonin in that one, though.  I get to be invited to David Sedaris' and Amy Vowell's Sunday Evening Tea if I do two hours of work?  Held at Tig Nataro's gluten-free residence just down the street?  In an adorable, comfy, warm outfit that magically appeared in my closet?  And which will not vanish at midnight but will gently pulse blue when it's time for me to go to bed?  (Note: awesome idea, need to think about ways to implement this.)

Point: I will try to think about how to do a few hours' work on my paper after derby.  Considering my current mood, it doesn't seem like there's a suitable bribe in existence that will make this possible, but hey.  I'll keep a lookout and let you know how it goes.

Considering that I'd like to be in to the lab at 9 AM, I'm off to bed.  Peace, people.  

Drumroll, please.

So, I have this paper that needs finishing.

I thought that a thing I could do would be to write down what I've done on the paper every day.

I mean, that is indeed a thing I can do.

And maybe it would be helpful?  Whatever.  I'll try pretty much anything.

So today, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have done ... uh, nothing on my paper.

But I ate dinner!  And picked out a bra online!  Woo!

And soon I'm going to go to sleep.

Maybe tomorrow will go better for me and my paper.

Not a tame man-hating lesbian.

It's true.  I'm not.  The only reason it seems that way is because I am still considering a career in science.

Some background: I broke something at work.  No no no no no please let it not be my fault (it's totally my fault).  People are trying to be judicious and kind and are generally succeeding only at making me incredibly angry.  Hey, I'm super fun!  And did I mention how much I hate the patriarchy?

Three weeks out, my blinding rage is now muting into something more like severely-impaired peripheral-vision rage.  This week, the positives:

1. No swearing at work!  This evening I almost had a pang of regret for hating all the men so very, very much.  They might be, like, people.  People I shouldn't swear at.

2. I found the mistake in my calculation and now everything's (reasonably close to) good.  I'd tell you what the mistake was, but it's embarrassing.

3. The many ideas surrounding Project: Get Work Done have, generally, suffered in the super-sadness of the Broke a Thing aftermath.  However, I had gotten started on one of the projects prior to The Horror, The Horror, and it's been going well.

This particular project is intended to help increase my job-related reading (research papers and textbooks).  Generally, I get sucked into the lab during the day.  This is a combination of inclination and project priorities.  I don't really need to be told twice to spend time wrenching in a building that smells of vacuum pump oil.  And I like to be in the lab along with the rest of my team.  The downside is that reading papers becomes an evening/weekend endeavor.  In sum, I've been attempting to do my literature reviews when my meds have well and truly worn off, and this has been wildly unsuccessful.  And I hate this, because I suspect many papers have something interesting to say.

So.  My college microphone, a new digital recorder, and I have teamed up for out-loud readings of my highest-priority texts.  The plan is to form papers into TAL-style audio pieces.  Obviously, with music.  Because how awesome would that be?

This is a complex plan, the kind I'd normally consider trouble.  But the first step offers a nice, low barrier: read the paper out loud.  Brain involvement can be minimal and I get a jolt of narcissistic joy when listening to my digitized voice.  Crucially, the explicitly iterative plan for the paper lulls me into actually really truly believing I can puzzle through content as little or as lots as I wants while reading.  For me, every sentence in a paper can hold a universe of perplexity.  An option to shift the sorting-out to post-production is ... helpful.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this plan and eager to see where it'll go.  The reading has so far been fun.  I have yet to do any editing, but my hope is that I'll find its barrier to be reasonably low.  And if not, hey, I've at least read some words.

Though, lest you think that I am a steadfastly practical beast, holy wow do I have a vision.  The latest in cosmological constraints on the standard model, with the occasional fade into a discussion with my stellar-modeler bro, woven throughout with music that gives me some space to melt into ideas?  Is it just me, or does science go all sparkles, sometimes?  Welcome to my mind, people.  I hope I can manage at least a first-order approximation.

Anyways, it's undeniably a slow way to get through papers.  But it has so far been a way to actually make headway.  In the future I might try to find less time-intensive ways to get through literature.  For now, this plan has been enjoyable and has increased my work-related reading from zero to not-zero.  Ahhh.

Also, I hate the patriarchy.  I really, really, really hate the patriarchy.

me, sucking at work

Oh, wow, I'm really feeling like I'm sucking at work right now.

Did I finish making that thing?  Uh, no.

Okay, what about that other thing?  No.

How's that paper coming?  It's not.  I mean, not the way either of us want it to.

Did you at least get that one thing done?  I'm feeling a little ill right now; could you come back later?

I really like my idea about writing a summary of my days or the week and keeping track of time spent on projects, but I'm having difficulty making it happen.

I'm thinking I need to find a way to make it happen.

Uuuurggghhh.