18 September 2011

question.

can you really do something if it's not something you want to do? and why?

17 September 2011

discovery.

Today I discovered the African Rhythms genre station on Pandora. I've been listening to it ever since.

The weather gompieno was calm and clear, just warm enough to be comfortable. I loved it. I did some of my reading outside, then worked inside on cleaning/tidying, and other homework. I prepared worksheets for the next Setswana lesson I'm giving: we'll be doing nouns, so that'll be a lot of fun, and probably overwhelming for my poor student. I hope I'm doing this well, but I suppose something is better than nothing, even if it's not perfect.

I was moderately productive today, but the general laxity of my homework load means that I have more time to do less work, so I can take it easy and take breaks and whatnot. Kind of nice. Friday I decided to give myself a real day off: I read the entire Alanna: The First Adventure in one day. I impressed myself.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Korean church - should be interesting. I'll also probably work some more on my Fulbright application. In the meantime, I applied for a 13-month position in Puerto Rico at a National Historic Site. That would be pretty cool, and I'm actually really hoping that I hear something back from them.

07 September 2011

Welcome Back

I've carried on conversations in three different languages today, with varying degrees of intermingling and success. I'm getting back into the swing of things at school, and working on developing a schedule. Currently I'm sitting my security job in Carlson tower. It's my first 4.5 hours of work of the school year, and I've got two more hours to go. Needless to say I need to get used to this again. I've got a bit more reading to do, but then I'll probably resort to watching Dharma and Greg on youtube. It's been awhile - I wonder what episode I left off on?

I have an extensive amount of freetime, so I'm trying to teach myself to make good use of it. I don't have much homework, but I've got plenty of other things I could be doing: preparing for my Setswana tutoring, practicing my clarinet or bari sax for one of my band gigs, crocheting, knitting, painting, running, swimming, rock climbing, job searching, grocery shopping, reading, writing, composing, and all sorts of other fun things. Now if only I could get into a good habit of doing those productive things when I have the freetime in which to do them.... It's harder than it sounds. I think that all my busyness and hard work before bred in me a bad habit of relaxing and doing nothing when I have freetime. Doing nothing means not being productive. And while that was all good and well when I was experiencing a tiny bit of free time amidst hours of reading, writing, and other homework and school-related activities, it is not so great when free time is not a welcome rest but a norm.

So here comes the great experiment in teaching myself better habits. We'll see how it goes.