I've got to admit it's getting better / A little better all the time

I began clinging to planning and schedule earlier this week, which is usually a sign I’m heading for some kind of disaster. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s taking things easier, but I seem to have avoided disaster and managed to sort things out again. Yesterday was all right, today is better, probably also because it’s quiet. (Though that’s a relative thing, here at the Kralingse Zoom.)

And I’m writing. Good things and bad things but most of all things that are helping me get other things out of my system. Let’s hope that this time I won’t jinx the mood and actually get some work done. April was going to be the month in which I finish another chapter, but that was a decision I made in early March, and March was the month in which Sadly Nothing Got Done.

Reset the goals, let go all the things that don’t matter, and let’s get going.
A redesign of the website might be a nice place to start. (When I need a break from the writing.) Getting out with my camera would be an essential part of that, and the weather might make that a grateful mission.

Despite its peace and quiet, I’m very quickly developing a rather deep and dark hatred of Thursdays though. They’re interminably boring, and I bear boring quite badly.

Probably should have gone to Groningen this weekend after all.

The way I set goals you'd think I liked new years

I've looked back at 2008 elsewhere, but I think it can be summarised as a year in which many unimportant goals were reached, and the important ones are still pretty much where they were in 2007.

So, 2009 will be the year in which real progress will be made. (Haha!)

The year starts off well: I have (it's still officially unconfirmed: people who teach teaching courses apparently don't have to reply to emails or confirm receipt) passed my didactic course, which means I am now (or should be) fit to teach in higher education. (The ceremony's Monday.) Suffices to say it's a relief, because it was starting to turn into a black hole sucking in all my spare time.

Today is the last day of teaching this semester: next week will have resits, and exams the week after that, at which point we will have arrived at a brand new semester. Time flies. Two terms until I can spend the summer in Cambridge.

I suspect I won't be as blindly busy with teaching as I was last year, but together with clearing out all the stuff on the work harddisk, and in the email and desk drawers that belongs to last semester (and tidying my room), the coming two weeks (if there's time, between checking exams and seminar days) the brain deserves some tidying as well. Review, reassess, and replan all the goals. Sort things out before it's Februari.

I like the idea of 2009 as the year I'll actually have something to show for my effort.

Rapidly approaching deadlines are good for getting to goals.

Putting some pictures up from the company trip yesterday made me get to developing some things for the website that I hadn't gotten to previously. (That's priorities and lack of time mostly, as ever. Do notice I didn't do it during the holiday either. :P) Anyway, the photography part of the site is more or less up (mostly less), and I suppose I'll just put a link for the teaching stuff when I'm sure about the link on Monday and sort out the About page tomorrow.

After that I'll probably go for a redesign again, but oh well.

Did the more necessary things, like vacuuming the inside of my parents' computer and putting in a working DVD-writer. I'm backing their stuff up and doing a clean reinstall over the weekend, because the damned thing is getting slower by the hour. I'll probably put some additional memory in there as well and see how that works. (More memory and clean reinstal should equal super-speed.)

Tonight is dedicated to getting that damned thesis introduction into shape though. If I can't pour all the stuff dancing around out of my brain into a word document I'll not be responsible for the consequences.

Also, need sleep.

Why this sudden urge to get things sorted? Certainly teaching starting this week has nothing to do with it?

Work, in its many shapes and forms.

I talked about reaching the end of the inspirational curve in my last post, I believe, not quite realising how true that prediction would turn out to be. My word counts over May and June have been atrocious (or they feel like they have been), and only July seems to be making up for that slightly. As a student, my writing tended to take precedence over my schoolwork (especially phonetics suffered grievously), and I've always been the first to admit my priorities were very wrong back then.

These days I've got even more priorities (or goals, anyway), so even more of a chance of side-stepping them, and, in effect, responsibilities. Except I don't.

Life may not start after graduation, but it changes, God, it changes. And even if I try to tell my students that studying and doing homework is not that different from work and doing the assignments your boss gives you, I can't pretend it isn't different for me now. I can't show up in front of a class unprepared. (Somehow it's easier to show up prepared and do other things though, maybe because the back-up plan is still in place.) As a student, failure just results in not passing a certain course or class. After graduation, failure has as a possible consequence that you get fired. So first and foremost (and this is probably insecurity as well), I make sure my classes are prepared. The only reason for this to maybe suffer a teeny-tiny bit is when I have a deadline coming up for my doctoral thesis, which apparently ranks higher in my brain of priorities. Fiction-writing, as stated before, suffers.

But today is the first day of my holiday, and between packing and wrapping things up (we’re moving offices after the holiday), last week wasn't as busy as the weeks before (which suddenly turned into unexpected hell), which gave the brain a chance to relax. I'll wrap up some last work-related things this weekend, put all my work-stuff I took home in a bag, and leave it in the corner of the library. I don't think I've ever experienced a holiday in which I could physically, psychologically, put a goal/priority away in a corner. It feels wonderful.

As a result, that inspirational curve? I'm in the steep part of it that goes up. :D

I think I’ve figured out the main (methodological) topics of my thesis, and I have high hopes of having a finished introduction and approach by the end of this month, if not the next, with a chapter 1 that’s more finished than in progress by September. And that’s taking into account my slacking abilities, not even a best-case-scenario.

Fiction-wise, big steps. I’ve got the basic plot for part one pretty much figured out and written, which leaves filling the gaps before I dare and try and expand any subplot. I did a run-through of the entire text for part 1 (108.000 words, thankyouverymuch) last week and think that even if much of it still needs work, there’s two parts in there that are really, really good. Small steps should get me a good way towards a finished first draft. Going to Cambridge is going to really help towards getting part two fleshed out. (Though seriously, it’s research for sequels.)

Yeah, I know, don’t tell me. Too much sleep is bad for me. :P