I-country problems
I appreciate the fact that there are a lot of things I never need to worry about. Food, water, housing and giganormous bombs in my immediate vicinity. The fact that I wake up in a warm and comfy (so incredibly comfy) bed every morning is an incredible luxury that relatively few people in this world has access to. However, this does not mean that I am not endlessly annoyed by my numerous I-country problems.
For example: Being forced to prioritize my reading materials. I have five books which I am absolutely gagging to read right now. However, my time is limited and I can only spend so much time and energy on reading, so, because of circumstances, I am forced to take them all in an orderly fashion, rather than haphazardly working myself through them all simultaneously. The four books are:
Out of these five, two are on loan, one from the library. This means that Mr. Goldsworthy and his prissy library-bills must take precedence, followed closely by Mr. Lovecraft who is longing to return to the care of his actual owner. The other three are recent purchases of mine and I am sure that someone else understands my obsessive need to dig into Mr. Da Vinci and Nietzsche's mind. It's just not fair. Two of my personal God's are at my fingertips and I can't touch them. I also got a new job this Tuesday, which is awesome, and I have a job-interview for another on my lunch-break on Tuesday, and I never have time to make use of the easel and the oil-pastels I didn't have to pay for myself. Life just sucks sometimes. I'm going to grab a snack.
For example: Being forced to prioritize my reading materials. I have five books which I am absolutely gagging to read right now. However, my time is limited and I can only spend so much time and energy on reading, so, because of circumstances, I am forced to take them all in an orderly fashion, rather than haphazardly working myself through them all simultaneously. The four books are:
- The joyful science by Nietzsche
- A compendium of Leonardo da Vinci's note-books
- The call of Chutulu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft
- Anatomy for the Artist by Daniel Carter & Michael Courtney
- The Complete Roman Amry by Adrian Goldsworthy
Out of these five, two are on loan, one from the library. This means that Mr. Goldsworthy and his prissy library-bills must take precedence, followed closely by Mr. Lovecraft who is longing to return to the care of his actual owner. The other three are recent purchases of mine and I am sure that someone else understands my obsessive need to dig into Mr. Da Vinci and Nietzsche's mind. It's just not fair. Two of my personal God's are at my fingertips and I can't touch them. I also got a new job this Tuesday, which is awesome, and I have a job-interview for another on my lunch-break on Tuesday, and I never have time to make use of the easel and the oil-pastels I didn't have to pay for myself. Life just sucks sometimes. I'm going to grab a snack.
posted by M | 8:30 pm
5 Comments:
There's always time for painting, but sometimes you just have to make it. Cheer up. These are all good problems to have!
Well, uh, yes, that was the point, wasn't it?
My irony-skills needs sharpening.
As an honestly bad student I've found the best way to add some time into my schedule is sleep. Or rather, the lack thereof.
You have two days before the full affects of lack of sleep kick in, and past four or so you start getting these wonderful auditory and visual hallucinations.
Plus, everyone needs goals.
And, by-the-by, don't not sleep for more than ten days. That may kill you.
I've experienced going without sleep for 36 hours a couple of times on separate occasions. It honestly made me so miserable and ineffective that I doubt the benefits of more time is worth it. Hallucinations sound like fun though.
I agree that LOF has the best idea by far, yay reducing sleep. But it's also understandable that you need sleep to be in a 'functional' mindset.
What you might want to try is just reducing the amount of time sleeping by just 30-45 minutes, over the course of 3 or 4 days, at a time. By just reducing slightly and keeping that reduced schedule for a few days, you'll be more apt to adjust without complications.
But, you also need to know when your limit has hit. This can be the trickiest, but there's one sure fire way to figure it out. Sit in one position for about an hour, wheather driving, reading computer stuff, watching tv, whatever. If you start to feel your interests wandering, ok. If you start to feel a tiny bit tired, ok again. If you either get excessivly tired or flat out fall asleep, you've gone just beyond your limits and your body is seriously letting you know.
I perfected this technique by having to shorten my commuting time to University to under an hour otherwise I would fall asleep. Of course if there's action like eating, talking, or something else besides being passive and staying still, you'll be able to stay awake longer.
Also if you're looking for a bit more time, find ways to fall asleep faster. When you can train yourself to fall asleep fast, you'll hit deep REM sleep quicker too. This means that your few hours of sleep time are the most dense regenerative hours of your sleep cycle.
My suggestion, is don't do anything you'll miss just before bed. I love to read, but if I read before I go to bed, I find that every time I pick up a book my body is saying, "oh, it must be time for bed, get tired." I suggest just finding something you won't miss, and doing that activity just before going to sleep. My suggestion is a small puzzle of some sort. I do suduko puzzles before I pass out, I've known people to do crosswords, or word searches. Some simple, enjoyable thing, that you can just pick up and have it be a trigger for your body that you're ready to sleep.
You'll be able to sleep sounder, wake up just a tad earlier, and still be functional throughout your days.
Oh and the really fun hallucinations happen at about 72 hours for me. I used to have sleep deprivation contests in high school. The scariest part was that I wasn't always the winner. My record is still undefeated amoung my group of friends at 107 hours and 30 minutes. I then proceeded to sleep for 18 hours, get up for food consumption, then go back to sleep for 4 more hours.
If I ever do another sleep contest, I'd love to see if I could get things recorded. Like speech and debate skills, hand-eye coordination, puzzle solving skills (like how long would it take to do a simple puzzle over the course of a few days), and most of all, the giggle factor. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm tired and something gets me laughing, I can't stop for about 25 minutes.
But then again, insteas of lengthening your time awake, you could just organize what hours you do have. Here are some lists for you to make.
List all the things you NEED to do during the week.
List the times it takes you to do those wonderous tasks. Be very generous for this. If you try to skimp in the planning stages, you'll always be running behind on something when you actually try.
Then group some of those pesky tasks together. Like if you get a break in between work and class, why not come home, grab a mushroom omelette, and clean up the house a bit. That way when you get home at night, you'll be free and clear to do what it is you enjoy. My schedule's actually done in Microsoft Excel, just for the grid based system, and it's broken down to the half hour. Feeding the cat, fish, and plants doesn't take 30 minutes, but I've allotted that much time so when I'm done early, I get to enjoy something else. If I staggar some of my larget tasks, then I also get to enjoy some more free time, but then again, some tasks are so closely related, that it's easier and more effiecent to do them all at once.
Ok that's enough out of me. [/rant]
I hope you're able to find a little more free time to enjoy yourself.
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