Need to work on ignoring the chattering monkeys in my head and just blurt stuff out on here regularly no matter what. Thanks for the prod, R.
If I work on my shitty time management I bet I could even do something every day!
Here's a secret, kids...don't tell anyone, but at heart, deep down, I am One. Lazy. Mofo. I have no doubt that there exists a parallel-universe Bizarro version of me who sits on his arse all day browsing forums, watching cartoons and playing old arcade games. (He's probably devilishly handsome, smart as heck and possesses a Bond-like level of wit, too.) Seriously, I just got a new PC today and thoughts of a weekend-long Monkey Island marathon are already seeping in at the edges of my mind.
Luckily, I seem to have an in-built mechanism, a kind of self-butt-kicking, that eventually activates after long periods of laziness. My very own internal drill sergeant. (He must have been dishonourably discharged from somewhere though, as it's often taken him bloody ages to show up!) Combine that with a desire to be good at or at least competent in a wide range of fields, and I'll never be motionless forever.
So what's filling the time of this terminally lazy individual?
-Martial arts, as always. Experienced something of a beatdown last week - in a ring, at the hands of trained and controlled individuals so there was never any danger of suffering anything much worse than bruises, but for me it was intense and psychologically it was Very Bad. I have decided my reaction to this is not "oh god I'm gonna quit forever" but instead "I will do what it takes to become comfortable with playing at that level".
I need to re-evaluate my training. One good turn of fortune - a friendship born out of shared love of toy collecting has led to me getting (extremely) cheap private boxing lessons. It's sometimes funny where the hobby that I think of as "the useless one" gets me.
-Weight training, not just for aesthetics but also to be stronger and faster for my sports.
-HTML, CSS, Javascript, and eventually Photoshop, PHP...there may be the possibility of extra money from web design work and these are useful things to know anyway. I'm a big fan of the "exchange of knowledge/skills" concept - you do/teach something that you can do and I can't, and I return the favour - and a lot of people need websites these days.
-In a similar vein, general programming, hardware design, etc. Not only do I need to refresh and learn in order to get a better job, I also want to learn to make cool stuff. Looking at little electronic games devices and wearable electronics.
-Tutoring, for the next month or so, my co-worker's son who needs help with IGCSE maths and science. So I try to impart to him things that used to come to me naturally, and give him a greater dose of explanation and drilling of concepts than he would get in a forty-five minute class of twenty-something people, and in return I get twelve pounds an hour and more importantly I get to learn about teaching. I also sometimes get dinner cooked for me. I know who's getting the better end of the deal here.
It's a busy life and I think I prefer it that way. But where's the time for learning to draw or to play an instrument, for more reading...? Can scientists please get on and find a way of doing without sleep? I really can't do less than six hours a night and even that requires the occasional evening refresher nap.
