An introduction

Hi there.

I've been away from writing for a long time. I used to journal on the Web from the late 90s to the early 00s, when I stopped writing on a regular basis. Back then, I wrote fairly melodramatic entries about random events in my life.

I want to use this space as a personal log of my efforts to complete my graduate thesis, and to get myself together in general. I've coasted along for a while as a fairly substandard student, and it's put up or shut up time now.

I've spent the past few days figuring out a viable system for getting work done. My big problem is sort of Groundhog Day-esque: I can't seem to string together more than a few days of working on a single project, and every day I wake up I start anew—unfettered by the previous day's work. This is both liberating and really really annoying/unproductive. I can do good work, but my focus is basically limited to one day. This is untenable for the thesis, as I need to put in a significant amount of work each day rather than a ton of work right before it's due.

I've come to the conclusion that I need to do two things: (1) have a reliable system for dumping thoughts into some kind of database that I can access later and (2) schedule the living daylights out of my day (and adhere to that schedule!).

So the first thing I'm trying to do is to use a task manager on my laptop (Things by Cultured Code) to keep track of all the stuff I need to do. (I'm very good at making lists, but not so good at religiously checking said lists every time I complete a task. Must work on this.)

I've also been using a wiki to jot down notes on my research. I've been reasonably good at this, but I need to review said notes and do the mental work to stitch all the pieces together more often. I'm hoping to do some of that thinking here, too.

...

I (literally) ran into a wall as a kid, knocking myself out. There's still an indentation on the wall of my parents' living room just to the left of the couch. Sometimes I wonder if I'm still struggling to wake up from that event.

(See, melodrama isn't dead for me.)