Focus

My focus is starting to drift away from my classes I'm awful at time management. That bit you see to the left was the beginning of a blog post I wrote in May but never had time to clean/post before it became outdated. I'm more focused on classes than ever right now, and I'm fairly certain that's because I'm back at my home university, which instead of scheduling class once a week like the Freie Universität did has each class several times a week (but with a roughly equivalent homework load. Probably. I think?). In other words, I don't have to manage my time here because the U manages it for me. Whenever I'm not in class is homework time 8D.

That wasn't even a sarcastic smiley. The schedule itself can be a pain (an English lit discussion can be great fun for around one hour but starts to get old after that, especially when it focuses on super close readings and lecturing), but I'm finding it oddly less stressful to get my homework done when I have less time to do it in. Having it all be in English probably helps, too, I guess.

There was another bit in that post about a quote about how the thing you do when you procrastinate is the thing you should be focusing on. It resonated with me, but I don't think it's necessarily true--my procrastination comes from a place of dread at not doing the thing I'm putting off properly or not enjoying the task. I don't usually put things off because I don't think they're worth doing, it's because there's pressure to do them right and within a certain time frame. This is why I'm writing blog posts instead of my response paper that's due on Monday and my one-page/probably-German report that's due the Monday after. They're all things that I should get done because I see value in them (well, the German report is more an obligation than a thing I see intrinsic value in. Still. An obligation resulting from doing a thing that was and will continue to be more worthwhile than a lot of things I've bothered with). There's some self-imposed time pressure on the blog posts, too, but the consequences for missing a day are not nearly as great as not doing my assignments, so they're lower pressure.

But even if the blog (and the Tumblr) are worthwhile pursuits because they get me cranking out presentable pretties/written work on a more regular basis than otherwise, I don't exactly take that much pride in what I post. Presentable is the key word. That, and I'm half-heartedly trying to build up some web presence for whenever I do something worth really spreading around (if the novel I'm working on doesn't get picked up by any publishers I'll send it to if I finish it, I plan to post it online, for example.) I haven't really come up with anything I'm really proud of so far. Or at least, not finished anything. I'm really proud of what I'm thinking that novel has the potential to be. But I might disappoint myself. I'm awfully fucking obsessed with the two main characters, though. I can't help but have faith that there's something worth extracting there. I just have to translate it to words clearly enough.

Not that the novel has gotten tied into anything for school at the moment, though. So I haven't found much time to re-write it (although studying Beowulf lead me to an epiphany that'll really help me improve what I've got.) I'll get it done some time or another. Other than that, I can write these blog posts, but they're not exactly the cream of the internet. Same with the photos. My sewing and drawings are mediocre for now at best, though the sewing's improving. Writing comes most natural to me, I just need to do more of it. Which I'm doing right now (both here and for school--hooray, three writing intensive courses at once 8D).

Anyway. The bit I ended the other post I was talking about was pretty much spot-on--I've got this personal weakness where as soon as I feel too pressured to do something I don't want to do it no matter how worthwhile it is. Not like that's unusual or anything. All there is to do is work around it, so I guess I'll just keep working on doing that.

[And speaking of not doing shit on time, I kind of dropped the ball with this blog the past couple weeks, so I'm going to post things this Tuesday and Wednesday as well as Thursday to make up for it >_>.]