If you haven't noticed by now, I don't deal well with stress. Or, more likely, I have a hard time handling a wide variety of things that require my attention. Give me one thing to work on and I'll-------well all right, I will try my best to weasel out of it, get distracted by the internet, or read a book. But give me two or three things and I'll focus pretty damned hard on one of them, taking deep breaths as I tell myself, "just get X to the finished stage, then worry about other things". However, if there are more than two or three things, my brain keeps popping back to the other stuff.
What's on my mind now? A lot. a lot of swirling things that keep cycling--they keep coming up, I keep worrying about them, then trying to stuff them down so I can get some work done, then that repeats. Currently worried and thinking about:
Work:
I have so much work to do it's mind boggling. Today my goal is to answer the question, "how do people measure feedback in the circumnuclear region" so that I can see if there's anything I can say about feedback in my short thesis-level timescale. But I also need to look at MIPS images vs my images because my second advisor is back and wants to meet with me and that's one thing he wanted to take a look at. Plus there are two numbers I have to recalculate because I screwed up, and I wrote a program to calculate and graph most of my things but I need to follow through on that and save the graphs in an image format and then put them into my paper draft and also reorganize the table formats in the paper draft. And while we are at it the paper draft needs a new introduction and background section and a complete overhaul of the references, which are not at all accurate. And I have SO MANY PAPERS TO READ AAAAH. But I really need to stay focused on the question for today. But I really need to make those plots, and fix the paper. around and around we go.
On top of that, I also have temperature data for my master's work and I need to figure out how to get it out of its files, into a processable format, then figure out a way to compare it to the other temperature data and make sure that it tracks pretty well, so I can excuse using it to analyze my other data. If I can get through that by Monday I will be in OK shape (not perfect shape). Oh and I should edit that shit first draft of my master's thesis that I threw together in 30 seconds last time. And I was supposed to be working on this for three months and instead I have ignored it. BAD ASTRONOMER. NO SLEEP FOR YOU.
Then I have to access my really old data and poke it a bit because I know my advisor is going to ask about it and it would be nice to get it out of the way but I keep forgetting how to even log in and get at it and I think my password keeps changing AAGH. And I should email my old advisor down there but I don't want to talk to him until I have some work done for him and that's embarrassing. And I should call/contact the guy I am collaborating with at the end of the month so at least he doesn't think I am a slacker.
That's just research. that's not counting all the other shit--I need to organize meetings with my advisor and the admin assistant who does finances, so I can find out which grants are active and which ones I am currently on and if I have travel money and how much. I need to organize an end of the semester meeting for my fellow grad students to have a chance to talk to the department chair, except he's not going to be around much longer so we also need to wait. *sigh*. And there's the whole "adjusting the TA positions to better reflect what needs to be done in the department," even though that's not QUITE my responsibility. And I should email the incoming grads again and make sure they remember to get back to me about stuff. And I have public night on Friday and a doctor's appointment next week and one the week after. *sigh* and I need to go to the gym and exercise too, my health is terrible right now.
And that's not including household--print and sign the new lease, sweep before the dust bunnies eat the cats, do more &(#*&$(*&@)%**)#%*)@*% dishes, try to get rid of the ants--get ant glue I suppose, that might help--organize and clean my room so I can maybe find some of my shit, maybe, do laundry because I am desperately short on pants and maybe go buy some more pants because two out of my three pairs are too tight and I hate wearing too tight pants, they hurt and they suck. Spend time with cats. arrange a date for next week (glee!). Clean out car. call family and see how they are doing. hang out with friends, and call the ones who were having a hard time to make sure they're okay. finish knitting that christmas gift for my aunt and mail it. Knit secret surprises for my sisters and mail them.
and all the while I am fighting a continual battle between needing more time to work, needing more money to budget better and pay off my loans, and needing more personal time to cook healthy meals and go for a long walk. These things cycle--and inevitably work wins, because it applies the most guilt, or money wins because it's easier to spend cheap money on fast food and save time as well than it is to take the time to get out of the car to get a salad and soup or an apple or some fish or something that isn't hamburger or fried. *sigh*. But too lazy to do any cooking, even though I have the makings for chili and soup in the fridge, ready and waiting for me to throw them in a pot or something.
I hate juggling all this. I hate the way my mind flits from one thing to another, and I hate the way nothing ever gets crossed off my to-do list. I hate how I try to save time to get work done and then a week or two later I feel horribly ridiculously stupidly fat, even though I know the primary thing that has changed has been my perspective and that I should (and sometimes do) love my body the way it is, and understand that the world is a fucked up place for not recognizing how atrociously it treats fat women. But then I just fall into the "how do we fix the world" cycle of thoughts, and I try to educate myself and organize my webpage and... it all falls apart. It all gets messed up. Nothing is easy to fix and I won't drop my life to go fix it all so then I just bury my head in the sand for days reading books or watching DVDs and knitting and playing on the internet and when I come up, nothing is BETTER. It's all worse because I've ignored it, and I have no good sense of priorities or how to set reasonable goals because mine are never ever met. I feel like I've been late or incomplete to every deadline in my entire life. And this all only contributes to my crushingly low self-esteem, which makes me see this all as my fault, starts calling me names--until I beat it back down and plunge into work again, taking deep deep breaths and telling myself, "just concentrate on this one thing, just this one thing. Everything else can wait."
and it all starts over all again.
I like to plan knitting. it is part of the procrastinating cycle--it makes me feel successful to come up with plans for my knitting, because they can and frequently are accomplished in a reasonable period of time (unlike work or the house or family and friends or LIFE; I wouldn't blame it on knitting, I sucked at all those things even before I started knitting). I think this is why I like it--because I *can* feel successful at it, and it's a tangible success--unlike reading books, which I also enjoy but which is much more, "oh, I finished this book, so I can check this off my to-do list (that shelf of novels over there), but I can't share it with anyone." Maybe if reading had a website like ravelry where I could organize what I've read, what I have, and what I am going to read next, I would spend more time on it. But anyway, knitting--I like being able to plan it, then do it, and have it done.
So, my accomplishments for April are: Harvest Dew Socks; most of a pumpkin hat; the damned secret gift that took forever; another gift, smaller, three owls; and finishing ONE of my two mitts for my aunt. Also I've knit a lot of my Tiny Green Leaves--only 10 rows from the ending! huzzah!-- and about 70% of a pair of Spatterdash for a KAL on LSG. I am really glad I did the KAL because that's the only thing that's gotten me through such a fiddly pattern. There are a lot of tiny details and I am sure they make the thing all that much more kickass but they require a LOT of attention and frankly the thing is driving me nuts. I threw it on the bed last Friday and yelled, "fuck it I am DONE with you." I still have an edging, a feather-and-fan repeat or two, and two thumbs and two sets of I think 14 buttons which I haven't even picked out yet, and I just don't think they're going to happen by Monday, the deadline I set for the KAL. I'm not too regretful--they are cute and they got a lot further with a KAL than they would've if I'd done it on my own, and perhaps I can come back to them when I am less stressed out some time.
I have plans, though (as always) for May. I'm very much in a finishing mood. I want these Tiny Green Leaves done, and I want the second sock for my sister to be done (if she would get me those measurements I wrote down. GAH why did I mail them to her?), and I want the last buttons for the mitts to be done and I want my size 7 needles so I can finish this baby cardigan that's hibernating, and I want to finish a surprise for my oldest friend (though at this rate I'd best hand onto it for her birthday); and there's a pumpkin hat I knit that only needs a leaf or two added and its ends woven in, which would be nice. It's pleasant to be in a finishing mood; perhaps I will even put a skein or two into the giant blanket I thought I'd finish in December, or finish the second-to-last Knit It Forward 2011 project, or cast on the last one (gah. I should do that. Gah. I really should do that. It would be easy, I'm sure. I'm sure I can manage. Gah. I already have the yarn. I haven't picked a project though. Gah). But I want these things DONE so I can feel like I've accomplished SOMETHING--even if that something isn't in life but in knitting.
(and then of course I want to cast on 85 billion things for myself. But two or three of these things are things that I've personally desired for a very long time--a Shipwreck in my sea silk (no beads yet, but I've got time) and a pair of fingerless mitts in stranded colorwork using some black yarn and some black-and-blue-with-sparkles yarn for myself. They're going to be lovely and subtle once I pick out a pattern. Endpapers, perhaps?)
EDIT: now I know this isn't going to end well but I have so many plans about knitting and they keep running in circles in my head.... first finish the haruni, then the damned mitts for my aunt, then the spatterdash, then the pumpkin hat... then my sister's sock, then the baby cardigan--it's so close to done!--then the other gift mitts. simultaneously I want to cast on everything, everything--the shipwreck, endpapers for me, endpapers for my twin, another baby cardigan, a steeked throw that looks fantastic, robot mittens, a laceweight shawl, another laceweight shawl, a spiral circular shawl in scrap sock yarn, a plaid floaty clingy shawl in that uberfine mohair, a frost flowers shawl for a friend, a hex shawl that I have to reconfigure for much thicker gauge and much less yarn, I want to knit one hundred billion owls for everyone I know, I want to do a 198-yards-of-heaven in that copper colored linen, I want MORE stranded color mitts for me in chocolate cherry and black; I want to figure out a cardigan/wrap for me in my laceweight thunderstorm colored madelinetosh (have I shown you that? it's lovely), and do something lovely and textured with my madtosh dk, and did I mention I got madtosh vintage the other day? I didn't? I think it's going to be another pair of mitts for me, I'm not sure, I had so much in mind when I got it and now they're all gone, not sure what to turn it into. Oh and I need to figure out what to do with all this thick-n-thin yarn, the Trabajos Del Peru and the Di'Ve stuff from L. Do you think it's a bad plan to do a highly-ribbed pullover in bamboo? is it going to stretch like no tomorrow and not hold the crimp of the ribbing? probably. I wonder if I could reinforce that in anyway. Ooo, more sock yarn on webs--what unique colors. And there's a sale on eco wool--that could match my local handspun brown wool that I got at the winter Madison Farmer's Market. Wasn't I going to make a striped and lace shawl out of that queensland rustic tweed that I picked up? and something laceweight with that brand new reddish sock yarn, and another pair of spatterdash (heaven help me) in my regia hand-dye effect. I bet a pair of Nutkins would look great with my solid sky blue yarn. I should rip back the half a sock I currently have and change it.
....
I can't believe how many of these things I want RIGHT NOW. doom.
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