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the great disappearing act
Oct. 21st, 2006 06:20 pmThursday I took a mental health day. Partially because of Wednesday, partially because I've been pushing hard for the last two weeks without a break or a stop - stressing myself out and probably concentrating on things I didn't need to becuase I couldn't see the forest for the trees.
Wednesday went from 8 am - 7:30 pm or so. I call Wednesday my brain drain day, because the mental expenditure of my senior seminar leaves me a bit hyped and a bit worked over, and then Japanese on top of that just sorta solidifes that mental humm of energy. Throw in 4 hours at work that are generally high stress or at least high energy using an entirely different part of my brain, and what you're left with is a girl that wants to sit that night and watch tv instead of doing her homework.
This past Wednesdy was that to the power of two. ( cut for extended whine )
I tried to do my reading for Thursday, really, but couldn't keep my attention on it for long and really just wanted to go to that mental place where I don't have to THINK about anything.
So that's what I did. I decided I'd give my self the day off on Thursday and just take a couple of minutes to breathe.
At 10 am on Thursday morning the phone call from my employer came. ( so that put a stop to my attempt to sleep in ) Finally she gets so frustrated with the whole situation that she screems. Not AT me, really, but seriously, screamed over the phone, into my ear.
This is not what I'm in the mood for. Not at 10 am on a day that I needed a break. Not when I'm actually using Mal's phrase "I'm on the raggedy edge" and meaning it. Hell no.
So I tell her that I'm sorry, that I know it's my fault, but that if she does that again I will hang up on her.
That did seem to draw her up short.
I spent the rest of the morning reading one of those comfort books that I've got - Robyn McKinley's The Blue Sword, a book every girl should read at 12 and again at 14 and again whenever she wants. Felt significantly better after that.
Then I worked on graphics for the website![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gray_ghost and I are doing together, watched TV, thought about doing my homework and my agenda for friday, discovered I didn't have homework for Japanese, and went to bed. Thursday was a damn good day.
Now, for the best parts - Friday was fabulous.
We're doing group projects in Japanese, and my group members are AWESOME and so it won't be one of those times where nobody does their work or skips out on group meetings or ignores people. Also, I got the last time slot on Wednesday for my Storytelling in Japanese, so that means I have Monday & Tuesday to practice!
And my department is doing this joint set of talks with the business school, so I went to a lecture by the former editor in chief of the Economist (who manages to make economics almost interesting). Saw bunches of people I knew at the conference, had a glass of wine with my professors, goofed around a little, and then got drawn into this graduate forum they were having after the conference. We met people from other departments, got a little one on one time with our guest speaker (and I got to compliment him on his phrase "Japan needs to lance the boil of history" ... yes, he really did say that), made a bunch of connections, talked with a PhD student in the Government program who is also a Japanese sci-fi junkie who gave me two more names of Japanese authors to study.
The best part of it all, though? I'm now on the committee of grad students from our department who are going to be hosting a kind of feedback forum in mid-November where we all read our papers to eachother and give feedback, and there is a distinct possibility that we're going to actually try and turn the results into a publication. Yep, I might be one of the editors of the East Asian Graduate Student Journal (or something like that). It was AWESOME!
After getting home at 10 last night, I babbled at my dearest about all of the fabulous stuff. We woke up this morning, bought a new backpack, looked at trees for the backyard (yep, we're going to buy a TREE for our backyard!) and got a little sunburned because we had the top down.
All of this was really an extended explaination about why I haven't been around LJ of late, and why I probably won't be that around in the future. I've time to skim, sometimes, but for the most part, life has kind of gotten insanely crazy, and the computer is being used more and more to look up Japanese words and do website graphics, and not much else. It's fun, I'll continue to write about it, but ... commenting? I will be sucking. And not in the nice way. I adore you all, and will hope that you're all here when I get to winter break.
Wednesday went from 8 am - 7:30 pm or so. I call Wednesday my brain drain day, because the mental expenditure of my senior seminar leaves me a bit hyped and a bit worked over, and then Japanese on top of that just sorta solidifes that mental humm of energy. Throw in 4 hours at work that are generally high stress or at least high energy using an entirely different part of my brain, and what you're left with is a girl that wants to sit that night and watch tv instead of doing her homework.
This past Wednesdy was that to the power of two. ( cut for extended whine )
I tried to do my reading for Thursday, really, but couldn't keep my attention on it for long and really just wanted to go to that mental place where I don't have to THINK about anything.
So that's what I did. I decided I'd give my self the day off on Thursday and just take a couple of minutes to breathe.
At 10 am on Thursday morning the phone call from my employer came. ( so that put a stop to my attempt to sleep in ) Finally she gets so frustrated with the whole situation that she screems. Not AT me, really, but seriously, screamed over the phone, into my ear.
This is not what I'm in the mood for. Not at 10 am on a day that I needed a break. Not when I'm actually using Mal's phrase "I'm on the raggedy edge" and meaning it. Hell no.
So I tell her that I'm sorry, that I know it's my fault, but that if she does that again I will hang up on her.
That did seem to draw her up short.
I spent the rest of the morning reading one of those comfort books that I've got - Robyn McKinley's The Blue Sword, a book every girl should read at 12 and again at 14 and again whenever she wants. Felt significantly better after that.
Then I worked on graphics for the website
gray_ghost and I are doing together, watched TV, thought about doing my homework and my agenda for friday, discovered I didn't have homework for Japanese, and went to bed. Thursday was a damn good day.Now, for the best parts - Friday was fabulous.
We're doing group projects in Japanese, and my group members are AWESOME and so it won't be one of those times where nobody does their work or skips out on group meetings or ignores people. Also, I got the last time slot on Wednesday for my Storytelling in Japanese, so that means I have Monday & Tuesday to practice!
And my department is doing this joint set of talks with the business school, so I went to a lecture by the former editor in chief of the Economist (who manages to make economics almost interesting). Saw bunches of people I knew at the conference, had a glass of wine with my professors, goofed around a little, and then got drawn into this graduate forum they were having after the conference. We met people from other departments, got a little one on one time with our guest speaker (and I got to compliment him on his phrase "Japan needs to lance the boil of history" ... yes, he really did say that), made a bunch of connections, talked with a PhD student in the Government program who is also a Japanese sci-fi junkie who gave me two more names of Japanese authors to study.
The best part of it all, though? I'm now on the committee of grad students from our department who are going to be hosting a kind of feedback forum in mid-November where we all read our papers to eachother and give feedback, and there is a distinct possibility that we're going to actually try and turn the results into a publication. Yep, I might be one of the editors of the East Asian Graduate Student Journal (or something like that). It was AWESOME!
After getting home at 10 last night, I babbled at my dearest about all of the fabulous stuff. We woke up this morning, bought a new backpack, looked at trees for the backyard (yep, we're going to buy a TREE for our backyard!) and got a little sunburned because we had the top down.
All of this was really an extended explaination about why I haven't been around LJ of late, and why I probably won't be that around in the future. I've time to skim, sometimes, but for the most part, life has kind of gotten insanely crazy, and the computer is being used more and more to look up Japanese words and do website graphics, and not much else. It's fun, I'll continue to write about it, but ... commenting? I will be sucking. And not in the nice way. I adore you all, and will hope that you're all here when I get to winter break.
