dianaschnuth

I wish I knew how to motivate myself. As per usual, I have several different things I’d like to get done, but I’m not motivated enough to actually do them. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of sleep or a lack of exercise or what, but I’m just not feeling it tonight. Don’t want to work on any of my three web projects, or my laundry-list of household chores/projects, or write any one of a dozen possible blog essays in my head, or even exercise. Don’t even really want to play video games. Don’t want to do a damn thing.

This can’t be normal. Really.

Read a blog entry about abortion today, written by a pro-choice advocate. Chose to write a comment in response.

Received an e-mail from the one friend I hadn’t told about my miscarriage yet. Chose to write a friggin’ novel in response.

I hadn’t realized this shit was still so fresh in my mind. I’ve been emotionally KO’d all evening. Didn’t get much accomplished besides playing some Civ IV.

Now it’s time to start getting ready for bed, and I have no idea what I’m making for lunch tomorrow, which is bad. I don’t really want to put my lunch together before I go to bed, which is worse. God knows what I’ll end up throwing into my lunch koozie tomorrow morning…

I know that these things smooth themselves over as time passes. I just wonder how long I’ll have these random days of sadness in the middle of being perfectly OK.

I realized just now that the smell of spring reminds me of living off-campus during the summers at BGSU. Particularly, the upstairs apartment/duplex on Troup Street, across from the TV station. The one with the unusually short screen door that Aaron would bash his head on every damn weekend. That was the summer of… 2000, I believe.

Of course, this same spring breeze also reminds me of sitting on the porch swing of my efficiency apartment back in 1999; or laying on the top bunk of a borrowed futon-loft in the room I rented in 1998, at 2am with the window open. Spring, to me, smells like standing alone, feeling grown-up, being responsible, but without feeling the weight that true responsibility carries.

Someday, when different memories are fresh in my mind, maybe spring will smell like something else to me — gardening, or travelling, or having the kids home from school. That’s a long way off, though.

The smell of spring makes me feel alive, like something new and different is around the corner, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because I prefer warm spring weather over the cold of winter, or because spring means the daylight hours are longer, or because spring meant the end of school for so many of my formative years. Or maybe it’s simply because the greenery finally makes its appearance.

At any rate, this 60-plus-degree weather is fantastic… even though I know it won’t last the week.

I’m reminded of several unfortunate moments in my academic career where I assumed that a project would be much simpler than it turned out to be. No, not simpler, per se, but less time-consuming. Where you sit down a couple nights before it’s due and say, “OK, time to crank this bad boy out.” Then, once you’ve started, you look at the scope of the project and realize that you may not get the luxury of sleep in the next day or two.

I just had a moment like that.

There are times when sticking by your guns and not working until a particular issue (say, the issue of getting paid) gets resolved ends up backfiring. This is one of those times.

Tomorrow evening is going to be spent working on my next contracting project, the one that my contact suggested I might want to start on over this past weekend. I’m going to be possibly eating dinner at my desk, and definitely working from 6pm through to 10pm, at which point I hope to be finished and able to go to bed. If not… I’ll stay up until it IS finished. The proof is due Thursday.

Now I know. Sometimes I can be such a stubborn dumbass. *shakes head*

Some people need to get a hobby.

Me, I need to drop some.

It occured to me while I was playing Viva Piñata on the 360 tonight, being that it’s a gardening game of sorts, and I’m a real-life gardener… of sorts. My hobbies are part seasonal, part on-a-whim-sical. I especially enjoy outdoor gardening in the spring — but, come summer, I lose interest and miss a few days’ worth of watering and my plants promptly croak. Except the bulbs and the catnip, and I love them for it. Then there’s my winter hobby of candlemaking, and my sometimes hobby of photography, and my hobby-turning-avocation of web design and development. And don’t forget my every-November hobby of writing, and the dozen or so unfinished short stories or novellas on my hard drive. And in my files, from before I even owned a computer.

To think that some people can barely stick with knitting.

Sometimes I feel all enriched and shit — look at me, I can do all these creative things, and I’ve even let some of my talents fall by the wayside (like drawing, which used to be my passion, and music, which used to be my identity). Sometimes I wonder why I can’t be like a “normal” person and only be interested in one or two pursuits.

I wonder if I’m not driven enough to focus on one passion, or if I’m just too interested in everything to pick just one.