Procrastination and Lost Time

The past few days I have been thinking a lot about how time just seems to fly by me. I am a fairly driven person when it comes to my work, but for some reason the past week or so has been very unproductive. It isn't that I am not doing anything, more like the work I am doing isn't accomplishing much. I don't have the tangible proof of my efforts that reflects the amount of time that has passed. I feel like I am flittering away my time doing things that don't much matter. Like surfing the web (for personal and professional pleasure) and doing less than critical things like housecleaning. I rarely take a day off, but I know these forays away from my dissertation are distractions I shouldn't give into. When I do give in they tend to drag me into a psychological black hole. That makes it nearly impossible to find any joy or motivation in the work... this, eventhough I love the topic. I can understand why people get stuck when doing their dissertations and why so many go unfinished.

So Friday I had hoped to get something done, but it didn't materialize. I suppose I did a little bit of reading of the VISOR I report, but I had hoped to get through the entire thing. I wrote a few emails in the morning and then had to go downtown for a sinus CT. As a kind of treat I went shopping and bought some cheap clothing. When I came home it was nearly time to get the Meemster. I did work on a group project for an online course I am taking for much of Friday night and part of Saturday, too.

Saturday I got the Meems ready for her dad and did the taxi driver thing. I got home around 1 I suppose and after eating lunch and working on the group project I worked on trascribing the observation I did for the pilot study. The recording was 1.5 hors and it took me about 6 hours to transcribe the entire thing. I felt delerious near the end! I suppose the wine had something to do with that. After this I was toast and so I watched a movie... Volver. It was a wonderful, although sort of strange movie. I thought it was a comedy, but it was a very dark one. The actresses were just fabulous -- Penelope Cruz was so lovely and believable. I love the fact they had her wear a fake fanny! I thought her fanny was fabulous with the extra padding.

Today I woke up at a nearly illegal hour. Since the past week has been a little lite on sleep I don't feel dreadful about the extra hour or two I spent in bed. Blissful sleep. I didn't get too much done today beyond bathing and cleaning. I have about an hour before I will need to go play taxi driver again, so I think I will try to finish the VISOR reading. Having just one goal in mind might make the whole thing easier. I also need to annotate the transcript with the non-spoken information that I gathered from the observation. It is so much data. 14 pages of single spaced text. Eeeeek. At least tonight is just inserting things like the number of images displayed in searches. Ok, to work... I need to get back to the list I made up on Thursday eve bright and early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow... I will loose most of the day to the Meems. Hopefully she will let me have a few hours to work.