Looking back over the last couple days, I can't say that things haven't been going well. I've kept up with homework, hung out with friends, and in general have been enjoying myself. Still, there are a couple of things I
should not have been doing -- things that would make life a lot easier if I could plan better. They are, in no particular order:
- Deciding to do Camp NaNoWriMo in what I knew would be an extremely busy month, getting ten thousand words behind in the second-to-last week, and being inconsistent about filling that gap because of such silly things as "being tired," or "not feeling like writing." Consequently, for the last several days of August, I had to spend several hours every night writing very very quickly and probably very poorly in order to catch up. This was aggravated by
- Closing documents without saving because I got confused because I had too many documents open because I was trying to check my word count over various documents because I was disorganized because I need to figure out a better system to keep track of writing because I haven't bought Scrivener yet because I'm a poor college student. Consequently, I lost 2,000 words in a critical moment. This was stressful, since I had been
- Letting tiredness build up from sleeping six hours or less the past several nights, and then
- Playing the fifth game of mafia with people in my dorm when I really needed to go to bed before having to wake up very early the next morning, and then
- Deciding to play board games the next night with people I love outside my dorm, because obviously I hadn't had enough yet, culminating in
- Playing a three-hour game of Cities and Knights, in which my exhaustion was almost causing me fairly serious emotional problems, and which could and should have ended an hour and a half earlier.
Six short hours of sleep later, I woke up for my 8 a.m. class, really feeling pretty good for all that. But now daylight is telling me things I
should be doing:
- I should read the play for which I need to organize and find props before tech weekend three weeks from now.
- I should take a nap today. Really.
- I should talk to the freshmen on my floor and make sure everyone's doing okay with the transition to college. I should also make some time to pray with them.
- I should probably be doing homework instead of writing a blog post.
- I should figure out what happened to my Fit for Life syllabus.
- I should try much harder to find someone to permanently switch work shifts with me, since I have a class when I'm supposed to work.
- I should write some personal letters I've been meaning to get to for the past two weeks.
- I should take a minute to be quiet. That is all.
This sounds like a lot. But even in writing these lists, reviewing all the things that filled my time, I don't regret anything (well, except not writing earlier... that could have solved lots of problems.) But I got to be around really awesome people. I stayed busy. And I accomplished lots of things, despite having to work around many obstacles. Last week was great. But, in light of all this, I can try to make next week better.
