While waiting in line at the UH Pharmacy, I noticed this handy tip on a pamphlet about preventing the spread of H1N1:
Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you sneeze or use an alcohol-based sanitizer.
I spent the better part of a minute trying to remember if I’d heard anywhere that Purell was helping to spread swine flu.
Man, is this week dragging, or what? I don’t think I’ve spent a minute less in front of my computer than I would have otherwise, and if I did, it was because I was either playing taiko or sleeping. I probably did pay a little more attention in class, though, so that’s a plus. Still, I’m ready to be done with this exercise.
Some unconnected bits:
Last night I dreamt that John was being chased by an angry kangaroo. He escaped by running to his dad’s house and tricking the kangaroo into jumping into a frozen lake. Then I stole an airplane and turned it into a robot. I tried to sign my brother up for a locker at his new law school, but the roller skating rink was on lockdown. I did find my own locker, though, and it was full of old swimsuits.
Samson is sleeping with his eyes half-open. All I can see are the whites, and every now and then they’ll roll around a little. It’s creepy as all get-out.
Three showers later, I’m still wearing the same eyeliner I put on for the Galveston show Saturday evening. I’ll probably have to take it off tomorrow because it’s finally starting to get patchy, but it’s had a good run.
Yesterday I was in a crummy situation that was all my own fault, and the idea popped into my head that it would be an ideal time to give blood, since I was already crying. The worst part of crying, after all, is trying not to cry. Once you start, all the tension releases, and there’s relief in knowing that however much your situation sucks, you no longer have to put on a brave face.
John and I haven’t gotten to see each other much lately, and it makes me sad. This weekend we’ll miss each other again because I’ll be in Hidalgo the whole time. Then three weekends later I’ll be in Nashville. I want to spend more time with him before he leaves the country for six weeks at the start of his new job in June, but spring taiko season has other ideas.
One and a half more days until I can step back into my online life. Like I said yesterday, if I do this again, I’ll fine-tune it to where I can exercise my self-discipline without becoming an internet hermit.
I guess it’s a lesson in how hooked I am on the instant-gratification, continuously-updated constant flow of information from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and all that. A minute ago, instead of opening tabs for Facebook and Twitter like I usually do when I turn on my computer, I opened up CNN.com. But the news hasn’t changed much since I last checked it this afternoon, so now I’m here. With nothing to say.
Yesterday I tried reading some of the featured articles on Wikipedia so that I could read SOMETHING online that wasn’t “prohibited.” I don’t remember what happened next, but I know I didn’t get very far, which is weird because you know how Wikipedia is. If you try to find one little thing for an assignment you’re working on, you’ll be there for hours. Apparently, though, if you set out TRYING to spend time on Wikipedia, nothing grabs your attention.
In other news, my foot still hurts about as much as it did yesterday. Looks like it’s sensible shoes for the rest of the week. Gotta keep this puppy fresh for Hidalgo: four shows in two days, for a total of five hours of performance time. Yowza.
Gah, I’m sure the rest of the world is talking about so many fun things in my absence. Thirty-eight more hours!
A little over halfway through, I’m feeling pretty blah about this exercise. It’s a success in the sense that I haven’t been on any of the sites I used to spend time on for the past four days, but I can’t say I’ve gotten much extra work done in the meantime. The main goal, though, is not to get more done during this week, but to strengthen my self-discipline in the future. A worthwhile goal, that, but hard to measure.
Quitting social media for a week has left me feeling disconnected and out of the loop. I’m completely cut off from my internet friends and people-I-follow, and I miss the casual chit-chat with my real-life friends, even the ones I see regularly in person.
Facebook and Twitter, for me at least, are all about being brief, witty, and shallow, and instead I find myself here on my blog, writing long, boring sentences analyzing the meaning of social media in my life. Gross.
If I do something like this again, I’m going to make it more like “only check Facebook once a day for a week.” It’s not actually interacting with people online that’s a waste of time, it’s keeping the site open and flipping over to check on it every time a new post appears.
Anyway, here are some of the things I considered posting to Facebook or Twitter today:
More than three days in, and I’m still on track. It helps that I’ve been keeping busy: last night we did a short interactive taiko show before Tao’s performance in Galveston, and today we had an extra long practice to prepare for our trip to Hidalgo next weekend.
As a result, I hurt. All over really, but mostly in my back, shoulders, and arms. And I’m exhausted. I might skip dinner and go straight to bed. I know, poor me, getting to spend so much time doing something I love.
In the near future I’ll have hours and hours of newly-freed-up time to spend on taiko because at the end of last week I resigned from journal. My paper was so far behind that things were getting ridiculous, and my best option was to make a clean break of it. No hard feelings on either side, I don’t think. After I finish up a few assignments next week, I’ll be done.
Is it cheating if I use the time I would have spent listening to podcasts and spend it reading my own blog archives instead? Speaking of narcissism . . .
A fun thing I found: In one of my favorite posts from 2006, I managed to work in the phrase “Heaven forfend.” Ironically, of course. I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed.
And another fun thing: I’ve thought a couple times of looking through my old blog posts to see when we first got Facebook at the Claremont Colleges (remember when they rolled it out school by school?), and just now I stumbled across the smoking post. It was mid-October 2004. Back then it was called “The Facebook,” and you had to have a .edu email address to join.
In unrelated news, tonight’s taiko practice: two and half hours of awkward turtle.
GAH I CAN’T STOP. These fleeting thoughts belong other places on the internet or NOWHERE AT ALL. And yet. I post and post. You’d think the “Publish” button sent a jolt of heroin straight into my brain.
You know how sometimes you put off a big task for a really long time, but when you’re finally forced to start it, you realize that it’s actually kind of fun, and you wish you’d started it earlier? This is not like that. At all.
ALSO.
Space Law is like listening to five TED talks at once, plus someone’s wacky old grandpa.
Some people run 26 miles; I quit Facebook for a week. Sure, the running thing takes a lot of training and dedication, but you have to keep in mind that these are people who ENJOY running in the first place. I bet that gets you through the first ten miles, at least.
Here’s the thing: I have little to no self-discipline. It’s appalling. Most of the decisions I make on a daily basis are driven by instant gratification. If life were fair, I would weigh 300 pounds.
Lately I’ve been having long, involved dreams every night. I’ve read that extremely vivid dreams are a potential side effect of quitting Lexapro (which I am currently attempting to do, so far successfully), but these aren’t any more vivid than my usual dreams, they’re just longer. Previously I’d wake up most mornings remembering bits and pieces of several dreams, each feeling like it lasted at most fifteen minutes, but now I’ll have one giant dream that seems to have gone on for an hour or more.
Each bit of storyline morphs into the next in that way that dreams do, where all of a sudden a new idea appears, and your brain invents some way to insert it into the action that’s sort of continuous, but in the light of day makes no sense.* And this goes on and on and on.
Is it me, or has CNN gotten really weird? It’s on the basement TV at school right now, and I’m struck by how informal it’s become since the last time I watched a 24-hour TV news network who-knows-when.
First there was a guy talking about the blizzard in the Northeast. He mentioned the rain in Southern California for a few sentences, then summed it up with “so the whole country is experiencing this.” Right. Okay, so that part wasn’t particularly informal, it just annoyed me.
Then the same guy and another CNN anchor (do they still call them that?), apparently in another studio, had a gripe session between themselves about how dumb the word “bipartisanship” is. They both leaned on their desks and made faces, and the lady actually rolled her eyes at one point. They agreed that Congress was being childish, and that everything would be okay if all of Congress went out and got drunk together.
