hmpf

I was recently told that when you work a fulltime job, you also get better at fitting more stuff into your spare time even as the amount of available spare time shrinks to just a fraction of what you had before.

I'm not sure what I think about that (though, to be fair, this effect is only supposed to set in after you've worked fulltime for several months). Well, I've worked fulltime, pretty much, for the past two and a half weeks, and been mostly busy with seminars on weekends on top of that. Today I did have a full day to myself, though, and managed to fit three loads of laundry, cleaning the entire flat, writing and editing a (very) short article about bread, talking to a friend on the phone for half an hour (I felt too busy to call anyone, but he called me), washing my hair, and cooking today's dinner/tomorrow's lunch into this day. (None of this is what I would really like to do with my spare time, of course, but these things needed to be done.) Oh, and I even watched one ep of Third Doctor DW during dinner. Still, I don't think that's significantly more than I would have managed before I started fulltime work.

I do feel different about it, however. My To Do List is as intimidating as ever, including, as of last Thursday, learning the basics of statistics and Excel, so I'll have at least some chance of success at that scary two-day application procedure I mentioned. (Because that job would actually be completely and utterly perfect for me. Cross your fingers for me!)

Usually, my To Do List leaves me with a persistent feeling of "OMG I need to DO MORE!!!" when I go to bed. Today, though, I feel at peace with leaving the rest of the list for tomorrow (and the days after that). I think that has something to do with the fact that, working fulltime, I don't have unrealistically high expectations regarding what I can manage beside work in a given day or week. It's easier to make your peace with your inability to keep up with everything you want and need to keep up with - or, in other words: work makes a very efficient excuse for neglecting Other Important Stuff. Like friends, hobbies, art, non-work-related responsibilities, even job hunting... (Well, okay, even without work, experience has demonstrated that I can't manage to keep up with all this on a regular basis. But with work it becomes oh so easy to stop beating myself up about it.)

I'm not sure I like this effect, despite the temporary peace of mind it provides...

if I can't even bring myself to open the frelling document before it's three a.m. and I have exhausted every other possibility of entertainment? I sort of sit at the computer all day, with the thesis folder open in the task bar as if I'm *just* about to open a file, and read the Engrish blog, and Cute Overload, and boingboing, and I Can Has Cheezburger, and half a dozen eco sites, and basically every timewaster site there is on the net. I'm not even writing fic, or spamming Mikey with comments anymore, which was at least a sort-of-useful form of procrastination... I'm really just killing time - when time is the last thing I can afford to lose.

Needless to say, my sleep rhythm is completely out of whack again, too. And I'm totally panicking at the thought of next week, which is a week where I have four hour shifts instead of my usual two hours, and those four hour shifts involve a type of work that does not really allow you to write 'on the side', as the two hour shifts usually do. Basically, I'll be at work all day (or what constitutes 'all day' if your regular day is only five hours long because your sleep pattern is fucked up) and only get home at about ten in the evening, probably somewhat exhausted, and then I'll have to make dinner and stuff, and *then*, at eleven in the evening or so, I will be able to start working. If I'm still able to work then, that is.

Actually, the more I consider this, the more sense it makes to just give in to my bizarre sleep rhythm and redefine three p.m. as 'morning,' at least for the next week, and possibly for the rest of the writing phase. That way, I'd get to go to work about two hours after waking up next week, and would have the entire night 'day' left for working on my thesis. I could go to sleep at, say, eight a.m. or so? One thing that really fucks me up at the moment is trying to fight my sick sleep pattern all the time. See, normally - I mean, 'normally' for a value of 'normal' that includes my current severe sleep problem - I'd probably go to bed after posting this - i.e. at a quarter to four a.m. or so. And then I'd spend several hours in bed trying to go to sleep - probably until around eight or so in the morning. And then I'd sleep until my alarm clock would wake me up for the first time - and because I'm constantly fighting my sleep rhythm, that would probably be at eleven or so, after only three hours of sleep. So of course I'd go to sleep again after the alarm rang. And probably sleep until the early afternoon.

I may as well give up on the pretense of being able to sleep before eight if I go to bed by four, and just *work* till eight; actually get a few pages of writing done.

Oh fuck. I forgot that I actually have to work early on Tuesday and Thursday. *sigh* There goes that plan.

Though I suppose I could go to sleep *after* work on those days.

That would be at about half past eleven in the morning. So... if I get up at half past four in the afternoon to go to work, that'd still be about five hours of sleep.

Hey, why don't I just stop sleeping altogether?

*groan*

I can haz normal sleep pattern, plz? I'm not exactly the most efficient person at the best of times, but this? This is just screwing me up in so many ways, and it exacerbates the writer's block-induced inefficiency like nobody's business.

(Filename is now: Frankensteins_thesis.odt, because I've begun patching my various truncated attempts at introductions and whatnot together. So far, it's fifteen pages of fail.)