sorcyress | Entries tagged with inbox zero is a laudable goal

Today was, by and large, a pretty good day for me, in terms of working on my little projects. It was an MCAS day, and the way things worked out, I saw two students the entire day. So...yeah. I had a lot of time to work on aforementioned little projects!

On my secretish one of them, I did 1/122 of the work, which is not a whole lot, but at the same time is an excellent start (this is a project that I have not touched since 2022, so that's still good stuff. And back then I only got through like...4/122 of the work, so this is good progress. RADICAL ACCEPTANCE OF INCREMENTAL PROGRESS, OKAY!?)

((Seriously, I keep that phrase on a sticky note posted above my desk. It's important to me. It's right next to the one that says "you can always start again". The only other pithy reminders I have are a couple of NancyButtons attached with magnets to my filing cabinet --one says "If the muse doesn't show up, start without her" and the other "you can't revise nothing". You have now determined most of my philosophy.))

On the other one...well the other one I've been public about, it's my email sorting project. I'm at about 7,600 unread emails and about 25,700 total in my inbox. Before you make snide comments, when I got serious about this project in mid-March, it was 13,600 and 32,800. Incremental progress.

(I mean hell, the start of May was about 11,900 and 31,000. My little graph is _plummeting_ in a most delightful way, and having reached "about 25,000" I was able to reward myself with more goofy data analysis.)

My third little digital project is Going Through And Sorting All My Photos and I have made zero progress on it in this batch (although I have done about 1600 from the earlier batch. I have no idea how many total photos it will be, my very rough initial guess is "I dunno, 50k?"). I kept trying to do some while babysitting Baby earlier this week (when Baby was sleeping, natch, not trying to balance both a child and a laptop) but I did not make much progress. Maybe I will do a little more tonight? This one suffers because I can't do it at work --my photos are not sorted enough between what is and isn't appropriate to have on the screen of my work laptop. That's one of the goals of this project, yanno?

Tomorrow I have actual work, which is a deep and abiding bummer, although we're at the part of the year where things are actually just humming along with end-of-year projects and the like. So maybe I will be able to do some amount of little projects as well. And before too long I'll be off to Pinewoods, and everything will fall apart again (I don't have any data on "number of unread/unarchived emails by month" but I think July will probably have an outsized percentage.)

I hope you are well and have nice things in your life.

~Sor
MOOP!

Here are some things for today, in no particular order:

*Went through some papers, which has resulted in a dragon's horde of recycling tossed on my floor. It's extremely dramatic, and going to be a pain in the ass to actually clean up into a paper bag and bring to the recycling bin.

*Also progress is ever-so-slowly being made on the whole papers project thing. Sigh.

*I had lunch outside, and there was delicious rolling thunder as I watched the marbles (I've been rewatching the old marblelympics while watching the current season, I've just about finished the 2018 winter games, which were stunning). I was largely done with lunch when the sky-water started to appear, so I finished my yogurt from the relative safety from the porch and then when that started to get too damp, went inside.

*My hair is in a bunch of skinny braids to make it all wavy later, am happy about this, but man is it actually kinda annoying. I managed to somehow half-pin it (read: pinned it up with the hairstick but then it half-unraveled) which was quite charming and gave me the effect of the long braids without the annoyance of going over my ears and getting in my face.

*Was morose at Ezri. Also cried for a bit this evening. Neither of these things have made me feel long-term better, since the underlying causes tend to boil down to "it's a pandemic, things are fucking terrible".

*I am incredibly fond of the Trogdorization of the Seattle Kraken logo. Also, how fucking badass is "the Kraken" as a sportsteam? Dang! I like hockey, in a vague "not actually following but damn it's pretty to watch" sort of way, and now I can have a favourite hockey team that doesn't make people hate me because Boston.

*I've been reading Shlock Mercenary. One of the incredibly rich things about the internet is that there are webcomics out there with literal decades, plural, of comics at this point. I've been enjoying, over the last couple years, going through and embracing some of these!

( I started talking about webcomics, and like I am wont to do, got excited )

*I am playing a shark clicker game and it's very cute and I'm resolutely not looking anything up about it which means I'm probably doing terribly. I spent way too much time on it yesterday, but today was an alright balance (since good clicker games work best as played in 5 minute increments once an hour or so).

*I should go to bed, which means I should clean my room. Ugh. Maybe I put everything on the floor and clean it tomorrow. Goodnight?

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The offhand "top five" I tend to name are (in no order): xkcd, Narbonic, Order of the Stick, 1/0 -slash- Leftover Soup, and an ambiguous fifth slot that I fill with various whatever-jumps-to-mind. Really, my all time favourite webcomic *ever* remains Narbonic, which I love enough that when Shaenon kickstarted a reprint drive of the two volume full-story set, I went ahead and purchased a second complete copy, even though it's basically identical. Currently they're lent to Austin and Bee, but seriously, if you wanna read this mad science comic and you need paper, let me know.

2: I thought the other day about maybe trying to make a list of every webcomic that I was caught up with and reading regularly at one point or another, and then decided that that's the crazy talking, and I'm not quite there. I wonder how many comics would be on my list that no one else would remember or know about. Ohmygod, Irritability still exists and is even being updated? As is 21st Century Fox? And Antihero For Hire??? I thought it was exciting when I refound SGVY⁴, dang, everything is still going! (I wonder if Ghastley is still online...uh...don't search for that one.)

3: Oh! Somewhere between Freefall and OotS, I started re-reading College Roomies From Hell, which was one of my first favourites alongside Sluggy. I read a ton of stuff I remembered, and then a much more ambiguous batch of stuff I sorta remembered and then stuff I mostly didn't remember and then it got Really Dark And Sad and I stopped caring entirely. Which is fascinating, because (see above) I can generally do dark and also crappy.

4: ...which apparently has had a huge site redesign as of June29th and the comic itself is not up again yet. Whoops?

I haven't updated in five days. Here are some things:

*Austin came and visited from Friday evening to Monday early afternoon. It was a very nice visit --he walked over, instead of taking the T, and given how close we are and were even the week before, probably neither of us have changed our risk profiles *that* much? But it was lovely to have him around for a bit, especially since we don't know when that will happen again, not really.

*Schools have been closed until May 4th, at least. I have a meeting with my department head tomorrow afternoon (immediately after she has a meeting with admin) so I'll know more about the Longterm Distance Learning Plan then. We are still only giving enrichment work, which means my students are largely not doing _anything_ offered up. I have some thoughts of things I might try, including maybe reading chapters of The Number Devil as a YouTube stream, if I can figure out how that works. (Probably I should email the author and find out if there are copyright issues with that idea --maybe only if I archive the streams after?)

*I am still alive, still eating multiple good meals a day, still showering every day (or every other sometimes, but that's totally normal for me). I missed my meds for about a week straight, just because I kept not remember to take them until it was too late in the day --I took them today and hopefully that will get me back on track. Physically, I'm fine.

*I finally started a calendar, after realizing that there are Too Many Good Things happening online with the livestreams and whatnot. Tomorrow is the Anna and the Apocalypse tweet-along, (as well as my meeting and my first attempt at an open office hours for my students), then Friday we're gonna try and have a family zoom meet-up, and Sunday is a s00j concert. Every Wednesday for the next five weeks is one of Patty's online archeology classes, about half of which sound SUPER INTERESTING and the rest of which merely sound interesting, and I'll maybe be able to go except that...

*Wednesday night is also the night the bellringers have been getting together for group social. Last week I failed to have a date with mek (we just...didn't manage to sync and really need to try again) instead, and this week I missed about half of the fun due to attending the Exec meeting and talking about Srs Future Stuff instead. But it was really nice to see everyone's faces --there were at least fifteen ringers represented-- and get like...tours of Michael's new apartment and to see Mira and James's cat and stuff like that.

*I've been _really_ laggy ever since Austin left. I was doing SO WELL with the cards, and then I was too busy hanging out with him to focus on them (I still _did_ stuff --my taskmaster projects, my words, lots of good food and hanging out outside!) and now I've completely lost track of them. Maybe tonight before I go to bed I'll choose a set? I don't know. I suspect I'm slowly moving towards a more stringent schedule, even though those usually don't work for me very long or well. I like the generalness of the cards!

*But yeah, Monday I watched nearly an entire season of British Bakeshow, and then yesterday and today both had _long_ stretches of playing _lots_ of dumb phone games. Probably I am not allowed to play dumb phone games tomorrow.

*I haven't been outside since Monday, and that's probably bad. I'm not very good at making my brain just...go be outside (especially when the weather's not particularly encouraging), I really need a destination in mind in order to leave the house. I should try and get back into PokeGo, that will help.

*The inbox zero project is about the only thing that's been making progress. I'm down to 1369 unread emails in my inbox, which is...staggeringly low, for me. There is hope! There is a light at the end of the tunnel! Then I can start interacting with the 15,000 emails that are just...in my inbox and need archiving or whatever. Sigh?

(The read-but-still-in-the-inbox emails date as far back as...well there's only one from 2007, that's a start anyways. The vast majority are LJ -not DW- comment notifications of some sort or another.)

*I keep thinking I want to do something like "Screenfree Sundays" or whatever, but I absolutely lack the conviction, and also I don't actually want to do that on a Sunday, probably. Maybe I'll trial run it this Sunday, with the exception of the s00j concert, oh bother. There're just Too Many Good Things going on, despite the apocalypse.

*Something great is going to happen tomorrow.

~Sor
MOOP!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Work:
*The Usual
*Actually caught up on attendance, which I missed yesterday, and writing seven billion cut slips sigh. Still need to do participation.
*Also graded a random Calc assignment, which means I only have two more assignments for them before I'm totally caught up. And some random participation and entrance tickets. Sigh.
*Worked with favourite student for an hour-plus after school today! That's always fun, I like her a lot.

Physical:
*Walked to therapy, because my bike is borked. Beat the 91, but only barely.
*Took a shower in the morning
*Went to squares and did a bit of dancing! Also I'm going to lead the grand march. I have not done this yet, so we'll see how it turns out.
*Added: The grand march went totally fine! We went up and down staircases! Somehow nobody died!
*Wrist is mostly feeling better. Still keep tweaking it, booooo.

Social:
*Went to squares! Chatted with random people
*Got called rude on the internet for telling a white man I wouldn't keep arguing with him unless he paid me. His retort was "should I invoice you for my valuable time then?" and then making ten more comments in the thread to other people. I am laughing my fucking _ass_ off.
*Gonna go curl up with Austin and do sleep! I guess this also counts as physical?

Personal:
*Wrote words without accomplishments list. Day 151 in a row, day 127 this year.
*Did some nice friendly social on dumb phone game. I liked it!
*I have now checked my email and done read-response for everything for two weeks in a row. I haven't made any forward progress on the endless pile of unread things, but for two straight weeks I've not made negative progress. I kinda like this!

~Sor
MOOP!

I still have under 600 unread emails, but it was a close thing. I got an email from my friend nagging me about a thing I need nagging on (this is a good thing) but it made me freak out and want to avoid my entire email inbox because like...I cannot get my daily for that unless I make sure to do all my emails for the day and soooo.

But I've recently come back and the last two days I've at least looked at everything. Which is good.

I still don't have health insurance (I found out a week ago that it's been terminated). I really need to work on going through mail and calling mass health and figuring out why it was turned off and how I turn it on again, but boyyyy that is just...not...happening right now. Maybe having mek around will make it easier, and maybe I will just not have health insurance or meds until mid-April, because that's an awesome thing for me innit?

Diiiiid I mention I have a mek? I am pretty pleased I have a mek. It was a sudden surprise of "so, I can actually visit you in like three weeks if that works for you" thing, and I said yes and so he rode a train cross country to come see me, look, I'm not saying my boyfriends are better than yours but have any of yours hung out on a train for four days just to bring you a dead spider in a snow globe I think NOT!

Highland Ball stuff is continuing apace. I'm actually in a weird gentle space where I'm a lot less behind on everything and feel a lot less stressed about it all. Really, right now I'm a lot less anxious and a lot more depressed, and so that's pretty good, except for the part where I'm a lot more depressed. I'm working on it, they lied.

On the plus side, I did clear off most of my bed. Granted, this was a lot of pileating, but it was a noble attempt.

Wheeeee, I finished my words before mek came back from brushing his teef! Gold star for me!

((I know this entry is crap and disconnected, but I haven't written anything in here for over two weeks.))

How's you?

~Sor
MOOP!

Crossposts: http://kdsorceress.livejournal.com/768999.html

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING:

1548:

Man, my folder of worship is getting *awesomely* full. One Comedity print, original art by Randy Milholland, Randall Munroe, and Jeph Jacques, a random commision of a dinosaur I bought at AnimeBoston, Hiro's milk mustache ad, the picture of me that Dominik used as a print for his portfolio, and my still alive index cards.

And that's not counting the Maryland folder of worship which contains an obscene amount of KattersArt, and my original sluggy art.

(For reference, the folder of worship is basically full of everything that goes on the wall of worship. So, not real posters, but Other Cool Things. I should put the ST article I ripped out of a magazine in there too.)

1557: Dude, that's James Bond? What the hell is James Bond music doing in my iTun...ohyeah. Thanks Talia!

1636: Unrelatedly to anything (I'm fine today, just a little stressed out) I find it really interesting that, one of the things I do when I'm trying really hard not to start crying in public, is to begin seeing how much of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I can recite.

Granted, this somehow backfires as I originally began to learn hitchhikers as a self-masochistic way to illustrate the 2718.89 miles between me and my clone, and if I think too hard about that I'll be depressed, but still, just as a "shit shit I need to distract myself from everything in real life" it works like a charm.

1925: ...Ohyeah, I was working on this. Well, I mean, Ria was all "doof?" and dhs was all "I'll bribe you to come to Diesel with the offer of giving back your clothes" and so I went and got dinner with Ria and Mando (who recently dyed his hair BLUE and so now looks not unlike a character of mine) and then went to Diesel where I stayed for like...an hour or something. On the wicked plus side, I was finally properly/formally introduced to

sunspiral, which is exciting. *adds him as a friend*

Now all I need to do is properly meet Cthulia and I'll be able to officially consider myself a Boston based fen.

2137: Did I really just spend the last two hours reorganizing my friends lists, again? Fuck. Me.

2224: You know what I want to know? I want to know how long it would've taken me to meet and become friends with Janny without the sluggy.net link. I think the only other person on my friends list who I could say pretty confidentally that I would meet without however I met them having happened is dan4th. And maybe very vaguely possibly Magus, but only insomuch I would've started to meet him at Balticon '06 rather than Origins '04

I'm attempting to clean out my gmail inbox, ie, archiving everything I'm done with. I had 1209 messages from 2008 sitting in my inbox waiting to be archived and about 4500 overall, I am *hilariously* bad at this, and not just because of the several hundred comment threads of doom I'm ignoring with mek.

OH! And I might be going to GenCon this year!! Mom's going, and if I can get the time off from wherever I will be working, there was an implication of me being able to booth babe for Joan. :D!

2237: So, something Tristan asked me right when we found out we were both virgos¹ was "So what's your neurosis?" I can't remember exactly what I answered --almost certainly my default compulsion, the fact that I clean my glasses overly often, and every single time I ever get into a conversation about OCD or neuroses. *speaking of which, cleans 'em now. Sigh*

But I think my current big one is the neck thing. I hate hate HATE having my neck touched, it freaks me out. Occasionally, I'll just freak out about the fact that I have a neck for no good damn reason which pisses me off, especially when I get the "ohgodohgod, need to have nothing near my neck, RIGHT NOW" Necklaces and collars I can take off. T-shirts are harder. Skin is impossible.

I was idly thinking about this, and about the fact that, when doing the cuddling/petting/caressing fan situation that I seem to find myself in a lot, if someone gets their hands too close to my neck, I will invariably move their hands down.

At some point, I am going to inadvertently move their hands down to far and accidentally cause someone to grope me. Stupid fucking neuroses.

2301: Oh, bitches!! So, I'm looking at my class schedule, and the creative writing class I really wanted to take because hey --Sorcy likes creative writing!-- takes place on Thursdays. From 6:45 to 9:15 PM.

Yeah, when is Concord based contra again? What's that? Exactly that time? What the fuck Belanie. What the fuck.

(So now I have to decide if I'm going to try and find another class to take instead or if I'm just going to not start doing contra up here until next January --I suspect one of the deciding factors in which I choose will be how much contra I get in over the summer.

Still though. Bitches.

0019: QUOTE OF THE DAY:

JoshZed:
this is more of the strong evidence that I'm really a 1 on the Kinsey scale
or close to it
I mean, if Randall doesn't do it for me, who will?

(Good lord, has the concept of sexing up Randall Munroe become a *theme* in my livejournal? That's either terrifying or awesome.)

Also, I am amused that I started this as 'thoughts while packing' and haven't actually packed anything in seven hours or so.

0101:

NEW Quote of the Day!

"Do I want to know why you are interested in my lovelife?"
"Because human interactions of all sort fascinate me."
"Any sort of interaction is fascinating if it involves cherry-flavored lube!"
[Immediate follow-up comment] "...........I did not just type that.........."

0112:

OHMYGOD.

Does the world love me? I don't actually know. But the world might!

But...not being at movie night.

But Satanic motherfucking Mechanics!

Ohhhh, I should not be forced to have decisions like this...

0222: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Sor? Fuck you. Go do your paper. Like...now. Just because you know damn well you're not going to be sleeping tonight is no reason to not get the paper done early.

P.S: What is your plan, to sleep on the floor or something eventually? You're incredibly fucking stupid, I hope you're aware of that. Also, a week of sleep-dep? What makes you think you'll even be able to potentially *begin* to make it to Rocky? Yeah, that's what I thought. Tell your terminal optimism to fuck off.

Allfornow

~Sor
MOOP!

1: heh, I almost wrote that as 'virgins'. Oops.

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MOOP!

The Rantings of a Terminal Optimist

Entries tagged with inbox zero is a laudable goal

Little Digital Projects Report

(no subject)

(no subject)

accomplishments

stuff and things and a mek!

Brought to you by...uhm...something theatre!