So this is what it’s like to be busy

What does busy mean? Well, it has a new definition for me which involves how you approach down time, rest time, leisure etc. In my case this generally means moving to the lounge, firing up the projector and watching some downloaded TV show or maybe a game of Gratuitous Space Battles. Being actually busy, means that I’m consciously aware during this time that there’s something else I have to do instead of this downside but making an actual decision to rest on the basis that doing otherwise would be counter productive.

I think it only really becomes a factor when your weekend is somewhat indistinguishable from the week. Like last semester, I have a couple of nightmare days in the week which have a bunch of lectures and tutes crammed in starting from the morning and ending late afternoon. This is a nightmare because it involves a crammed morning train and an even worse evening train (since I likely wont get a seat). Not enough time in the morning to crank out my news stories on my day job so the spare hour here and there in the day I need to scurry off to find a place to set up laptop and get my side job stuff done.

The good news is majority of my uni work is genuinely interesting which wasn’t really the case last semester. The bad news is I still have real problems with my approach to getting things done, whether it’s an assignment or a simple news story. I take too long to do it, I get side tracked, I do it more thoroughly than I should and then get stressed over the time I’ve taken to do the thing. If there’s an upside it’s that my work is good, in the case of my uni assignments it’s very good indeed so that’s not too bad.

I’m falling behind a little in Chinese homework. Mostly because it’s kind of less productive to do the actual homework than to do self study in a different way, eg. flash cards, Skritter, reading actual Chinese I haven’t seen before and sketching up problem characters and sentences on my whiteboard. So this is somewhat tactical again, because the work I’m doing is better aimed at what I know I’ll need to do for the big marks in assessment. Last semester was bad ass for Chinese assessment and despite the fact I got a good grade I really wasn’t happy, it was more of a reflection of everyone else doing badly too.

I should try kick out some more blog posts, because there’s plenty to talk about but … there’s a Chinese idiom that springs to mind. 轻重缓急. To weigh the relative importance of things. I should remember that when I’m done this blog will be my lasting record so a little more 重 then.