Scheduled Productivity

In trying to be more productive with my time lately, I’ve been finding so many new things I want to try and keep up with.  However, when I get excited about a new project, I tend to focus on it and forget about other ones I had already started…

I decided to go back to what I’ve done before and have a weekday schedule of project types for each day.  I actually found my old post from 2012 that had my old schedule listed:

  • Monday: Video games! and reading
  • Tuesday: Crafts project
  • Wednesday: Technical project
  • Thursday: Do something with Jack (play games or do a project or something)
  • Friday: Free choice

When I decided to make my current one, I had remembered that I used to have one, but I couldn’t remember what it was and hadn’t looked it up.  It turns out it was pretty much the same as the previous one!  Including the day for hanging out with Jack – I guess I’m pretty consistent in trying to have a dedicated “You have to spend time with me” day 😂 The difference now is that Tuesdays and Thursdays also include going to the gym after work, so the days are moved around based on what I am okay with having less time for:

  • Monday: Technical project
  • Tuesday: Gym, hang out with Jack
  • Wednesday: Crafts/journaling
  • Thursday: Gym, games, read
  • Friday: Whatever

An interesting thing is that in the blog post about my old schedule, I wrote that I had decided to come up with it “so I don’t get lazy and do nothing when I can’t decide what to do”.  The one I have now is almost the opposite – I have too many things I want to do and it gets to be a big mess with nothing getting finished if I don’t have focused days!

I haven’t quite decided if writing this blog post today is on schedule or off schedule – I usually put it in my planner for a weekend.  I guess writing a blog post would kind of fall under journaling.

And now, Juggernaut:

New Year Rest

It’s a new year, and the day before work starts again.

All I’ve done today is rest and relax, only leaving the house to go to the gym and pick up some food.  Did some Blogilates after I woke up, ate a light lunch while reading Hedy’s Folly, wrote in my planner/journals, watched the Pens @ Flyers game (Fuck the Flyers), worked on the weight average app I’m making for myself, went to the gym, ate dinner, did some cross stitch, did the second day of the YOU-NICORN 30-day workbook, did the second day of the OmStars 30-day yoga challenge, and read a chapter of War and Peace.

Even though I think I’ve always needed it, it hasn’t been until this last year that I’ve really put into a conscious thought and words my need for recharge time.  I guess that it’s pretty classical introversion, though I never really connected it together before.  When we take vacations, if we’re coming home the day before we go to work, I prefer not to come home too late so that I can just sit around on the couch for at least a few hours doing nothing important.  For this long holiday break, even though I’ve had days in the middle to just rest and relax at home, I pre-reserved the last day to just spend at home doing my own thing.  Even just going out for dinner takes energy away from me; being around people, even if not talking to them, makes me really tired.  Being in very loud and energetic environments is stressful and completely drains me.

In fact, even though I’ve been at my current job for over 5 years and am very comfortable and familiar with what I do and the people around me, so I don’t have the anxiety of finding my place and getting used to people, I come home exhausted just from being around everyone.  Jack used to ask me why I just sit around and do nothing so often, and I think it came from that that I gradually had to put it into words that I need to just sit and re-energize.  Even if we’re hanging out with friends we like, even if we’re out doing something fun that doesn’t involve interacting with the people surrounding us, just being around the people is a lot for me.  I need mini home vacations after actual vacations where I’m continually surrounded by people.

I bought the book Quiet in 2012 but I never got around to reading it.  Seems like it should be the next on my list.

Anyway, I decided this post is also a good chance to look back on the cross stitching I’ve done this past year.

  • I made this Pusheen for Jack to put on his desk
    • Made this for some friends getting married
    • Two sets of friends had babies within 3 days of each other… so I did two of these in a row
    • Made this as a housewarming gift
    • Making this now to be a birthday gift

We’re still alive!!!

BaconFriedRice has been neglected for a long time.  We’re still using this ugly theme I randomly picked a long time ago, even though I was working on making one over a year ago… Jack hasn’t posted about games or anime, and I haven’t posted about books or worked on anything in my spare time like I used to.

Biggest reason – we have no spare time!  Work is awesome, but we put a lot into it and it takes up almost all of our time.  When I’m free on the weekends I’d rather just sit around doing nothing than work on anything.  I’ve sadly even dropped the things I was doing while I had nothing to do at my previous job – I used to read books all the time, and now my reading has slowed so much that it took me over a year to finish reading Crowdsourcing (don’t even ask when the post about it will be!).  I’ve only finished two other books since then (I Am Jackie Chan and Nine Algorithms That Changed The Future), and I never learn – I start new books without finishing my current ones, and still keep buying more!  One day I’ll get through all the books I have… and one day I’ll post about them all… in the meantime, I’m still keeping track of my books on my Books Trello.

I’ve also stopped working on all the projects I had been working on… and learning the new languages… I have nothing made with Node.js, haven’t even finished one language in Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, have not finished the BaconFriedRice redesign (started May 2012!), stopped playing around with random parallax things… just stopped learning stuff on my own like I used to.  I’m sad and I want to keep working on stuff, but I’m just so tired when I get free time now :(  I need to somehow motivate myself to do things again.

In other random life news… My hair has purple highlights, we are buying a condo that will be completely constructed around December/January… and that’s about it.  My life is boring.  Hopefully you’ll see a post about a book or a project soon.

Dumpsters

I was reading A Free Life by Ha Jin on the plane yesterday, and noticed that the book capitalized “Dumpster”.  I hadn’t realized before then that Dumpster is actually a brand-name-turned-word… So I tried to come up with some more on the plane ride, but all I could think of was Popsicle (only because the same book capitalized that too) and Post-It.

As Jack and I drove home from the airport, we came up with a few more, then Googled it at home and came up with a short list:

  1. Dumpster
  2. Popsicle
  3. Post-It
  4. Jeep
  5. Vaseline
  6. Kleenex
  7. Aspirin
  8. Thermos
  9. Zipper
  10. Tupperware

It’s pretty fascinating to me.  According to Wikipedia, these are genericized trademarks.  I think it’s interesting how some brands can become so popular and often used that they’ve come to stand for the item they brand.  I remember I once borrowed a three-inch-thick book from the library in elementary or middle school full of words and their origins.  I guess I’m fascinated by how words and phrases come to be… I like how Chinese characters are made up of parts that contribute both sound and/or definition.

Not to mention I used “Google” as a verb… and of course we “friend” people on Facebook.

I’ve never seen Dumpster and Popsicle capitalized in books before this one.  My theory is that the Chinese author did a lot of research on English because it wasn’t his first language… interesting that the book is about a Chinese man who wants to write poetry in English, also not his first language.

I’m tempted to capitalize these genericized trademarks from now on, but I’d probably be “corrected” by people or lose points in classwork.