Post 17: I Got Sidetracked...

One of the things I hoped to achieve during this winter break was to be productive. I like to have a structured day wherein I would have specific periods of time dedicated to something. Sort of like how school had those 40-minute periods for each class. On my private wiki I've developed for myself a master schedule that accounts for typical deviations from a normal day. I have three "classes" if you will on there: Devotional, which is when I do my Bible studying; Programming, when I teach myself some programming language (currently PHP); and Creative Writing, when I let my creative side run. The Devotional period lasted a half hour while the other two were an hour long.

I was satisfied with this and started going with it. My first task in Programming was to complete my knowledge of JavaScript, which I did by learning about the many properties and methods for various object types. I also spent a day learning some basic and not-so-basic SQL, which is used to play with databases. Now I'm slowly crawling through PHP, which is used to put things on a Web page before the user sees it. In Creative Writing I completed the first chapter of "After Adults", a sort of post-apocalyptic series. Check it out at http://afteradults.blogspot.com. Then I moved on to a "Ben 10" fan-fiction that's been in my head for a long time.

Yet somehow, I fell out of the schedule after a little over a week. This seems to happen to me a lot. Without some external source giving me a schedule, like they did in school, I just can't seem to stay in a self-imposed routine for more than a week. In this case, I believe I know why. I got writer's block and decided, "I'll take a couple days off to refresh myself, then come back and continue." It's been six days now and I haven't gone back to it. I also ran into a bunch of things in PHP that I couldn't wrap my brain around. Instead of letting those slow me down I figured I'd come back to those when I was done going through the rest of the methods. I'm learning about the various commands that PHP has for arrays (arrays are difficult for me to explain in layman's terms - Google it) and well, compared to JavaScript, there are a lot. So many that it's getting monotonous for me to write each one down and learn it when I can't see myself ever being done.

My devotional period has not disappeared, though. It's of vital importance for me to study my Bible and I just about always spend a half hour daily on it.

With the disappearance of these two periods from my schedule, distractions have very quickly set in. Right now my days are being absorbed by the mind crack that is called Minecraft. I'm even getting bored with that as well, yet I usually log in once a day or so in order to build some experiment. I also have a blog going with my adventures in that: http://mineventures.blogspot.com. (That's right, I have three active blogs. The fourth is hosted on Xanga but was only ever made for a school assignment.) Otherwise, I just feel bored. A lot.

So, I think it's time for that to be fixed. I've had enough time to relax, now is my time to get back on track. I don't like wasting days because I'm not guaranteed the next one and I have things I would like to accomplish in my life. Time to get going!

Of course, I certainly picked a heck of a time to kick myself in the rear. Spring semester of college starts in one week and now I need to start collecting textbooks. Last semester I made several mistakes. One was deciding to do all of my notes on loose-leaf paper and then put it all in a binder. Why was that a mistakes? Although I prefer to be organized, as clearly evidenced I don't do a good job of it in the long run. Eventually I started leaving papers with notes on them lying around and they got mingled with other papers and lost. Also, they were wide ruled, meaning the space between lines was the size that most paper appears to be. I prefer college ruled paper, because it gives me more lines to write on. Apparently, I don't write with very big letters. In fact, I can fit two lines of writing into the top and bottoms halves of a wide ruled paper by writing just slightly smaller. So this semester I'm stocked up on college ruled spiral notebooks. With these I will be able to keep my notes and my room tidy while cramming information in microscopic text. Anyway, to get the textbooks I'm not sure what I have to do. I may e-mail my advisor to see how to do this. I think I can just print a copy of my schedule and show the bookstore lady. She'll know what to do from there.

Any advice on how to prep myself for another four months of school?