blog.olya

continuation from diny’s questions from the headache post.

why is it that i feel so overwhelmed? it is not like i am responsible for the world’s survival. well, i know what destresses me somewhat - writing down everything that’s on my mind. thankfully, i am not stressed now, but let me write down the list of responsibilities that i have. maybe, diny, its more than yours. it is probably (definitely) less than maha’s. but perhaps our individual tolerance levels are different for activities. i know, for example, tim doesn’t like to keep more than a few things on his to-do list at a time. neither do i, really, it is just i’ve seen him time and time again be “ruthless” with task creep, and just cut out things he doesn’t want to think about completely from the sphere of his concern. very smart. (reminiscent
of carnegie’s advice to “live in the sector of today“)

i suppose my activities list has several sections:

• personal responsibilities:
  • close people who i’d like to keep in touch with on a daily/weekly basis, such as friends, parents, tim
  • people who i need to spend at least an hour/month writing, or 2 hours/month meeting (per person) acquaintances at school, ex coworkers, coworkers, photography acquaintances
• schoolwork
  • since i attend all my classes, this is 11 hours a week for classes alone.
  • for school work, it is about 4 hours of reading a week, plus about 20 hours per assignment - with assignments usually being due every other week.
  • 2 hours a week at the computer science office, this is really friend-time though.
• work
  • depends on the week; thankfully this is more of a mental pressure as my manager understands that i can’t be available 8-4.
  • on average about 5 hours a week.
• chores
  • since i’ve moved out, this list has increased significantly. beyond daily cleaning that takes around an hour a day (dishes, bathroom, bedroom) there’s also..
  • weekly cleaning: laundry (~2.5hrs per load, mostly waiting), floor washing (30 mins), dusting (10 mins), cleaning up after the week’s activities (1hr) (if we didn’t have time to put things we use away)
  • about once every 2 weeks i dedicate myself into scrubbing down an area of the apartment. that takes around 3-4 hours per area
  • shopping - of course tim helps - but independently of what he ends buying, i usually need to spend about 2 hours each week on a shopping trip
  • cooking; the foresight to take things out to defrost them or to buy them. coming up with things to cook. the actual process of cooking. breakfast is easy, thankfully, but dinner is slightly more complex - at least in the amount of works it always feels like.
• personal time
  • interior design: ~2 hours a week easily on just reading/planning
  • humor: ~2 hours a week reading random things
  • random things: ~3 hours a week
  • blogs: ~2 hours of reading, commenting, writing lists like this one
  • books: ~4 hours a week on leisure reading of some sort
  • tv: ~5 hours a week on watching the shows that we follow (ads aren’t part of the equation
  • transportation: ~30 mins a day biking, if i’m not leaving downtown. (or going too far, or making more than one shopping trip)
  • fashion and gossip reading: forced myself to go through these faster as i know its a total time waste. BUT FUN. ~2 hrs/week
  • my photography: yeah, that thing. anywhere from 0hrs to 6/week on shooting. on any average week about 2 hours editing old work.
  • random knowledge: ~4 hours a week on news, various tutorials/guides, just learning new things
  • showering, make up, choosing clothes: :) this is as much relaxation as it is a time “waste” of picking what to wear! (yesss warm weather)
  • shopping, not groceries: decoration stuff, clothes, stuff for home (like cleaning stuff), books/journals. ~5hrs/month
  • pure day dreaming, aka meditation: ~1 hr a week
  • sleep: whatever time is left

granted most of these are things that EVERYONE HAS. probably the entire freaking list is identical for most of us. i guess maybe its my conscious awareness of all that i have to do in the next few days that makes me so frazzeled - and consequently forget what i need to do now, in an hour, was going to do, will have to do in a week.
also note i love doing most of the things on this list! :)

i’m too lazy to make any calculations though.

It is said that we are all three different people: the person we think we are (the one we have invented), the person other people think we are (the impression we make) and the person we think other people think we are (the one we fret about).

from

click here and wait for the 837KB background GIF to load and then drool.

google maps has extreme close ups in africa. the way that you can zoom in this far is through changing the z variable in the URL to some value (usually at most 23 from what I read).
in the links in that above page that say “images at this zoom aren’t shown”, click on “link to this page” to get the url, and then change the Z variable to 22 (or 21) there. zooming out will work too - but to zoom back in for others, you’ll have to do the “link to this page” and change z to 23 anyway.

if all this is too complex just look at the pretty pictures. crazy…

first headache in a while (excluding the whole being dropped on a piano fiasco). blargh.

goals: wouldnt your intermediate goals just be steps towards your long-term goals? i.e., in 5 years i wanna be working a decent computer-whatever-related job and have an established photography business. so in a few years, i should be progressing in some entry-level job and having a regular list of clients and/or a way of advertising and attracting people constantly. in a year, i should be working somewhere i want to be for a while, and be doing photography as much as possible to get my name out there. in 6 months, i want to get whatever non-work stuff out of the way (travel, slacking around) so that i can concentrate on being a grown-up (or trying to be), and having a clear idea of what kind of photography i want to do and how it will work. in 3 months, i want to finish school with good grades so that i can get a job and start building a portfolio that i can be happy with. in a week i need to finish this assignment and do this photoshoot. tomorrow, i need to red this article that i need for the assignment, and get a haircut cause nobody gives jobs to ugly people.

see people, now that’s genius. that’s pretty much exactly where i stumbled. i can say whats in 5 years but working backwards? never occurred to me.
i’m just going to use this as my list now!

its interesting how differently we perceive goals though. scarf has difficulties with long term view, and i have the problem with short term views (i.e. working backward).

SO WE ALL SHOULD BUY MY SUPER DUPER ORGANIZER SYSTEM!
(ha, fooled ya! thanks, superkev ;) )

week has finished and i’ve been slacking off way too much. at least i got a break - next 3 weeks? something enormous due each week. like, end-of-year projects. and then exams. oy oy oy!

our cat started shedding. wtf? so far no hair and BAM spring comes around and freaking fur all over the place. i didn’t sign up for this!

headache headache go away please come back another day.
its cssu pub night tonight. last one of the year. man, i can’t believe graduation is so soon…

oh, and,
my haircut is short and delicious!