thank God it's... Friday?

Man, why is staying on top of things so hard? It should be easier when I have all of this free time, right? But somehow I feel like I'm accomplishing less and less. How irritating. On the plus side, I do seem to have finally (mostly) recovered from jet lag. I'm still taking unnecessary naps in the middle of the day, but I've slept through most of the night the past few days. Still waking up really early, but alas. I'm holding out hope that once I go back to school, it'll all smooth out completely.

The past few days I've had the best of intentions about being productive, but I haven't accomplished the one thing I really should be doing, which is lesson planning. I have, however, been really good on the exercise front. I was unbelievably sore from my Monday/Tuesday weight training sessions on Wednesday and Thursday (my days off), but it was actually a nice feeling. Let me know that I was doing something right. And my legs were still a bit sore this morning when I did lower body again, but they don't hurt anymore! I ran some intervals on Wednesday, and then went again today for a bonus. It was drizzling a bit when I sent off, and just as I got to the farthest point from home to turn around, it started pouring. I only managed about 7 minutes before I took a walk break, then I just alternated jogging and walking all the way home. I was completely soaked when I got there, but I was just glad to have gone out and done it. Yesterday I wanted to pass a lot of time not lesson planning, so I walked about 6 miles. (That's almost 1/4 of a marathon, I realized!) So yeah, aces on the exercise front.

Wednesday I met my co-teacher in Gwangju, and she took me to TGIFriday's, which was tasty. We even ate relatively healthy, sharing a meal. We had a really nice visit, and she seemed to like her presents. Then yesterday I met one of Tim's Korean friends, a teacher from his old school. He was funny. And then Tim and I had a date with the new ETAs in Naju. Three out of four of them showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. They seem like nice enough people. Two girls and one guy. They're no Meghan, for sure, but if nothing else it adds a little novelty, some new characters. We went for dinner, then fruit cocktail things, then I turned in. They seem like they might be partiers, and I got an invitation to drink and presumably go wild in Gwangju with them tonight (or tomorrow, maybe, I didn't read it well), but I passed.

If we become friends, that's nice. If not... that's okay too. I had a nice conversation with Tim last night about our similar asocial tendencies. I didn't always used to be this way, I don't think, but maybe I was. These days, I'd just mostly prefer the company of a good book to most people. My family and people who've known me a long time would probably balk, but I think I'm actually a pretty shy person, in most situations. If I have to, I can always bring myself to strike up a conversation with people I don't know well, and initiate friendships, but most of the time I'd just prefer not to. It takes a lot for me to overcome my initial aversion to doing so. I remember when I arrived at the NY airport for my first flight to Korea, I sat down at the gate and saw the big group of people (like 35), all roughly my age, all sitting in a circle and talking. I mean, it was pretty obvious that these were probably all of the other Fulbrighters (I knew that about half of them would be on the same flight as me), but I still hid away for almost 45 minutes, watching them and chatting on my computer to Amy, trying to screw up the courage to go over there and introduce myself to someone.

I often wonder how much of this shyness, or discomfort with new people, was a result of being overweight. I recall being a lot more outgoing and talkative in high school, then I feel like I sort of retreated into my fat as I gained it in college. But I was hardly a social butterfly-- I was a Team Leader, and my job at Honors forced me to come into contact, and actively try to recruit, students everyday. Then again, I dealt mostly with people younger than me then, which has always been more comfortable for me. Now that I'm less fat, I should certainly feel more confident in meeting people. I should worry less that they will take one look at me and pigeonhole me as a "fat girl," to be unable to see past that. I know that I have a lot of good qualities, and they should be even easier to see now, like my waistline. So I shouldn't be so intimidated about meeting new people, especially guys.

But I'm vacillating. First, I admitted that I tend to be anti-social in large part by choice--asserted that I'd usually prefer the company of a good book. But then, I try to blame this aversion to social situations on latent shyness. So what's the real root of the problem? Is it really a problem? Is it so wrong to be satisfied with a few good friends and a lively internal life? Tim says no, and I tend to agree, but obviously something about it bothers me. But I don't want to be the life of the party.

In other news... I finished book #33 today, so I'm ahead of the game again. This one was called Son of the Revolution, by Liang Heng, and it was surprisingly good. Filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge about the Cultural Revolution and was just plain interesting, if somewhat long. That's all the China books I brought with me to Korea, but I certainly wasn't disappointed.

And now, I'm long overdue for an organization-related meditation. So let's talk about topic #1, time management. Stop reading now if you don't want to be bored. :)

How do you wish you spent your time? How do you actually spend it?

I want to write. I've expressed that as one of my most important 3 goals for the next 5 months, so I want to be able to arrange my schedule in such a way that I set aside time every single day with no distractions to just sit down and focus on the work of writing. Nowadays... I spend a lot of time in bed. Rearranging my computer will hopefully help with this, because now I can sit at the desk and also get an internet connection, so I'm aiming to spend less time in bed with the computer, which often leads to an unnecessary nap, and more time productively upright. Those idle times are the biggest thing I want to do away with. I want to replace long period of idle, lazy time with shorter but still enjoyable periods of time for myself, preferably spent reading.

What activities and distractions can you give up?

Well, for one, I've given up my hope of making any more great strides in learning Korean, and I broke the news to my co-teacher. She understood perfectly. This is funny, because it's not as if I've actually spent much time in the past few months studying, but I actually believe that a big part of the reason I was so unsuccessful at being productive was just the sheer number of things on my to-do list. I would get discouraged at the prospect of studying, reading, writing, and exercising, and would just go to bed. So by taking that pressure off of myself, and honing in on the things that are important to me and will be useful for my future, I'll hopefully be less distracted.

Another huge distraction for me is the internet. Which is why, whenever my internet stops working, I start telling myself, "Oh, it's probably for the best. This way I'll be able to get more done." I spend a lot of time sitting, or more accurately, laying next to my computer and staring at it. Waiting for emails to come, waiting for people I want to talk to to log onto messenger. Often I pair this with my daily reading, but the sheer amount of time I spend doing nothing is mind-boggling. In the month before I went back to America this last time, I'd even taken to playing word games online, sometimes for hours at a time. That's a good example of one way I do not want to spend my time. So, to tackle the negative influence of the internet on my productivity, I have a 2 part plan.

1. I'm going to adopt one of the recommendations of the article, and try to only check my email three times a day. I spend a lot of time screwing around with my email at school too, which is detrimental to my efforts to lesson plan. I also spent a lot of time talking about nothing with Meghan on Google chat, another time waster. And the most amazing part was, I still was terrible at replying to emails. (That's another mini-goal: to start replying to emails promptly.) I'd read them the second they came into my inbox, because I'd been looking at it for hours, but then I'd just shrug and let it sink into the quagmire of my inbox. Well, no more. I now have a clean inbox (have for about 24 hours), and I've been dealing with emails as they arrive, and either archiving or deleting them immediately. Once I go back to school I'm going to start with the 3 times a day plan. Once in the morning when I get to school I'll reply to, archive, or delete everything I've received over night. Then again after lunch, and at the end of the day. I'll be a little more flexible with myself at home, because hopefully I'll be busy most of the time, or away from the computer, but I'll make sure to have an empty inbox before I go to bed.

2. I'm going to try only logging into messenger for about an hour every night, during the time when I'm doing my reading. One less distraction.

Thus, I've pre-made my daily to-do lists for next week. I put it all on one sheet, and I'm going to print it and stick it to my door. It's convenient for me to mark things on the Google Calendar online, because I mostly am online all the time, but it's easy for me to ignore that too when I'm feeling lazy. So we'll try this new method, with all of the non-negotiables right there in black and white. What are they?

1. Exercise

2. Regular e-mail correspondence with the family

3. Reading

4. Blogging

5. Devotional

These are the things I MUST do everyday in order to accomplish the big three goals. Everything else is... negotiable. But I'm feeling pretty good about this, hoping it will work well.