6.1 Just books, no faces.

Weird few days.

I succeeded on Monday & Tuesday but failed in my spend-no-money project on Wednesday, having to buy something to eat so I didn't starve in the 8-5 time block in which I wouldn't be home. Then I bought a dollar shake, 'cause it was shake day, then I went to Senior Night at the Pub, and there was a pitcher of beer and an attractive stranger and a walk home and my brain has been less apt at focusing since then. I need Dick Cheney to shoot me in the face and knock a little sense into me so I can get back on track. It's finals week.

Which makes now a very, very good time to spend three days with no Facebook. I need all work and no play and to be a dull girl. I need the grounding influence of words like nationalism, ethnicity, ideology. I need Nietzsche and Kafka to take me by the hand and show me very creepy things and force me to analyze them.

But first, I need to eat breakfast.

5.1 Money money money.

SPEND NO MONEY.

For three days. That's muh goal.

Which is not so hard unless you're me. And you are, I notice, because your hands are writing this and your eyes are looking at it and WHOA, not making sense.

I was smart today by taking advantage of the Senior Class Bribe, which was a free bagel and coffee if you submit to a little chat about Whether You've Given Yet and all. I haven't, because newsflash, I'm devastatingly poor. But I acted really interested in getting myself one of those donation envelopes, which sort of got me off the hook. Then I had my bagel (plain on everything) and coffee (with soy milk) and enjoyed my stroke of luck. Mondays and Wednesdays sort of make me have to buy lunch, because I'm going to-and-fro from 8-3 with only a 40-minute break, and I am usually tempted by samosas or other Indian food. And an Honest tea, because it's going to be spicy. And I spend a lot of money to satisfy my desire for tasty food, is the truth of the matter.

If I sound sort of weird, like I've been doing work all day, it's because I've been doing work all day.

The thing about not spending money is... it's difficult to leave your apartment. You can't just sit in a coffee shop without feeling like you have to buy something. And a coffee shop is the only place to go and work and be alone. The alternative to my apartment was the library, and respectfully, right now, no thanks. But there's no place where it makes sense to go and not buy something. Everything is centered around consumption. You might as well not exist if you're not shopping. It would be a different story if it were springtime, but alas, Chicago's brief fling with the sun was not meant to last and we're back with the gray-white Standard Edition sky.

Some people have money. Like, they consistently have money. When they go to the grocery store they can buy fancy delicious cheese. They can shop at Anthropologie and wear something everyday that they feel attractive in. They can buy athletic equipment, lots of books, vacations, kitchen supplies from Williams-Sonoma.

I want to be one of those people without having to structure my life around unhappy circumstances for the privilege of wearing a lovely dress on the weekend and using a shiny grapefruit spoon.

This might not happen, I guess.

I am OK with that, deep down.

4.3 Run run run run run run run run run.

Yes, that's from a song.

It turns out that working out is not so bad. It takes 40-50 minutes out of my day (walk to gym, run 10-15 minutes, walk back, shower) which is readily available most days and is a better way to spend your time than Facebooking. It re-energizes but also calms me. I am hot from working out and I cool down with the shower. My muscles get used, and then relax. They held up better today, although I couldn't quite make it the whole mile yet again; a huge cramp in my side took over and I ignored it for a while, and then couldn't. I missed about .05 miles. Then I felt bad so I added them at the end.

Also I feel better about eating cookies.

I plan to go to the gym again tomorrow even though it's the fourth day. I have a ton planned for tomorrow so I can't start something new; this is my concession. I'm also thinking of generally taking a day off in between each set of three days. Lately I'm not having time for intensive things and my thoughts are consumed with stuff they should actually be consumed with. I am making interesting strides in other ways, and trying new things.

Now I might read a little for fun and sleep.

The Verdict:

• Exercise is not fun unless you have an iPod. Everything that is fun about it doesn't have much to do with the actual activity. But the pay-offs are good anyway, mental or otherwise.

4.1-4.2 Keep running back to me

In hindsight, it wasn't smart to start this right before my BA is due (a draft next week--really?)

A few comments:

My project of yesterday-today is running a mile a day. Not a big deal, right? But I don't exercise much, let alone daily, so I count it. Also I have been more adaptable to going outside, because the overcast depression that has been hanging over Chicago for a week finally drifted away yesterday, revealing a sky that is blue and a sun that is bright. Mmm. Something that the sunrise project taught me is how essential weather is in determining mood. The past couple days have still been cold, but who cares? That white-gray void of a sky gave up and went home. (Note: have you ever flown into Chicago in the winter? You know you must be over Chicago because all you see is the topside of the overcast, a fluffy white uninterrupted blanket.)

So I went to the gym. Yesterday running was great. In fact, I ran (OK; jogged) the whole mile easily, and the only thing that hurt was my feet, unused to pounding the belt of a treadmill. Today, though, my legs were building muscle and let me know they weren't happy after about half a mile. Ow ow ow. So I walked about .15 miles, and ran the rest.

I don't particularly like running. It's sort of boring, for a physical activity. I do like listening to my iPod, though (big points for likable rap & dance music), and I especially like having run. Ah, an accomplishment. It takes ten minutes or so and I'm done. There's a bit of an intense vertigo I always get stepping off the treadmill (akin to whooooa-I-definitely-drank-too-much) but maybe this is normal.

No epiphanies. But it's nice being a little more active than usual. Especially after hearing about this.

3.3 Productivity. Wait, what?

Today's schedule: worked at the library from 8-11:15, straight to my first class, 40 minutes for lunch, on to my second class, home at 3, 30 minute break, and 5 hours of BA work, making me finished with my day at roughly 8:30. Whew. I deserve to be eating a half pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream--oh WAIT, I am.

You know how I went on briefly yesterday about the virtues and consequent glories of time segmentation? You didn't believe me, did you? You didn't try it, did you? HOW SILLY OF YOU. Try it right now. Do something for 10 minutes, bounded by an alarm clock. Just pick something up and read it. Or open up your resume and remove "ecoanarchical movements" from your interests. But you have to set the clock because if you don't, you won't do anything for 10 minutes because you're being made to do something boring for an unbounded amount of time when you could be reading hilarious neoconservative blogs!/watching Youtube videos of laughing kittens!/reading about Jon Stewart on Wikipedia!

Because you, like me, have the attention span of a gnat.

But if you do set the alarm you're all, oh what the hell, it's only 10 minutes and then I can watch laughing kittens on Youtube except after 5 minutes you realize you're concentrating because you have no choice and that you don't actually care that much about laughing Youtube kittens, it's just a distraction from the panic-inducing mound of shit you have to do. But after 10 minutes, 10 minutes of it is finished, and you're all, that was really fast, and so you do another 10 and before long your mound of shit is reduced to a modest pile. I hope you're still picturing papers.

After this weekend I went from an Oh-My-God-inspiring 24 pages needing written to a manageable 14 (assuming I write 50 pages, which I'm sure I'll actually go over and have to edit down). It was beautiful.

The Verdict:

• MAJESTY and WONDER.

3.1-3.2 Working for the weekend

Goal: 5hrs/day of working exclusively on my BA. No distractions.

Friday I pulled off two and a half hours before I had to go to a play, and yesterday I pulled off all five, resulting in a glorious eight pages. I decided to celebrate by going to a party--I would go for a little while, I reasoned, and then come home, eat some ice cream and watch "An Education." Except turned out it was a really good party and I wanted the socialization, so cut to me interrogating this French guy named Basile and then seeing and talking to everyone from the Weekly and from the Pune program and discussing all matter of things with this group of guys in the kitchen and then walking/running home at 2am. Horrific hangover today. Add rum and sparkling white wine to the list of drinks I should not drink in concert.

Anyway, here's what I can say: work is significantly easier to do if you break it into time segments. I timed myself by setting the alarm on my clock for an hour at a time, and it's so easy to talk yourself into another hour or thirty minutes or twenty minutes when you get into the project and get a feel for how time passes. Seriously. Do this. Try it. Increase your productivity.

Alright, back to hungover work for me.

[Break Day]

Weeee.