May 3, 2015

 Today kind of sucked. It was predictable but it still kind of sucked. I didn't write my research paper, and it is going to be super hard to find the motivation after work during the week. I did watched a few long conference lectures and several shorter videos on linked data, taking a few notes and trying to absorb all the information. I very briefly started looking at the articles I found. I really wish this was an annotated bibliography and not a research paper. I can knock an annotated bibliography out really fast. Now I just need to get over that initial hump and start typing. I've got the basic idea of what I want to do with the paper but now I need to find all the supporting stuff in the articles. And actually start typing, of course. God help me if I put it off until next weekend. I really wish I was in the other section of the class because their paper was due today, seeing as how they received the assignment a week before my section did. I tried to pretend like mine was due today but I knew better. I'd be feeling so much relief right now if I was done with it, though. It's like any time you actually sit down and do homework and don't put it off until the last minute. It feels great, but for some reason that isn't motivation enough to make it a common occurrence.

I made two more posts to the discussion thread for this week, so that's something slightly productive I accomplished. Along with the laundry I did tonight. So the day wasn't a complete waste. Although I did manage to waste so many hours. Maybe this week I need to pretend like I don't have the internet at home. I felt way more productive last semester when we didn't have the internet. I had to go back to using a real dictionary and thesaurus, and I couldn't get distracted by the internet. Now I really want to try that. That might have to be a thing. I'm not going to miss anything because all my internet activities (other than school stuff) is fairly pointless. Kind of like when I turn off my phone for a week or longer. It's not a big loss. And the gain in productivity would definitely be measurable. I like it.

My current favorite band is Little Hurricane. They've got less than an hour and a half of music on Spotify but I've been listening to them on repeat for the last two days, along with watching a whole bunch of live performances on YouTube. They're a duo, with a dude on guitar and a girl on drums, and it's just really solid music.

Unrelated to my enjoyment of their music, the drummer is also my current musical crush. Yes, she is attractive, but that is only part of it. At first I was more perplexed by her drumming, because it just looks different. In some of the live performances it kind of reminded me of a mechanical, animatronic style. I also think she holds the sticks differently, and maybe the sticks just look big. I don't know, I'm not that familiar with the ins and outs of drumming. But I started paying more attention to her because I was trying to figure out the drumming. That is when I noticed that she always looks happy when she's drumming. I can always use a little more happy in my life. In an interview she also said she used to be a cook but got tired of getting laid off so she decided to try out the music thing. I'm not against a relationship where the girl can cook, and maybe give me some pointers on my cooking. Like how to make a less ridiculous amount of spaghetti, instead of making enough to feed an army. And lastly, my favorite thing about her is that she is always wearing a dress. She looks respectable. It's like a throwback to the days where musicians dressed up and looked nice for a performance. It was a real event, not just a jeans and t-shirt kind of thing. I like it. So now I need to find a girl who cooks, plays drums, and wears dresses. Seems like a easy combo to find.

It's now 11:30PM and I'm not that tired even though I woke up relatively early this morning. But I think I'm going to go to bed. I thought I might try to read a linked data article before bed but I'm kind of sick of linked data after all the videos I watched today. Still a very interesting topic, but I'm good for today. So I'm going to go to bed and hope I can fall asleep, not just lay there and pretend. I'd like to hunker down and put in a late night tomorrow if necessary to get a decent chunk of my paper done. That would be great. Not as great as if I had done that yesterday. Or today. But still greater than putting it off yet another day. I don't need this paper to be the one that bites me in the ass. I survived high school and college, I don't need my procrastination to catch up to me an bite me in the ass in graduate school. Especially after all the work I have put in this semester, for this class in particular. So that's not going to happen. I'm going to rock this paper.