9 August 2000

Reading:  The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

Maybe I should have reread what I wrote last night upon waking up this morning.  I feel like I have wasted a lot of minutes today.  I had this notion recently that it would be great fun to get a group together and go to UH Theater's annual Shakespeare Festival production at Miller Outdoor Theater and emailed some friends, none of whom could make it tonight.  So Callie and I went to take in tonight's production of Othello.  I'm sure it was fine.  I couldn't follow any of it.  My mind was on the dissertation, and the Dancing Wu Li Masters, and Presidential politics, and a million other things that I should have been working on.  My mind was not on being entertained.  

That last sentence was something else I kept thinking about tonight:  I was sitting in the grass wishing I had a book or something to write with or something to engage my mind actively, anything but sitting passively "being entertained" by a play I couldn't even follow because my brain was busy.  I'm in a contemplative zone right now, my brain is actively engaged, and yet I'm spinning my wheels.  Getting nothing done.  Wasting minutes.

Not that I didn't waste a lot of minutes today already.  My DSL connection has died again -- heaven forbid I have my computer system working in its entirety for a whole week -- and so after about 4 phone calls with associated hold times, I finally found someone who concluded that SW Bell was at fault, and that maybe in 3-7 days they could trace the problem in the DSL line.  Wonderful.  I'm not even betting on it being fixed in 7 days to be honest.   I wasted more minutes with a number of short naps, the need for which was probably brought on by the fact that, according to Callie, I seemed to suffer from sleep apnea last night, and not for the first time.  Also wonderful.  So by the time I finished the workday, it's about 6 pm, throw in walking Kiwi, dinner, Miller Outdoor Theater, etc., and it's now10 p.m. with no dissertation work having been done.

This thing is turning into an albatross.  I've never doubted my ability to do anything, but I am starting to wonder about this.  I've not been backpacking this year, which is a ridiculous state of affairs (this is something else I was thinking as I was sitting in the grass at Miller Outdoor Theater).  I've not done a lot of things I might have done this year thinking I will make some progress.  And I have made some progress.  Just not enough.  Too many things continue to interfere.  Computers crashing and needing to be tended to.  Insurance needing computers to be taken to repair facilities for official diagnosis before they cut me a check.  DSL dying and requiring me to be on the phone with idiots who ask me if it is plugged into the wall (no, I thought the DSL modem was cordless! gawd). Coworkers needing babysitting.  And wanting to have a semblance of a life.  

I'm whining.  I know.  It's my website.  My prerogative.     

But I'm going to stop now and read some Charles Beard.  Minutes are wasting after all.