Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibility

Ok, so technically this isn’t a photo, but I still think it’s appropriate for this week’s challenge because in this blank page I see endless possibilities – the possibility for a fantastic novel, or for the (seemingly inevitable) crippling writer’s block that strikes whenever I actually have the time to write. Which is not very often these days.

I might blog about this soon but just in case you don’t hear from me for a little while, these are my current excuses:

1. I have several major assignments due for Uni
2. I am in the process of moving house
3. Lil Miss Awesome is turning 1 in a few weeks so I have her very first birthday party to plan
4. My mother-in-law is coming up from interstate to stay with us for said birthday party

And, of course, all of these things are happening at the same time – and during a period where Lil Miss Awesome has decided that sleeping is a waste of time! They say if you want something done, you should give it to a busy woman, but, if you want it done right you should probably give it to a well-rested busy woman who isn’t notorious for procrastination and being easily distracted…

So far, so good…

I think I really may be onto something with this experiment. I’m not going to lie, I haven’t even considered working on my ideas for a novel but at least this blog has brought some organisation to the chaos that is my mind. Since I started this blog, I’ve found that every time I start to get bored with something, I end up logging on here to read Freshly Pressed/one of the blogs I follow, check my stats, or think about what I might write about myself…Unfortunately, as I predicted, now that I’ve given myself the task of posting something new every week I’m also coming up with new ways of getting out of my blogging commitments. Luckily this past week it has been Uni assignments that have distracted me from updating my blog, and since they are definitely more important right now, that tells me that this experiment, albeit boring, is a success…at least so far.

Believe it or not, I used to be smart.

It’s true. I’m sure this will come as quite a shock to anyone who has only known me post-pregnancy (when hormones and sleep-deprivation started turning my brain to mush) but once upon a time I was a fairly intelligent person, capable of such impressive feats as: holding actual conversations and *gasp* constructing full sentences without even breaking a sweat. Hard to believe, I know. Nowadays, even when I can somehow manage to organise my thoughts into words, the signal seems to get disrupted somewhere between my brain and my mouth so that everything I say comes out as gibberish. The same goes for my writing; last week I had to write my first formal essay since having Lil Miss Awesome and not only did it take me about ten times longer than it would have in the old days, but by the time I finished it I’d gone off on so many different tangents that I completely forgot what my argument was supposed to be. The whole thing really needed to be rewritten but since I only had 25 minutes before the submission deadline, I had no choice but to hand it in as it was. I’m really dreading getting my marks back. Not so much because I care about the grade – the idea of doing Honours seems to have lost some of its appeal – but because my lecturer for this course didn’t know me back when I was smart. I feel like I should have sent a cover note with my assignment, something along the lines of:

“Please find attached my assignment. This essay took more effort than any other I have ever written…unfortunately it is also the worst essay I have ever written. Sorry. I’m not really a moron, I swear!”

*Sigh* I really miss my old brain.

Some of the other things I miss about my pre-motherhood life

• Sleep!!!  Including, but not limited to:
  • Averaging more than 3 hours of sleep per night (or at least having the option to put my insomnia to use on one of my many unfinished projects)
  • Having the option to go to bed earlier than 11.30pm without being woken up 45 minutes later
  • Blocks of sleep lasting longer than 45 minutes
  • Sleeping-in on… well, any day would do
• Long hot bubble baths that aren’t interrupted by an attention-hungry baby…
• Being able to set my own schedule without having to allow for play time, nap time, feeding, changing etc
• Being able to leave things to the last minute because I can always make time later…

Oh, and being allowed to take my migraine medication would be nice too…

Things that I now couldn’t do without

• Being greeted every morning with big smiles, cuddles and kisses
• Having someone actually enjoy my singing!
• My own personal entertainer – who’d have thought that peek-a-boo was so hilarious?!
• Having an excuse to watch Monsters Inc. and various other kids’ movies
• Listening to cute babbling stories punctuated with giggles
• The excitement of hearing my little darling call me “Mama” for the first time 🙂

As much as she is driving me mad at the moment, choosing to have Lil Miss Awesome is still the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and I wouldn’t trade her for all the brain cells and luxuriously long bubble baths in the world.

Although a couple of hours’ sleep wouldn’t go astray…

Confession #3: Zombies made me do it!

Well, I’m sticking with my Procrastinator-Post-A-Week commitment but I’m going to have to keep this post fairly brief because a horde of zombies has stopped me from getting anything productive done today…or yesterday…or just about any other day this past week. It’s not my fault, though! As I’ve mentioned previously, The Motivator has got me hooked on Call of Duty: Black Ops (the Zombies part of it, anyway) and now at odd moments during the day I’ll find myself daydreaming about whether it’s better for me to get the power on quickly and use my points to buy the Bowie Knife, or to take the risk on the mystery box and hope that I’ll score the Ballistic Knife or Thundergun (I’m usually not that lucky).

Lately I’ve managed to (mostly) resist the temptation of playing on my own – which may have something to do with the fact that I don’t get very far by myself and the zombie-gollum thingies freak me out – but now we’ve made the mistake of introducing my sister and best friend to the game too, and with four players the game is just that little bit more interesting…

So far Lil Sis has managed to avoid the addiction and only plays when we ask her to, so either she has a lot more will-power than the rest of us or she’s just not that interested in having The Motivator yelling instructions at her and whingeing when she takes ‘his’ kills. Probably a bit of both. My best friend on the other hand is hopelessly obsessed and I am therefore holding him responsible for my total lack of productivity. I had a lot planned for this weekend (unfortunately all homework or housework related) but it’s very difficult to turn down a good zombie hunt.

Besides, I have a very severe case of writer’s block at the moment and I can’t even remember what the book I am supposed to be analysing is about so it only makes sense that I should take a break and kill zombies. It’s great inspiration.

PS. Does anyone know if there’s a way to get the Thundergun in Kino Der Toten without using the mystery box??? Because I am really sick of getting stuck with the Dragunov against a theatre full of zombies and gollum-thingies.

Sometimes my excuses are legit…

I’ve always been a night person. No, that’s not quite right…

I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac and I just try to make the most of it. That means that when I do actually get around to writing – whether it’s for Uni or for one of my stories – I tend do my best work at night (probably because most of the time it’s ideas for writing that are keeping me awake in the first place).

Unfortunately, Lil Miss Awesome seems to be a ‘night person’ too (at least tonight she is) and I don’t write/type well one-handed while simultaneously trying to settle a whingeing baby.

So I thought now would be as good a time as any to point out that it’s not always my procrastinating habits and short attention span that stop me from getting things done as planned. For example: I had every intention of writing another post for my confessional tonight (although technically it’s morning now where I am) but after about a dozen failed attempts to get LMA to sleep for more than twenty minutes, I am so well-and-truly distracted (not to mention exhausted) that it’s just not gonna happen right now…

Stay tuned!

My dog didn’t eat my homework…

But one of these things probably stopped me from doing it in the first place:

Facebook
I’m listing this one first because it’s the one I’m most ashamed of. I don’t even like Facebook but that doesn’t stop me from checking my Facebook page at least daily. Usually more. At least I’ve (somehow) managed to avoid the dreaded FarmVille plague that seems to have infected some of my ‘friends’…

Catching up on the ‘news’
Arrgh! I used to have Ninemsn as my home page but I had to change it back to Google. I found that every time I needed to pay a bill online or find a phone number or any other five-minute task it would end up taking me an hour because for some reason I just had to find out what Justin Bieber was wasting $15k per week on and that would lead me to some other very important article. Like the one about someone finding a live rat in their loaf of bread. Compelling stuff.

Housework
At least this one is productive! My house always seems to be the cleanest whenever I have an essay or other assignment due. Not that my house is usually very untidy but I’m just saying, if I have the choice between describing the art-making strategies of the historical avant-gardes in blah blah blah or cleaning the microwave, the microwave wins hands-down.

Looking for random objects that I’ve only just realised are missing but now can’t seem to function without
Unfortunately this one happens all the time. I don’t know why it is impossible for me get started on my filing after I’ve discovered that my left weight lifting glove is missing, but apparently it just is. It doesn’t even matter that the glove has probably been missing for three years (because that’s when The Motivator bought them for me – in his deluded optimism that I might actually go to the gym), or that I have no intention of lifting any weights. I just need it, okay?

Killing zombies
The Motivator recently introduced me to the Zombie game in Call of Duty: Black Ops and, although I can say in all honesty that I am nowhere near as addicted to it as he is, I’m still finding myself drawn to the Xbox far more than I should be…

Confession #2: I have the attention span of a goldfish

Well this blog is off to a great start – I managed to spend five whole minutes working on my first real post before getting completely sidetracked and forgetting what I’d planned to say (but at least I got my washing done). Unfortunately this is a frequent occurrence for me because I have a phenomenally short attention span (we haven’t ruled out ADHD just yet) and I tend to multi-task just a little bit too much…

So, I decided that rather than wait until I remember the point I was trying to make in Confession #1: My ulterior motive, I should just move onto Confession #2 instead and explain that – for obvious reasons – the majority of my posts will be short.

And, yes, I do realise that I could’ve just renumbered this post but that’s not how I do things 😛

Woohoo!

Yay I’ve started a blog! Which, on my very long list of things to do today was number…. oops.
Ohhh, I can already see this is going to be very good for my productivity….