Laziness vs burnout

I’m glad I asked you guys how to distinguish laziness and burnout. I’m really not good at seeing the difference.

Your answers convinced me I was about 75% burned out and about 25% lazy. I decided to focus on some basic things my life needs. Even a few days of reconnecting to my hobbies has done me a lot of good. Today I’m getting professionals in to help clean the house. (Because of my allergies, I have to keep a much cleaner house than most people, and this is intimidating to achieve when the house is a wreck.)

I suspect that once I ease the feeling of burnout, the laziness will go away. I’m already daydreaming again, which I hadn’t been doing in a while.

You know what I really want? Three months. A summer, like I had as a kid.

Bizarre stock photos

60 Completely Unusable Stock Photos

I like the guy sleeping on the birthday cake, and the young maiden Hitler eating bread.

More Wisconsin outrage

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier in Wisconsin:

Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom

Any of you folks in academia, either private or public, will really want to see this. The WI Republican party is targeting Professor Bill Cronon, who wrote a NYT op-ed about WI politics that asked some uncomfortable questions. They’re requesting to see all his emails for the past few months under an open record law. This law was designed so that citizens would have transparency in government activity, but instead this law is being used to discredit and intimidate the professor.

Well worth reading. For those who don’t know, I was born and raised in Wisconsin and my parents are still there. In the past, WI has been a very progressive state (to a degree that surprises some people on the coasts), and this current nightmare leaves me heartsick.

Question about working habits

1) How do you distinguish between laziness and burnout? (For yourself, anyway.)
2) Do other people tell you that you work too hard? Or not hard enough? Or do you rarely hear anything one way or the other?

Blog envy

For the most part, I like who I am.

But there’s a little part of me that’s envious of some of the great bloggers I have on my friends list. I don’t know how you guys do it. Multiple times a week, you have thoughtful posts about politics, writing, science, sociology–it just amazes me.

I occasionally write a longer post, but it takes a lot out of me. I never liked writing nonfiction in school, and I wonder if that extends to blogging. Maybe it’s just my low attention spa–ooh shiny!

Anyway, thanks for all you do. I like reading the thoughtful posts. And as for my own blog–at least I’m always myself here. Even if that means mostly surreal one-liners and weird links.

Catching up

I haven’t posted in a while because my brain has been… foggy.

But here are some updates from the last few weeks.

1) FOGcon was awesome. I had as much fun as I do at WisCon, and I was running the thing! I figure that says something good. I don’t usually do convention reports–some part of me really hates detailing what I did each day, even if it was interesting. But my favorite parts of the con were the people I saw. Rachel Silber said to me, “It’s like a reunion with friends I hadn’t met yet,” and I thought that was brilliant. (I knew a higher percentage of people than she did, but I still made some new friends, which was wonderful!) The programming was also stellar–though personally I needed to blow off steam, so I was glad to do karaoke instead.

2) I have a lot of thank yous to write this week. I’m afraid to count.

3) I spent last week hiding from the world and recovering. I watched a ton of cool documentaries and played Dragon Quest IX. It’s 100% normal for me to have a huge emotional crash after a big event concludes, so I expected it and planned for it. I think I’m okay now, but I really needed those days to myself, where I didn’t have to do any tasks for anyone.

4) Somewhere in the last few months, I got myself overcommitted to Life and Everything and possibly the Universe. It started with house-buying in September and I think I still haven’t adjusted to my new life. What I really want to do is clean this house top to bottom and buy storage shelves for all our crap, but that task is daunting, so I’m trying to break it down into smaller ones. I’ve reclaimed the living room at least, and I feel tons better when I sit there and relax. Also, I need to look at how I’m committing my time. I don’t think I’m doing too many things, but I bet I could “work smarter” and waste less time. Something needs to change–I can see that much.

5) Health problems continue to aggravate all of the above. This is peak allergy season, and I’m still having unusual reactions to my allergy shots. Put it this way: for most people, allergies are annoying. Mine are disabling from March to May (and serious the rest of the year). These upcoming months are always the hardest for me in terms of productivity, mood, energy, and social life.

6) Therefore, right now I’m torn between pushing to revise my novel before the Nebula banquet (tough but doable) or truly resting and relaxing so I’m ready to work my butt off after WisCon. What I _don’t_ want to do is go halfway on it, because then I end up all stressed out AND without a finished project to show for it. There are other ideas, like short stories and so on. I’ve got to think through what will be best for my career and my health and my enjoyment of life at this point.

That’s about it. Also, I have dye-free citrus gumdrops and they are really good.

FOGcon is one week away

zomg you guyz! starting a new convention is haaaard!!!1!eleven!!

(but worth it! It’s going to be SO good. I love this concom team!)