Category Archives: Nerdy stuff

The Renaissance of the Bullet Journal

Posted in gtf outta my head, Nerdy stuff by

bujocover.jpg

Being all over the place is nothing new for me, as most of you will know by now. Apart from some serious ADHD doing a lot of freelance work (mainly writing and editing) as well as (still) organizing a dissertation may add even more pressure to my already overwhelmed mind. Furthermore, I have so many ideas in my head, ideas for texts, stories, what to read, which book to blog about, what to sew, and a lot more, that I mostly forget them and have neither the time nor the place to take a note… As stated before, I don’t use my cellphone for everything all the time because hey, there’s nothing better than wanting some down time and fortunately not remembering where you put your (silent) phone – this is pretty much heaven for me, so I’m most definitely the wrong person when it comes to productivity apps and the like. I need a calendar. I need a notebook. And I could really need a personal assistant, but unfortunately I can’t afford one. Also, I’m much to introvert to want to share my life and all that’s in it with someone outside my head… So instead I decided to give the bullet journal another go, after a rather half-hearted test of the concept two years ago (you may find some gibberish about it here).

After not succeeding last time I tried to adapt the concept for my needs, I decided to go in 200%, meaning I even bought a new notebook dedicated to the renaissance of the bullet journal in my life. The first time around I used an old notebook I bought years ago, which did not provide the best hardware and left me feeling rather underwhelmed by the results I got from my various layouts and doodles (a lot of ghosting, and also just plain paper, which in hindsight is not the best choice for a bujo – I now use one with dots). This time I bought a dotted Moleskine with roughly 200ish pages. Though I got some ghosting there too, it still provides a much better hardware for keeping and actually using the bullet journal …

My main goal this time around was to bring everything together in one place – not 15 different notebooks for different topics, but one notebook for everything, from my schedule to my to-do lists, my calendar, my diary and my various list for books I want to get/read, stuff to cook, ideas for my blogs and the like. Apart from all the notes for my thesis – my thesis notebook is not full and finished at this point – it seems to work this time around, at least it has for the last two months (yeah I know, what a milestone, two months and counting …). I even started to do some serious doodling and coloring, though this is light-years away from all those sophisticated and beautiful bujo spreads one sees on Instagram and Pinterest. But that’s ok, I like doodling around a bit, even trying my hand at some sort of hand lettering (or rather my interpretation of it) just because it’s fun. I got something called “daily recap”, which I use when I include some journaling in my bujo, so I won’t need an additional diary anymore. And once my thesis-notebook is full, I will include all my notes for my thesis project in my bujo, too. The big idea behind all this is to confine my chaotic state of mind and thought to one single notebook at a time so that I have one place to turn to to find my ideas, concepts, plans, memories, lists, and much more. I got a vintage label maker to put the dates of  the specific journal on the spine once it’s full, so I won’t get lost in various notebooks. So for now, it seems like a pretty good idea, and it feels like it’s a good way to tackle my ADHD state of mind…

bujocoveraugust.jpgAt least in theory. August is my third month with this new system of mine, I started my current bujo in early June. For the last three months I tried some layouts, seeing what works for me and what not, what is ok to design and draw and what is simply too arduous to do every month. I still experiment with some stuff – trying to keep a gratitude log has not worked that well overall, though I think it’s useful and important for someone like me; the spending log too has not worked out as planned, but I guess some things need time to get used to, so I will continue to include one in my monthly layouts for some time to come. I feel great with some other things – using the bujo as a diary and a work notebook makes a lot of things easier and motivates me to write much more in general.

habitandmoodspread.jpg

So much for the second try. Right now I’m still very enthusiastic about it all, and I hope it stays that way (I probably wrote that the first time around too). I long for some method to ease my mind and help me stay (get?!) more organized – not using any medication, there are days I can literally see my thoughts popping up and then slowly pulling back again, only to disappear in some sort of dark corner where I won’t find them again any time soon – the trivial and simple ones as well as the important and interesting ones. And when this happens I don’t have the time (or nerve) to look for just the right notebook to jot this special thought down – it’s at times challenging enough to find the one-for-all bujo in time to not lose the thought or idea. Maybe it works this time around. I dream of shelves filled with my bujos of the past few years while I stand next to it, all happy and organized and oh so polished.
Yeah well, one can dream …

FYI: if you want to find out more about why a bujo can be really great for ADHD minds, you may watch this very interesting and funny video –wonderguy found it for me and it helped me find a good concept for my current bujo. Enjoy 🙂

So many ideas, so little focus…

Posted in Nerdy stuff, Work/PhD by

It’s a new year and we are encouraged to make a new start. Magazines, newspapers, friends, family, and pretty much the whole internet demonstrates some serious motivation regarding new year’s resolutions. That’s nice, and inspiring. But I know myself better than that — a lot of us do.

I hate Christmas, but I love the new year — not necessarily because of this inherent feeling of starting anew, all fresh and sober(ed up) and willing to make the best of the coming 12 months. I love the new year because it means last year’s merry shitmas is over and the this year’s merry shitmas is still really far away. Combined with the “start anew”-theme this feels wonderful.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference at Columbia University. It was interesting, frightening, awful, and inspiring all at once. It was also (hopefully) the climax of a really shitty episode of depression, anxiety, medication and all the other neat little shit that comes with something like that. Which means that finally, after nearly two years of good intentions that paved the way to my personal hell of frustration, I am ready to get back to work on my dissertation, like, actual WORK.

One main reason for this important step in the supposedly right direction is my fear of not finishing it at all. There will always be a job “I could fit in, after all it’s good money”, meaning since my dissertation is a sort personal project of mine — not working for any university or cooperating with institutions or the like — money work comes before work work, even if it’s not that important at the given moment. Right now, my monetary situation is okay (let’s hope it stays like that at least for some more months…!) so I can afford some work work. It’s my fourth year in this project, my sixth since I started this PhD — meaning it took me two years to finish all courses AND find the right material to work with –, and it’s about time to continue working on it more seriously, otherwise it may die the slow death of a passion project being sacrificed on the altar of modern capitalist delusion.

Furthermore, I got and get a lot of support, especially in recent months. Wonderguy is constantly looking for the right tools for me to find a smooth and distraction-free work space and flow (yes, ADD is greeting from down there, somewhere, always lurking around) and even bought me a new program — which I use right now — that will sync easily with my writing and working on my new iPad that I got from my uncle. And while I’m not necessarily a huge geek regarding apps and stuff and iPhones and stuff, this iPad pro works on a whole different level. Here too, Wonderguy uses his vast knowledge about apps — being the wonderful Apple Ipad/Iphone enthusiast that he is — to help me get the best out of my new gadget and boy do I love it! It’s huge, it’s got a pen, I can actually really use the keyboard because it’s THAT huge and therefor combined with my beloved Linux Lenovo it’s ideal to finally get shit done. I never thought I would be THAT enthusiastic about something like that, but this iPad already made some stuff a lot easier, and I just hope this enthusiasm in regard to the gadget itself as well as all the ways in which I can and already do use it will carry over to the actual task of writing the thesis. This paperless office thing (which sounds like and probably indeed is a slogan to promote iPads and apps) feels really good, which is a strange thing to say for someone like me, a post-it fairyqueen, taking notes constantly, scribbling on every piece of paper I can find, only to lose and overlook two-thirds of it once I could’ve actually used it. My my, I’m still totally overwhelmed by such a huge gift that my uncle gave me to show his support for my academic work on a practical as well as ideational level. I’m planning (and hoping) to live up to it.

So here’s to a new year’s resolution: get this shit done!

Once more with … less feeling, please?

Posted in Nerdy stuff, Work/PhD by

 

IMG_20170809_232328_236.jpgA few days ago I received an invitation to a conference in December. I never in a million years expected anyone to accept my paper because a) it’s not even a conference with a focus on literary studies and b) I’m no fancy academic pursuing her studies not looking left or right, but rather a freestyle academic, pursuing her studies when finding the time next to work, life, and stuff. So not exactly distinguished ivy league university material. Not even ‘attending a conference at a distinguished university I always wanted to see’ material… 

Obviously, no one ‘there’ knows that, which is why they are delighted to include my paper in their conference. And I’m delighted, happy, overwhelmed, and panicky all at once. For days now. And nights, which is worse. I sent a submission to give it a shot, “aim high”, as they say (I don’t know who “they” are, but hey, “they” for sure never suffered from anxiety disorders and shit like that) and try for universities (and cities) I always wanted to see or love to visit. I have been to New York before and missed my chance to see Columbia, at least from the outside. I may get a second chance now. 

Still, I have to finance this wonderful craziness – New York is pricey, especially in December (I guess). Also, I have to keep my shit together to go there. It’s not that I am too nervous to actually attend a conference and present a paper (I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so that’s not the issue here); rather, the real challenge will be organizing the trip, finding a hotel and staying on top of things. I hate organizing because I’m really bad at it. Also, since receiving the invitation, tons of unfounded fears came creeping up from the shitty dark holes I forced them into; they caress my arms, creep up and down my spine, float into my semiconscious mind in the early morning hours, lay their heavy burden on my weary shoulders (yes I know, THAT sounds cheesy…). Depending on the mood I’m in, I can take them one at a time, pushing them back into the holes they came from, or I let them flow, because there’s no use in fighting it, not right now. 

I know, I sound like a whiny kid, and I don’t want to. I simply did not expect this to happen – some provincial freestyle academic presenting a paper at rather well-known university. London has already been great, and this too is a wonderful opportunity and it feels huge. Overwhelming. Unreal. And frightening.  

Greetings to my demons. 

Something fresh…

Posted in humor, Nerdy stuff, Uncategorized by

2017-02-22_17.19.43.jpg

So the new laptop finally arrived!! UPS and I had some initial problems of finding some time for each other since our doorbell wasn’t working as it should (probably for the last months – which explains why we never get any parcels, but always have to fetch them at the post office), but in the end, THANKFULLY, everything worked out just fine. I’m always a bit nervous when waiting for a valuable item, especially with parcel services like UPS. It’s often hard to get a hold of the individual driver because it’s an international company, so they only offer ‘international’ customer service. ‘International’ in this context rarely means ‘professional’ but rather ‘hard to get.’ So I was really worried that something might go wrong and all my new hopes and good intentions would be crushed before I even get a chance to actively crush them myself with my distinguished lack of energy and drive.

So now I’m already writing on my new notebook, to get a feel for it (as stupid as it may sound, every keyboard is different), with all the fancy Linux stuff I don’t know shit about. I’m still in the process of getting used to Linux and the system with its various components, which is all new to me – though it’s not that difficult, still, in the beginning one is always careful, as if the device may suddenly burst into flames and cease to exist just because you entered one wrong command….who knows, there’s a first time for a lot of different things. I know I may need at least half a day to get acquainted with Scrivener, which sounds ideal to work with for my dissertation and other writing projects that need some organization. Furthermore, there’s still this huge variety of stuff that helps you (and your system) to work better, but I will need some more time to discover all of that. As you see, ‘bird person’ (my notebook’s name, because everything needs a name) and I are still getting to know each other…

I may have a new assignment which will keep me busy until the deadline in June – I will find out in the days to come if it is still on – so this is the perfect test for me working with ‘bird person’ AND with Scrivener. O course, it is also the perfect opportunity to get into the optimal regular-writing-mood I will need if I really want to give my thesis project another shot, like, finish it. I’m usually all about professional and perfectionist when it comes to paid writing/work assignments that come with a deadline. Not surprisingly, I’m also all about the perfect procrastination mode in regard to work that has no deadline in sight. So my good intentions may get some outside support from tech stuff, at least I hope so.

(FYI: You may find references to Rick and Morty and P.G. Wodehouse in this little text of mine. They are easy to detect and deliberate, so to make the repetitive elaboration regarding my incapacity to stick to my idealistic academic goals a bit more diverse and enjoyable.)

New Hope or: the road to hell is paved with good intentions …

Posted in humor, Nerdy stuff, Uncategorized by

img-20150330-wa0003

Now this entry sounds way more dramatic than it actually is. Fact is, I didn’t work ‘that much’ on my thesis or academic ventures since returning from London last May. For one thing, wonderguy and I moved in together shortly afterwards and there was a lot to organize and do for weeks afterwards; secondly, I did indeed work a lot for several months, though not on my dissertation.

With the beginning of 2017 I decided to make a fresh start. Right now this means starting slowly by catching up on some reading (not that much, but still necessary) and trying to get an overview of all the material I’ve already gathered. After all, I do have about 200 pages of literary analyses (first draft, but at least this part of the dissertation is somehow finished), so for more than a year now I’m dreading to start with the historical background (more because I have to organize my information the proper way) and especially the theoretical background (because I simply cannot decide which theoretical strings to include while at the same time – OF COURSE – excluding others … which could be just as interesting, but probably not that fruitful in context of my work BUT who knows and do I really want to commit myself to just a few theoretical approaches while there are so many other brilliant and great theories and ideas out there? Won’t I risk making the wrong decision, so it’s better to not reach a decision at all because that way I won’t risk excluding brilliant positions and views?).

So it’s obvious I need some new tools, because the fact that I feel deadlocked regarding my thesis could never have anything to do with my messy, insecure brain. No, of course not.

Long story short, since I also start a new job in April and want to go back to writing more on a regular basis in general, I got completely overwhelmed by my own good intentions and imaginary work steps and bought a new laptop, or rather, notebook. It’s more portable and practical than my old MacBook and I can use Linux (heeeeelloooooo freedom of choice!!), so I can put a ton of excellent writing programs on it for free. Because, as I might have stated before, I intend to use this as my new main WORK laptop, taking it with me pretty much everywhere except the bathroom, so to not find any more excuses to NOT work or write.

You know, it all starts with good intentions, and let’s just hope it doesn’t end there as well…

 

[By the way, the picture has nothing to do with the text. Since I could not take a picture of my new notebook, I decided to try something completely different…birds. Flamingos, more precisely.]

Shame on me: an update on how I blame everything that doesn’t work on my bullet journal…

Posted in humor, Nerdy stuff, Uncategorized by

Long time no see, again – an update on how I blame everything on my bullet journal…

So for months now I regularly thought about what I could probably blog about. I even had a few ideas –  quite a few at times –  usually when I had nothing with me to take some notes (for the tech nerds: talking about analog note taking, like on paper,  as well as digital, like evernote, Google keep and similar stuff). Often this happened shortly before falling asleep, which seems to be a high time for me imagining stories, or rather, little passages of something that could be a story one day. IF I would bother to turn up the light again and write it down. Or at least had my cell phone at hand to take a note… Both of which I don’t do and have, which is actually pretty stupid considering the fact that I haven’t written a creative (or academic, for that matter) thing in weeks – might be even months, if you’re referring to something ‘finished’. I did that note taking at night stuff years ago, many, many years ago when I still believed in it. Also, I was drunk every night back then, so this might be another reason why I did it, because aren’t we all a bit Bukowski if we want to?

I’m trailing off…. What I wanted to say was that I do have a section for “Blog IDEAS” in my bullet journal. I also got a “everyday recipes”, “sewing projects”, “stuff to get”, and similar pages in my bullet journal. Some I even tried to organize, like, using a sticky note (post-it) to make them stand out and easy to find (if I don’t find something of everyday use within the first seconds of looking for it, it may as well be lost in outer space, because I will simply forget about the whole thing). Still, I don’t stick to it. I forget, I don’t act, nothing happens. Even with this oh so glorified bullet journal, I’m not capable of organizing myself.

Of course I’m to blame (even though mini-me finds ways to excuse myself from any responsibility for the things in my life). I chose an A5-sized notebook, which is fairly easy to work with as a sort of homemade calendar and planner, but it obviously does not fit in every single bag I own. And I found out over the last few months that this journal works shit for me if I do not carry it everywhere I go – literally. Only then will I be able to get myself to use it daily,  use it every time I need it.
Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? You will be a better, less chaotic and more stable and organized person when you just switch your fucking diary to a more workable size. Great, isn’t it?

I will try and hope for the best. I do know that it’s not actually a question of size (it never is), but also a quest for discipline. For everything that might be even slightly helpful to get all plans and goals on track again. Getting some structure in your everyday life when handling two to three jobs, freelance stuff and still trying somehow to accomplish a dissertation is exhausting and seems impossible, at least for me. But I will go on, and it will work out somehow, eventually. Because, looking back, it always did. But on this path “t will all work out”,  it never felt as hard as it has for weeks, months, the last one and a half years.

I already own a smaller notebook. Now I only have to convince my inner postwar child (thanks, granny!) to waste a perfectly good, half-used notebook for the sake of trying something slightly different. If you had any clue how strict I am with myself regarding unnecessary escapades, you would know how difficult this will be….

How to organize a chaotic mind

Posted in gtf outta my head, humor, Nerdy stuff, Uncategorized by

20160822_002809

I’ve been working as a freelancer for years now. I started the first draft of my thesis roughly 2 years ago and there’s still much to do, as pretty much the complete theoretical framework is still missing (it’s there in my mind, at least some parts of it, but not where it should be, written down). Part of the problem is not only that I have to find a balance between work, work, and life, but also because – no, ESPECIALLY because it is very difficult for me to organize myself.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid-twenties. Though I don’t like to hide behind my various issues (panic attacks, anxiety disorder, depression, extremely introverted, anyone?) this did indeed explain a lot. Most of the time I find it hard to focus on one thing; I can lose myself in hours of online research, reading about the least interesting topics ever, but I cannot sit through a two-hour-movie (or even a 50 min TV show) because it bores the shit out of me. I get some impulse for my work, jot it down and forget all about it the next minute, even forgetting WHERE I made or put the notes that could be helpful some other time. I remind myself to write another blog post only to forget it just a minute later because I there is so much going on in my head that I am overwhelmed and just give up. I often thought (and sometimes still think) that this is all about procrastination and being unorganized and chaotic, but –as my therapist liked to say – this is rather about a psychological issue and being a ‘special edition.’ Since I do not take any medication, it’s always just me and my hyperactive, multi-wired brain.

Which leads us back to the initial issue, namely how to organize myself without losing my mind?! I desperately need some planning and structure in my life, for my freelance ‘career’ and especially for my thesis. For years I’ve been looking for some way to organize myself, my tasks, my appointments, my life. I have not yet found a system that works, so I’m still waiting for a miracle…

A possible answer could be: start a bullet journal.

Wonderguy started one and told me to give it a try because it could actually work. So I googled it (of course I googled it and filled my mind with hours of bullet journal porn on Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and other sites) and was taken aback by how much work many people – and especially girls and women – put in the (graphical) creation of a bullet journal. I’ve seen journals I would never actually use because they were too beautiful to just put some common information in it. Those journals were works of art but nothing to work with since my chaotic mind would probably be too distracted with painting another elderflower in the left corner of May 12th on page 30. Also, it seemed so structured and organized (well, what a surprise!), it frightened me. I was afraid of not being able to organize myself with this system. I AM afraid of being too chaotic and unstructured to organize myself with any system. I suppose I’m looking forward to a future filled with post-its, lost notes in the corners of my life, and looking puzzled and surprised half of the time.

So I guess I should give it a shot. It really can’t get much worse…I think. And I do have a fair number of notebooks, I can spare one to substantiate my hopes in a more organized future…