This morning I had set my alarm for about 7:45, as I had to be at HQ for my training class at 9:00.
My experience last week taught me that I should get on the road pretty early, given the fact that traffic seems to have increased exponentially in the past couple of weeks.
I woke up on my own at around 7:30, but opted not to get up, once again enjoying the cool morning breeze.
I drifted back to sleep, though, so when 7:45 rolled around and my alarm went off it made me feel tired, even though I had been more or less awake a few mintues earlier.
I made it to the class with surprisingly little time to spare, considering that I left 40 minutes before it started and that HQ is only a few miles down the road.
Brian and Kathleen were, not surprisingly, a few minutes late, even though they left at around the same time I did, which is really amazingly early for them.
The actual class was pretty good; much better than last week’s yawnfest.
The really cool thing was that as part of the class we each got a pretty sweet day planner that would cost $60 if purchased separately. I’ve been meaning to get one, so this really saved me a lot of trouble (and money).
Whether or not I’ll make use of the planner to actually work the program as intended is up in the air, but I think I’m going to at least give it a shot.
The whole reason I took the class wasn’t because I don’t have enough time, obviously, but because I have too much. I wanted to learn some methods to more effectively use all of the time I do have.
This class at least gave me some ideas, so we’ll see what happens.
Before our first break in the morning the instructor told us what time we’d be breaking for lunch, so during the break I e-mailed “Tucson” to tell her when I’d be free for her to bring me my container and cake pan bottom. I also invited her to join Kathleen, Brian, and I for lunch.
As we made our way to the cafeteria for lunch, our path crossed with hers (or rather, met head-on), and she decided to join us. Brian and Kathleen were walking a bit ahead, and Tucson and I walked side-by-side. Mostly she talked about how good the cheesecake had been, and I tried, in vain, to develop a personality.
Once we got to the cafeteria and sat down, I mostly sat in stupid silence while the other three talked about mutual acquaintances (they had all worked together back in Arizona) that I either didn’t know at all or whose names I only vaguely recognized.
After she finished eating she headed off for a meeting, thanked me again for the cheesecake, and that was that.
Once we finished our lunch break I brought the container and cake pan bottom out to my car, and then we went back to class and rounded out the afternoon.
And that was pretty much my day.
As one of the exercises in making a plan (and making use of the planner), I made plans for my birthday tomorrow.
I first had to list tasks I wanted to accomplish, then assign them a priority.
My number one priority for the day? Hate the world.
I think I’ll be able to accomplish that one pretty easily.
Beyond that? Well, while I didn’t put it into the plan, I figure on being miserable and cranky and looking back on the last 33 years and shaking my head in dismay at all of the wasted time.
I had thought about going to see Sin City again as something of a birthday present, but I think I’m just going to wait for it to come out on DVD to see it again.
I’m really not as distressed or depressed about my birthday as I might make myself seem. Honestly, it’s just another day, though that fact in and of itself is sort of depressing, I suppose.
Still, in the class today one of the exercises involved introducing yourself to someone else in the class. The twist, though, was to introduce yourself as you were ten years ago.
It was annoying to look back on the past. In many ways, I’m much, much better off, but in other ways…well, it was a bit distressing to see that there are many aspects of my life that haven’t improved since I was a married, relatively recent college graduate.
Don’t worry; I have no intention of listing off the ways that my life is better/worse, I’m just mentioning that, at a time when I’m naturally inclined to look back and take stock of my life it was sort of annoying to be required to do it.
Worse, we then had to go the other way, and introduce ourselves the way we’d like to see ourselves ten years in the future.
I tried to imagine a hopeful, positive future for myself, but that can be kind of tricky to do when you really can’t think of anything you might actually want for the future. I went the standard “successful author” route, but I can’t honestly say that I really want that. Ten years ago I thought I wanted that, but do I still, and if I do, how likely is it that in twenty years I’ll manage to accomplish what I haven’t managed in ten?
On the topic of my writing, I spent a fair amount of time yesterday taking a look at my novel blog (http://www.15000years.blogspot.com/, for those of you who aren’t aware of it).
Was I admiring my handiwork? Not exactly; it was more like cringing at my handiwork.
I know it’s supposed to be a rough draft, but didn’t I edit the damn thing at all? There were so many typos, wrong and missing words, and oddly-constructed sentences that didn’t make any sense that I couldn’t help but wonder how I missed them all in the multiple read-throughs I made before posting each chapter.
Maybe it’s no wonder that in more than ten years I haven’t been able to get published…
Still, typos and so forth notwithstanding, it isn’t really a bad story. It just needs a lot of work to flesh it out a little more and tie it all together a little more neatly.
In any case, that’s going to do it for this entry. I may or may not be back tonight, but I did put in a block of time for posting an entry tomorrow in my planner, so, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be back sometime…
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