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I'm coming to an equilibrium with the new schedule. 5 AM wakeup times don't really suit me, but going to bed early hasn't really changed much in my life. I've ended up with what appears to be more up-time on paper, but it's not productive or especially pleasent. I thought that it'd be a little like when I got up at 6, but moreso - that I'd get up to speed pretty quickly and feel up to working, but that's a mindset that never actually gelled; it'd be 11 AM and I'd still be groggy and kind of ill-tempered despite coffee, a shower, being dressed, breakfast, and an additional pot of tea.
In fact, I never got up to speed. I'd spend the whole day at a solid 60-70% of my normal energy level. It felt a little like a permenant hangover. If I rest for an hour, like from 8 to 9 AM, I feel way, way better. I don't even have to sleep, but I do end up dozing off into a semi-sleep state pretty often. I square it to myself like so - you were definetly going to waste that hour anyhow, because every day you try to avoid it, you do it anyhow. Ideologically, I don't believe in the productivity culture, but I know I've internalized it pretty seriously, so I'm constantly justifying rest by indicating how much more productive I am when I get back to work. I'm legitimately stuck at home for a little while, at least, though, so there's no reason in particular for me to be freaking out about minute-by-minute productivity metrics when it comes to getting the housework done.
I worry anyway, but I'm working on not worrying so much, which requires writing and introspection.
I ended up dropping my Sartre reading yesterday at about 250 pages in. I was hitting a new chapter section and realizing that I wasn't really retaining much of what I'd read; I had started while I was finishing up my thesis, and Sartre was laying out his terms in the introduction and first chapter - I didn't really have time to make good notes and hash out his ideas deliberately. So, over a quarter of the way in, I kept following along hoping that I'd be able to make sense of things better.
For whatever it's worth, I got the gist, but it was dense reading and I don't have anyone to share it with, so as the ideas progressed, a lot of the nuance was getting lost on me. I figured - better to start again in a little while and tackle it section by section and giving it the attention it's due. At least a part of the problem is Sartre's cyclical and self-referential prose which often resembles a mirror. This seems really intentional! But it's also awful to process, sometimes. I know that what he's writing at is attempting to get at ideas that are difficult to render into language because he's dealing with the sense of self, and the nothingness that this sense of self endeavors to mask. To describe nothing, you can say "there's nothing," but that doesn't describe nothing's relationship with something that interacts with it. See? Anyhow, this is my problem. In the same way I feel compelled to come back to Derrida, I'll have to come back to Sartre.
Being defeated here is something of a luxury that I actually enjoy. To say, "There's nothing riding on my immediate processing of this text, and I can come to really understand it in time rather than rushing and faking it, or experiencing that terrifying feeling of being uncertain under fire." I can just read my new Gibson novel, which so far has seemed pretty good. After that, I think I'll probably tackle a re-read of Barthes' "The Pleasure of the Text," which I might just do concordantly with Gibson.
In fact, I never got up to speed. I'd spend the whole day at a solid 60-70% of my normal energy level. It felt a little like a permenant hangover. If I rest for an hour, like from 8 to 9 AM, I feel way, way better. I don't even have to sleep, but I do end up dozing off into a semi-sleep state pretty often. I square it to myself like so - you were definetly going to waste that hour anyhow, because every day you try to avoid it, you do it anyhow. Ideologically, I don't believe in the productivity culture, but I know I've internalized it pretty seriously, so I'm constantly justifying rest by indicating how much more productive I am when I get back to work. I'm legitimately stuck at home for a little while, at least, though, so there's no reason in particular for me to be freaking out about minute-by-minute productivity metrics when it comes to getting the housework done.
I worry anyway, but I'm working on not worrying so much, which requires writing and introspection.
I ended up dropping my Sartre reading yesterday at about 250 pages in. I was hitting a new chapter section and realizing that I wasn't really retaining much of what I'd read; I had started while I was finishing up my thesis, and Sartre was laying out his terms in the introduction and first chapter - I didn't really have time to make good notes and hash out his ideas deliberately. So, over a quarter of the way in, I kept following along hoping that I'd be able to make sense of things better.
For whatever it's worth, I got the gist, but it was dense reading and I don't have anyone to share it with, so as the ideas progressed, a lot of the nuance was getting lost on me. I figured - better to start again in a little while and tackle it section by section and giving it the attention it's due. At least a part of the problem is Sartre's cyclical and self-referential prose which often resembles a mirror. This seems really intentional! But it's also awful to process, sometimes. I know that what he's writing at is attempting to get at ideas that are difficult to render into language because he's dealing with the sense of self, and the nothingness that this sense of self endeavors to mask. To describe nothing, you can say "there's nothing," but that doesn't describe nothing's relationship with something that interacts with it. See? Anyhow, this is my problem. In the same way I feel compelled to come back to Derrida, I'll have to come back to Sartre.
Being defeated here is something of a luxury that I actually enjoy. To say, "There's nothing riding on my immediate processing of this text, and I can come to really understand it in time rather than rushing and faking it, or experiencing that terrifying feeling of being uncertain under fire." I can just read my new Gibson novel, which so far has seemed pretty good. After that, I think I'll probably tackle a re-read of Barthes' "The Pleasure of the Text," which I might just do concordantly with Gibson.