I'm Still Here!

I am starting to suspect that my less-than-faithful, up-and-down, on-again, off-again blogging habits (just check out the numbers next to the months listed under 2011 in the side column) might cause a little bit of false alarm--especially when I might be in a particularly "off-again" phase, particularly when said slump follows an especially active period.  I only think this because I haven't posted in over three weeks, and in the past week, I have gotten no fewer than three emails that sounded slightly worried about me/wondering where I was.  Maybe life does imitate art... to be fair to those people, I have also been really bad about calling and writing lately (not that that is a huge change from normal, however...)

Is there a good reason why my posting sometimes slows to a trickle?  Maybe I am really getting that much busier (unlikely).  Maybe I am procrastinating less (really unlikely).  Maybe stuff has come up, maybe I have been out socializing more with friends and less with my laptop.  Usually, though, it is probably because I'm just not feeling it.  

I follow a few bloggers who are positively prolific, and I have to say... I have NO idea how they do it.  I never feel like I am that interesting, or witty, or charming, or verbose, or --and this is the really big one-- creative.  It's strange, because having some sort of creative outlet in my life feels like it is vital to my being, and the more I do it, the easier it becomes.  But most of the time, being creative takes a lot of effort.  And most days, I don't feel like I have any extra effort to give.  

And it's not as simple as just saying, "Well, this week all I did was study... and then study some more.  No one wants to hear about that."  Because some weeks I have plenty to say when I haven't actually been doing anything all that interesting.  And some weeks, I have a lot of fun times, and then just have no drive to blog about them.  I can't figure out why that is.  A lot of it has to do with whether or not I have good pictures to post along with my rambling words, because I generally like blogs best when they are more images and less talking.  But the same goes for my taking pictures, too... sometimes the camera is out and I love the pictures I'm taking and it is really fun for me, and then other times, just....  nothing.

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One of the other things that has recently been surreptitiously sucking my time away is the television.  After I graduated from high school, I didn't live in a place with TV for nine years until I moved to Atlanta a year and a half ago.  I didn't have a TV in any of my dorm rooms, didn't have one in Namibia, had a physical television that was never connected and only occasionally used for watching movies in Williamstown and Charlottesville, really never watched at home during the year I spent back in Colorado because my dad pretty much monopolized our TV there, and I didn't ever feel like I had a moment to sit down and watch last year with my roommate Ajanta, who did like to watch a fair amount.

But now.  Now, mostly just over the course of the last two or three weeks, my roommate, Alexis, Jake, and I have settled into a bit of a routine.  I get up and go to class (or not) in the mornings, Alexis goes to the public health school, Jake works from home.  In the afternoons, I try to study, then I go to work out more or less at 6, come home exhausted, unload my backpack, open mail, hop in the shower, check email, facebook.  Around 8, Jake comes over, we have something or other for dinner, and then we settle down into the sofa and flip on the TV.  We've watched The Sing-Off, The New Girl, The Biggest Loser, Up All Night, Modern Family, plenty of news, a couple of Republican debates (so many reasons I want those hours of my life back), and a bunch of other random crap. 

best show on television

It feels all cozy and domestic and sort of a nice way to unwind at the end of a long day... but then I realize that I haven't studied or gotten done what I wanted to get done, and I haven't seen any of my other friends in a week, and the three of us are not really having any conversation, and I am not prepared for the next day all of a sudden I haven't done anything and it is still way past the hour I was meaning to go to bed, and then when I finally do go to bed, my head is still turned on.  And it is becoming a pattern.  And I don't think I like it.

Anyway, right now I am battling what is hopefully the end of a vicious cold I came down with on Sunday afternoon that has kept me in bed for most of four days now.  I HATE being sick.  And I need to get better so that I can spend the weekend making up for those four days in bed.  (Anyone else out there feel like being a grown-up isn't all it's cracked up to be??)

Whether you do or do not like watching a lot of TV, you should definitely check out TED talks.  Inspiration in 20 minutes or less?  Yes, please.

This one is by one of my heros, physician-writer Abraham Verghese.  Enjoy!