Why wear a watch, when time is meaningless?

Sometime last week, I completely lost all sense of time. Day and night, week and weekend, all blurred - but this time I'm not in the middle of the holidays. Two weeks in, I'm settling into the honours program - but sleeping "patterns" and "waking hours" are alien concepts to me. Falling asleep this afternoon didn't really help matters - I pottered around the house for a while, and passed out face-down on my bed for about three hours :-) At some stage, hespa came home and noticed my unconsciousness...

I've been in a cobweb-clearing mood, lately. The house needs tidying, junk needs throwing out, half-finished jobs need finishing... really, anyone could be forgiven for assuming that I was in the middle of an exam period. All this activity smacks of procrastination... Somehow, I've ended up doing a lot of things that I enjoy, all at once. When confronted by a Thing that needs doing, I instinctively back away - grabbing for the nearest distraction and tinkering with that. Progress by sustained procrastination...

At the moment, I'm happily wandering from task to task. Single-mindedness might be a virtue for some, but I'd get very bored with one job at a time.

So, I spent much of last week reading about my research project, and looking at the diamonds under the microscope. Took some photos, too - the diamonds aren't very spectacular to look at, but I've been finding orange-red garnets and vivid green Cr-diopside intergrown with the specimens. The degree in Shiny Things progresses apace - I think I shall major in Colourful Shiny Things (an important, but often overlooked subset... besides, I've always preferred stones like emerald and sapphire, to the "clear" stones).

I've also spent as much time as I can, with people I care about. This is the best part of a flexible timetable - the freedom to do what you need to be doing, when you need to do it. Sure, I have various timeslots booked to use labs at uni, and work on Wednesdays anchors my week against slipping too far from "normal" hours, but otherwise I can choose when to do the jobs that need doing. I know that I'll be a slave to the project, when the thesis draws near - but after so many years of the work giving the orders, I have no qualms about selling some of my Then to build a better Now. Not too long-sighted of me, perhaps, but I'll pay my share when it comes due.

At the same time, I've ended up painting more; cooking more often; preparing for orientation; training; and chasing room bookings for Tai Chi. I did some forms in the park on Thursday night (Liu He Ba Fa, Qi Gong, Tai Chi & Mantis), while on my way home from the CBD. Midnight is the best time to train - the air is still, and most of the day's heat has drained away. I'm scraping the rust off three forms for O-week, as we're doing a demonstration - my name is now down to do the Beijing 24, Tai Chi sword, and the Meihua Praying Mantis form. Guess I'd better work on those stances a little more...