4 posts tagged “time”

Wanted to post yesterday to keep up with my pledge, but Dingle was on the computer until after I went to bed, trying to do her English class "DEJs," or double-entry journals, on To Kill a Mockingbird. She said she was supposed to turn them in for chapters eleven through twenty-two or -three. I asked her how many she'd gotten done, and she said, "I'm finishing eleven now." I doubt she made it to chapter twelve.

I spend too much of my time trying to avoid things, people, and places that make me feel uncomfortable or distressed. I'm not good at shrugging things off. I am the elephant who cannot forget certain memories; memories tucked deeply into the folds of my cerebellum. But I don't know what to do about it. Time heals all wounds, or so I've heard, and I think it's generally true. But what do I do until then--until the day it doesn't hurt anymore? Should I write about these things, on the theory that it's better to draw out bad blood that to let it fester? Or should I keep trying to distract myself with British comedies and endless games of Bejeweled 2?

I have to go to sleep.

I have to go to sleep because I have to go to work in the morning.

I have to go to work in the morning because I need the money. Besides, I like my job. Right?

I like my job, but I don't like to get up in the morning.

But this is the last week I have daytime hours. I just need to get through this week and then I can sleep in again.

At least until school starts up. It will feel like only minutes have passed from now until then.

But that's life. It goes by fast. It's difficult to make it slow down. Sometimes I stay up late, trying to slow it down. Like now.

But I have to go to sleep.

Instead of thinking about how much I don't want to get up in the morning and go to work, I should sleep. Let it all go; it doesn't matter anyway. I have to go. And it will be over fast. And then it will start up again. And there is no changing it.

Come on.

...Ericsson's primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding.

From The Science of Experience, Time Magazine, 28 Feb. 2008