You probably know my name. Or maybe you don't. In either case, here's a video on how to get it right:
Dynamism, or Branching Out
"What, what is it?" I asked.
"Oh, it's nothing, I just forgot about how there's a "smart Sacha" too."
I was out with a friend the other day trying a new café and as we were talking, the subject bounced around substantially between projects, ideas, events, and other goings-on in our lives. There was much to be caught up on, not just because plenty of time had elapsed since we had seen each other, but because it seemed that each of us was, at least in terms of ideas and energy, working on a lot of things at once. Between projects being worked on in the real world to entrepreneurial ideas in the city and building experience in our fields in whichever ways we could, my friend was taken aback by the idea that sometimes I actually do go to class, that I study for a master's degree, and that on some level, I understand political theory. I'm not just Sacha the Blogger, but Sacha the Thinker ("lawl", I think to myself, writing that as I have) as well. It was an "aha!" moment of realizing that I might possibly have it in me to be a multifaceted person, the kind that wakes up early in the morning and has a wide array of professional endeavors to provide both meaning and sustenance to life. For my chilly, pragmatic demeanor, it was a rare glimpse of unbridled optimism.
So the point, then, is that perhaps in the midst of being concerned about working prospects, whether due to reasons of economic crisis or generational hurdles, with an open and active mind and a spirit open to taking on new projects wherever possible, things can happen. You can register the domain and work on the project and bounce ideas around with friends and, who knows, perhaps one of them will stick and you'll bring it to fruition. Perhaps your design work will lead to freelancing which will lead to consistent clients who will refer you to a studio, or at the very least, help you build your portfolio so that you can start your own. Perhaps the colleagues you're befriending really do like your ideas or find you to be a legitimate part of the program and might know someone who knows someone else who can refer you to the lead for interning as a political analyst after all, perhaps your associate knows someone who can help you secure the legal documents you need to reside legally for enough years to be considered a real immigrant, perhaps studying your little side endeavors might lead to ideas that bear real fruit with just a little bit of application after all. When my friend commented on the number of ideas I had, I recoiled and said no, not at all, I feel like I don't have enough, especially not enough that are bringing in the results I want just yet. But perhaps with the right energy, in due time, they will. That seems to be the place I'm at, lazy millenial or not, and I think we could all learn something from it. I'm working on it.
"Oh, it's nothing, I just forgot about how there's a "smart Sacha" too."
I was out with a friend the other day trying a new café and as we were talking, the subject bounced around substantially between projects, ideas, events, and other goings-on in our lives. There was much to be caught up on, not just because plenty of time had elapsed since we had seen each other, but because it seemed that each of us was, at least in terms of ideas and energy, working on a lot of things at once. Between projects being worked on in the real world to entrepreneurial ideas in the city and building experience in our fields in whichever ways we could, my friend was taken aback by the idea that sometimes I actually do go to class, that I study for a master's degree, and that on some level, I understand political theory. I'm not just Sacha the Blogger, but Sacha the Thinker ("lawl", I think to myself, writing that as I have) as well. It was an "aha!" moment of realizing that I might possibly have it in me to be a multifaceted person, the kind that wakes up early in the morning and has a wide array of professional endeavors to provide both meaning and sustenance to life. For my chilly, pragmatic demeanor, it was a rare glimpse of unbridled optimism.
So the point, then, is that perhaps in the midst of being concerned about working prospects, whether due to reasons of economic crisis or generational hurdles, with an open and active mind and a spirit open to taking on new projects wherever possible, things can happen. You can register the domain and work on the project and bounce ideas around with friends and, who knows, perhaps one of them will stick and you'll bring it to fruition. Perhaps your design work will lead to freelancing which will lead to consistent clients who will refer you to a studio, or at the very least, help you build your portfolio so that you can start your own. Perhaps the colleagues you're befriending really do like your ideas or find you to be a legitimate part of the program and might know someone who knows someone else who can refer you to the lead for interning as a political analyst after all, perhaps your associate knows someone who can help you secure the legal documents you need to reside legally for enough years to be considered a real immigrant, perhaps studying your little side endeavors might lead to ideas that bear real fruit with just a little bit of application after all. When my friend commented on the number of ideas I had, I recoiled and said no, not at all, I feel like I don't have enough, especially not enough that are bringing in the results I want just yet. But perhaps with the right energy, in due time, they will. That seems to be the place I'm at, lazy millenial or not, and I think we could all learn something from it. I'm working on it.
Waking Up Early
I've recently finished the first of several evaluation periods for my MA program, the effective equivalent we have of midterms, meaning that roughly each six to eight weeks we have a flood of papers, exams, and other forms of evaluation of that period's classes. Our classes are split up into small segments because of the fast-paced nature of the program, and so we get a 'taste' of each subject, through the collective of which it is presumed we will come to a sophisticated understanding of the principles of political science that our program deals with in particular. That and hopefully something to push us along through a thesis, alas. So I survived, despite notifications by my alma mater that it would be rescinding alumni access to its VPN soon, and I came to some conclusions about time management that I had never fully been able to realize as a personal habit before.
Productivity is obviously very important as a graduate student, the more so as an immigrant to a new country, but I have a tendency to be scattered and only infrequently manage to collect my energies in one place, which leads to mixed results in terms of initiative and moderate success in terms of academic pursuits. My distractions written about previously didn't really help in terms of this period, but I found that after a paper or two I managed to hone in on what needed to be done with greater focus, perhaps aided by nothing of mine being broken by housekeepers or dramatic goings-on in the apartment otherwise. Yet find my focus I did, and I found that with my schedule seeming to be impossible, I accepted the responsibility as just that and plugged through it. My Portuguese language course runs from 8 AM until noon, which means that I have to get up early in order to have time to eat breakfast and get there within a reasonable window of the class starting. (I'm laying no claims to punctuality in arriving to class in this country, because it doesn't happen.) When faced with midnight deadlines for papers and homework in that class, it came to be that I saw myself needing more time in the morning to regroup myself, organize my days, and get going with enough fuel to last through both the class and my other obligations without stopping.
More time in the morning. How? I am not a morning person.
Those were the thoughts I had initially, and it's true that I'm really nothing of a morning person. There are very few people I want to see, let alone interact with before 8 AM rolls around. If I don't have to wake up before 9 AM, I generally try not to. However, necessity rang, and I've come around to waking up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 AM each day in order to reach my objective. There's a lot to be said for the amount of willpower it requires to motivate yourself to get out of your bed, face a cold, dark, and silent apartment, eat breakfast, and organize your day in just a couple of hours before walking out and getting started with things. There's a lot to be said for actually doing it, the follow-through, and I've mostly managed to do it. Like anyone, I've had hiccups, days where I didn't hear my alarm and slept until noon, others where I woke up only with enough time to eat and run out the door, but the majority of the time I wake up in the dark hours of the early morning and do as I'm slowly getting accustomed to, learning to relish the time I have to think my thoughts, be alone, and get my creative energy flowing. For someone who prefers to stay awake until those hours of the day, it's a radical change. I don't go to bed that much earlier, but I utilize my time awake more efficiently.
This is all a part of themes of late that revolve around setting realistic goals and attaining them, evaluations of what exactly it is that those goals are and what purpose they serve, and a lens toward where that will push me into the future. Perhaps it's not realistic to wake up at noon one day after going to sleep at 5 AM and say "today I will go to bed extra early, by 10 PM, and wake up and do yoga and cook a full breakfast at 6 AM!", but setting more attainable goals seems to work. Waking up at 5:30-6:30 after going to bed at midnight leaves me tired, but the benefit to the rest of the day outweighs the relative sleepiness. The extra productivity is more satisfying than the perceived comfort of not doing it, and it leads to other decisions which expand on that. I'm also eating better since I've started this particular habit and, upon balancing my accounts, found that I'm spending much less money than I thought.
So the purpose of writing this, I suppose, is to say that it can be done. I, in particular, can overcome my natural tendencies to laze about until the ugly hours of the morning and instead turn the ugly hours of the morning into useful ones. They might not be any more attractive, but with a shift in perspective and willpower, they're no longer enemies. It's all part of the process of actually doing the things that we think would make us better versions of ourselves, and in my case, I needed to start somewhere. Let's see where that goes.
Productivity is obviously very important as a graduate student, the more so as an immigrant to a new country, but I have a tendency to be scattered and only infrequently manage to collect my energies in one place, which leads to mixed results in terms of initiative and moderate success in terms of academic pursuits. My distractions written about previously didn't really help in terms of this period, but I found that after a paper or two I managed to hone in on what needed to be done with greater focus, perhaps aided by nothing of mine being broken by housekeepers or dramatic goings-on in the apartment otherwise. Yet find my focus I did, and I found that with my schedule seeming to be impossible, I accepted the responsibility as just that and plugged through it. My Portuguese language course runs from 8 AM until noon, which means that I have to get up early in order to have time to eat breakfast and get there within a reasonable window of the class starting. (I'm laying no claims to punctuality in arriving to class in this country, because it doesn't happen.) When faced with midnight deadlines for papers and homework in that class, it came to be that I saw myself needing more time in the morning to regroup myself, organize my days, and get going with enough fuel to last through both the class and my other obligations without stopping.
More time in the morning. How? I am not a morning person.
Those were the thoughts I had initially, and it's true that I'm really nothing of a morning person. There are very few people I want to see, let alone interact with before 8 AM rolls around. If I don't have to wake up before 9 AM, I generally try not to. However, necessity rang, and I've come around to waking up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 AM each day in order to reach my objective. There's a lot to be said for the amount of willpower it requires to motivate yourself to get out of your bed, face a cold, dark, and silent apartment, eat breakfast, and organize your day in just a couple of hours before walking out and getting started with things. There's a lot to be said for actually doing it, the follow-through, and I've mostly managed to do it. Like anyone, I've had hiccups, days where I didn't hear my alarm and slept until noon, others where I woke up only with enough time to eat and run out the door, but the majority of the time I wake up in the dark hours of the early morning and do as I'm slowly getting accustomed to, learning to relish the time I have to think my thoughts, be alone, and get my creative energy flowing. For someone who prefers to stay awake until those hours of the day, it's a radical change. I don't go to bed that much earlier, but I utilize my time awake more efficiently.
This is all a part of themes of late that revolve around setting realistic goals and attaining them, evaluations of what exactly it is that those goals are and what purpose they serve, and a lens toward where that will push me into the future. Perhaps it's not realistic to wake up at noon one day after going to sleep at 5 AM and say "today I will go to bed extra early, by 10 PM, and wake up and do yoga and cook a full breakfast at 6 AM!", but setting more attainable goals seems to work. Waking up at 5:30-6:30 after going to bed at midnight leaves me tired, but the benefit to the rest of the day outweighs the relative sleepiness. The extra productivity is more satisfying than the perceived comfort of not doing it, and it leads to other decisions which expand on that. I'm also eating better since I've started this particular habit and, upon balancing my accounts, found that I'm spending much less money than I thought.
So the purpose of writing this, I suppose, is to say that it can be done. I, in particular, can overcome my natural tendencies to laze about until the ugly hours of the morning and instead turn the ugly hours of the morning into useful ones. They might not be any more attractive, but with a shift in perspective and willpower, they're no longer enemies. It's all part of the process of actually doing the things that we think would make us better versions of ourselves, and in my case, I needed to start somewhere. Let's see where that goes.