The Perfectly Groomed Nails of the Lazy Coder

I'm a nail biter by nature, but from time to time if I'm not doing any gardening, moving furniture or having any personal traumas my nails have the capacity to grow extremely long. For some reason when I'm working and it doesn't matter if I'm doing my accounts, coding a website or writing an essay I'm guaranteed to be biting my nails. The fact that my nails are currently so long tells me that not only have I not done any of the above this week,  but that I haven't done any of the above for over a month.

I had so many plans for this summer and as it gets closer and closer to winter it's blatantly obvious that none of them are going to get done. Now when I say I haven't done anything this summer I have. I've been taking care of my family and doing a very good job of it.  I also did an internship at a leading Manchester digital agency but if I'm going to catch up with the mouthy teenage boys (see earlier post) then I need to be doing a lot more than I am currently.

The problem with summer is firstly it seems to be so much longer than it actually is and for some reason despite being a parent for over half my life I still expect to get things done whilst there are children in the house. (How have I not learnt that yet?) I also forget that if I need to concentrate on something that having Spongebob on in the background, half the neighbours kids screaming in the garden or a tired, beautiful and slightly spoilt two year old anywhere near me is simply not going to work. In a years time when my coding is better than it is now and I don't have to keep refering to my text books every two minutes I'll be able to manage more distractions than I can now. I'm currently the equivilent of a learner driver. I can drive, but I can't go faster than 25 mph and I struggle with three point turns and hill starts. I need more practice which I can't get with my entourage,  so next years summer plan is to firstly reduce the sheer volume of things I aim to do over the summer. In March it seemed perfectly reasonable that I'd be able to -

1. Look after my family,
2. Do an internship, 
3. Decorate my bathroom,
4. Write 3 websites,
5. Makeover my garden,
6. Finish my tax return, 
7. Practice my dressmaking skills
8. Declutter my office.

As I sit here on the last day of August I've actually only done the first 2 things on the list. I did my internship before the kids finished school for the summer and I've spent the rest of the summer looking after them and whining about how many things I didn't get done. The problem with moaning is that it doesn't get stuff done, it just makes you feel miserable and inadequate. At the end of the day what is more important than looking after your children? If I had a great garden and a full portfolio of fantastic websites but I'd neglected my kids in the process, then the negative voices in my head would have a lot more to complain about.

 
I'm entirely confident that I have the mental capacity to get my degree, the potential for disaster lies in the logistics and planning elements and unfortunately I have a tendancy to go one of two ways. I'm either an OCD style obsessive or I'm a complete tool.  OCD mode involves colour co-ordinated folders, clip boards, wall planners and all manner of nerdiness. Tool mode involves doing none of the above and wishing I had. OCD mode gets things done and allows me to indulge my fetish for buying new stationery. Tool mode has no upside. It's just me acting like a tool and in most cases heading towards epic failure. My natural state is one of disorganisation and mayhem, which is generally cancelled out by my ability to fly by the seat of my pants and scrape by at the last minute. I'm probably at my most productive when I'm running out of time and about to get myself into a big pile of brown stuff, but it's no fun. I also set myself very high standards so although the report / essay / tax return / dressmaking assignment is generally OK, I know full well that it could have, and in fact would have been so much better if I'd spent more time on it and not driven myself to the edge of a breakdown in the process.

I'm not sure if my inner obsessive is age related or whether I just got sick and tired of my own stupidity, the problem is that unfortunately I've been acting like a tool for a lot longer than I've been organised so I have to work really hard at it. The problem with being a full time student is that it doesn't feel full time. I've worked full time since I was 16 and frankly the 12 hours a week contact time, doesn't feel like I'm working full time so I imagine that I have a lot of time and should therefore be able to get loads of things done. I'm mentally discounting travel time, trips to the library, online research and all the other activities I do, simply because they don't take place at a specific time and / or in a university building. I used to work regular 16 and 18 hour days 5 days a week and then go home and get my laptop out to do work emails. No wonder I'm expecting to be bored silly with all my free time. The problem with my free time is that it creates a vacuum that is automatically filled. If I utilise the obsessive half of my nature and plan how long these extra activities are likely to take I'd realise that I don't actually have that much full time and the free time I do have, isn't enough to fit in even half of the things I want to get done. This academic year, my goals are to avoid the self induced panic attacks of trying to do too many different things and to embrace my inner obsessive. Granted she doesn't seem to be much fun, sitting around with her diary allocating every hour of her time, but on balance she's a lot more fun that the Lucozade fuelled, sleep deprived, slightly psychotic maniac she replaces.