I have never gone back and reloaded my bookmarks* from when I weaned myself from the teat of the Internet while I was studying for my exams. That means that if I want to look at blogs, I have to 1. remember the URL, or 2. make the effort to dig my bookmarks out from where I’ve hidden them on my hard drive. I am a lazy person at heart, so I’ve stuck with method 1 for a while; I just wish I had a better memory. The other day, though, I had to look something up for John on his computer, which contains my core bookmarks from back when we were a one-computer family. The lure was too great to resist, and I found myself skimming my old bookmarks. Aha! I thought. Let’s see what Mr. John Scalzi is up to.

Now I am thinking of giving up writing.

It was this article that really did it for me. Does this main character/story-line ring any bells, Kee? Does it remind you of a certain short story I was working on last year?

Last time something like this happened to me, I thought, Hey! My story ideas aren’t total crap! Someone else out there thought it was a publishable idea. This time, my confidence has taken a bit of a beating.

I guess I know the saying, beat by Miss Snark into her readership, that ideas are a dime a dozen, but the real test is in the execution. But that doesn’t make me feel much better. I guess I thought my idea was unique, but apparently someone else’s brain works similarly to mine.

What’s really stupid is that I didn’t even have any plans to publish my story (I don’t *think*, but the brain is a treacherous organ).

Also, I hadn’t written a word on it in months and months, even though I had recently dusted it off mentally and was working out some necessary revisions. Maybe that is why I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under me. If my story were still buried in a box in my closet or in a file on my hard drive, it would have been like finding out that my one-of-a-kind tchotchke was actually part of a set. As it is, it feels more like discovering that someone cloned my child and gave her a better upbringing—complete with private tutor and pony—than I could.

Maybe I should just get over myself. I mean, look what happened to this guy: When he wrote a book from the point of view of an ogre, Shrek came out. When he wrote a book about some kick-ass princesses, Shrek 3 came out. And yet, he didn’t let him get it down, and those books all got published.

* Yes, I know there are sites where you can store your bookmarks online, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.

Let's see:

Today I read a chapter on child development and a chapter on cognitive linguistics and wrote a page of notes for my thesis. It's not a whole lot, but it is a lot more than nothing. I think I will aim for that amount as my minimum every day.

And what's up with you?

I had a very productive day--minus my bus not coming and therefore being late for the class I was scheduled to teach. *d'oh!*

I typed up a plan for my thesis and sent it off to a potential advisor, who wrote me right back and said yes. Yay! Except, I am supposed to turn in a form with her signature on Thursday, and she is sick at home (in a distant town--she commutes). I'll drop it in the mail to her tomorrow and run by the exam office with a copy of her email to let them know that I won't have my paperwork in on time.

I found a couple of books to use for my thesis. I'll start reading them tomorrow and will enter them in a database of materials.

I read about the corpus I want to use for my research.

So, baby steps and all, but progress!

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have resolved to whittle away my to-read pile. John knows how much I love to read, and every xmas I get books from him, but I don’t seem to have made much headway recently on getting through my stack. This last semester has been rather heavy-duty, so there has been no reading for pleasure, outside of the occasional peek into one of my “wubby” books: Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter, The Dead Zone, The Lord of the Rings. I often read the last three when I feel a little down. Nothing makes me feel better than a guaranteed cry.

Anyhow, I had taken up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as bathroom reading a while back, but it was getting too engrossing for that setting, and I didn’t have more time to devote to it, so it went into the closet until yesterday. I thought I was about halfway through it, but alas, my bookmark is only about one-quarter of the way in. So now I have something to do in the evenings in addition to mastering Rock Band for Wii and the occasional sewing project. During the day, I will be putting my nose to the grindstone on my thesis (I even did a little research for it already this morning!). I refuse to feel guilty about reading in the evening, as long as I get my work done in the morning.

I had grand plans for organizing my reading plan, maybe going in alphabetical order, but that would be a huge undertaking, so I think I will just try to mix it up as I go. And post my progress here, just to have something to say.