Wastage

ell, so much for all the things I kept telling myself I’d do as soon as I was finished with studying for the year.  All that time when I had no time for anything but work and study, I was so looking forward to having the time to read real books, and do massive craft projects, and do lots of blogging, and catch up on all the movies I missed, and play lots of games and and and and…  and I’ve pretty much done nothing for the past couple of weeks.
I think I’ve figured out what the problem is: I’ve spent the past five months in a mindset of not wanting to start anything big because I wouldn’t have time to finish it, so if I wanted to relax for a bit I’d watch a short youtube video rather than a film, read an article on the internet rather than a book, do a crossword rather than start a craft project, play a quick puzzle game on the computer rather than a game that took a longer commitment… so now, when I’ve got the capability to make a commitment to a longer-duration entertainment possibility, my mind is still turning automatically to the quick 10-minute entertainments – it’s just that now I’m repeating them over and over again.  So I’ll spend an evening playing solitaire obsessively, or browsing the internet, when there’s so many more interesting and satisfying ways I could be spending my time.  I haven’t exactly forgotten about all the other stuff, it’s just that when I hit leisure time they don’t immediately spring to mind.
Anyway, now that I’ve noticed and identified the problem, hopefully I’ll actually break the cycle and get back to spending my free time productively (for a given value of “productively” – building a giant xp farm in Minecraft counts as being productive, doesn’t it?).
Oh, and I got my results back (well, sort of – it’s only a provisional grade, because it has to be cross-marked by an external examiner, but it’s very rare that grades change drastically as a result): I got an A+!!!  So I’m pretty happy with that… 🙂