Tricks and Costs - Part 2

Merging these for efficiency's sake -

Tricks:

Block the clocks, especially the one staring at you from the corner of your laptop screen. If you don't know what time it is, you don't know how much you've used/wasted/got left. If you need some kind of reminder (appointment, work, etc.) set an alarm.

NO TV, just don’t start. The half hour turns into an hour and then 2. Turn on the stereo instead, load in the CDs (distracting enough), and sit at your desk. Use internet radio. Use your iPod. Whatever, just not TV (except in the rare case of the Grey's Anatomy season finale).

Use Ebsco or other databases to get your references imported straight into your bibliographic manager (like Refworks) – work backwards if necessary, rather than enter it yourself. So I found a reference in a journal article, didn't want to type it in myself, so searched it on Ebsco and then imported it into my Write-n-Cite list - handy!

Also handy: comfy pajamas, an RRU hoodie, and some kind of reasonable chair/desk combination. And even in mid-May, some wool socks aren't a bad plan.

Costs:

Energy costs on the rise as the computer is on almost all the time, and the lights on for at least 6 hours a day (9pm-3am).

I've found some fresh flowers are a nice addition to the apartment and then I can pretend I'm actually outside in the environment. Also, they don't need to be expensive if you "purloin or pilfer posies from other people" as a friend says (for instance, in my laneway there are some bluebell-type things, and some overhanging lilacs).

At what cost sanity? Stock up on whatever you need food, drink, drugs, books, music, time to get through this particular period of your life. And good luck with it.

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David Orr, on a world without environmental education: “The result is ecological yahoos without a clue why the color of the water in their rivers is related to their food supply, or why storms are becoming more severe as the planet warms…If they come to reflect on the discrepancy between the splendor of their private lives in a hotter, more toxic and violent world, as ecological illiterates they will have roughly the same success as one trying to balance a checkbook without knowing arithmetic.” (1992, p. 86) <-- proper APA style!