mrp2019-blog

[mrp2019-blog]

June 3

Personal goal: have outline of paper by Friday end of day; this way I have time to clean it up and show to Barbara for our meeting next week

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June 3 Procrastination tracker:

DONE 

Gardasil shot (shot 1 of 3)

TO DO 

taxes

pay remaining balance on water bill (3$)

[mrp2019-blog]

June 3

Happy June! Today I started working at 10:00am, took a break from 11:30 to 1:30pm to go to the gym (30 minute on bike, 40 minutes weightlifting, 2 minute abs, 8 minutes stretching, 10 minutes shower/change). Started work again at 1:30pm, will stay here until 7:30pm and then go to dinner at my parents’ place. 

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May 29, 30, 31

Reading “Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life” edited by William A. Cohen and Ryan Johnson. Also reading “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennett and “On Garbage” by John Scanlan. Need to kick project into 2nd gear -- outline for paper due in two weeks (June 15) and draft due in 4 weeks (July 1). 

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May 28

Today finished closing water and sewer account with the city of Ottawa. Also walked to school and started work around 12pm. Still feeling unwell. 

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May 27

Didn’t do a lot today either -- feeling unwell due to period cramps. Read for about 20 minutes then had a 2 hour nap. New rules: absolutely no working in bed. 

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May 24

Didn’t do a lot today-- read a couple articles which I will add here later. 

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May 23: Procrastination Tracker

Things I did:

– Paid final bills for 247 Percy

-- Made physio appointment: 10:40am tomorrow, May 24th

-- Asked around for subs on FB for Monday ultimate

– Organized my new room

– Did laundry

– Put away dishes

STILL TO DO:

– 2017 and 2018 taxes

-- Make DR appointment -- Gardasil vaccine

-- pick up Interlibrary books from library

-- Email supervisor with book list, ask for recommendations, and send 2 essays

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May 23: Status Update (Day 3)

Good morning! Today I woke up naturally at 7:25am-- I usually wake up a few minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off at 7:30 and then again at 7:45. I didn’t end up getting up until 8:30, because I slept in and also listened to a podcast (Reply All, which is one of my favourites and comes out with a new episode every second Thursday). It helps keep me updated with what’s going on in the online world, and it is fascinating and funny. I then had breakfast (green tea and slice of bread with peanut butter, plus baked potato wedges for scheduled weirdness). I then watched the newest Jane the Virgin episode with my sister (the episodes come out one at a time every Thursday morning). Finally, I paid all the remaining outstanding bills from my old apartment, noodled around on tumblr and then updated my blog. I will now launch into research for the day! At least I am getting going earlier than yesterday-- no need to be hard on myself. I am still easing into it all and being kind and forgiving to myself. I hope that over the next week or so I can transition to stating my day around 8/830 (since I think I work best first thing in the morning, if I am well rested) and then ending early so I have calm evenings to myself and for spending time doing the things and being with the people I treasure most. 

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May 22: EOD Update

I didn’t do as much work as I had planned yesterday, but I did read a few really interesting articles: 

“Henry Mayhew, Urban Ecologist” by Barbara Leckie. 

“New Grub Street’s Ecologies of Paper” by Richard Menke. 

“Reading Victorian Rags: Recycling, Redemption, and Dickens’s Ragged Children” by Deborah Wynne. 

“Lake District Online: Studies in Book Ecology and Digital Migration” by Margaret Linley. 

“The World Made Flax: Cheap Bibles, Textual Corruption, and the Poetics of Paper” by Joshua Calhoun. 

Each of these articles dealt with the topic of paper, print culture, and the interplay of medium/message/material in the nineteenth century. Leckie’s piece was read last week and is one of my touchstones throughout this project -- I need to mine her bibliography and go from there. I especially liked Wynne’s linkage between recycling and redemption, which is very illuminating for my project. Menke’s article was helpful in outlining the history of paper production in the nineteenth century, something which I was largely ignorant of. Additionally, Menke’s ecologically-inflected language was really helpful in conceptualizing “ecologies” of paper, print, etc. I also need to finish Calhoun’s piece. Finally, Linley’s piece was an interesting brief introduction to a digital humanities project she is working on, and her articulation of the relationship between space and place in Wordsworth, and the role of Romaniticism in viewing the natural and built environment, is something I am interested in looking out for traces in Mayhew’s work-- I know he uses the language of the sublime to describe the vast amounts of wealth accumulated at the London docks, for instance, but I have to look closer to see if he does anything with the languages and discourses of the beautiful and the picturesque. 

I also looked at collections of essays specifically regarding climate ethics, since I am becoming really interested in that topic. I downloaded a essay collections and plan to browse them later. I have a lot of books and other articles lined up to read in order to orient myself a bit more in ecocriticism, especially pertaining to the nineteenth century. Reading more Bennett and other eco critical pieces today is my goal! 

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May 22: Procrastination Tracker

Things I should be doing that I have been irrationally putting off: 

1) Taxes for 2017 and 2018 -- to do by EOW (end of week)

2) Paying final bills for 247 Percy Street (Hydro Ottawa, City of Ottawa, Enbridge, Rogers) -- to do by EOD (end of day)

3) Organizing my new room -- getting hangers for closet (ASAP)

4) Doing laundry (by EOD)

5) Putting away dishwasher items (by EOD)

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May 22: Status Update (Day 2)

Good morning! Today started later than I had hoped because I slept so poorly last night and let myself sleep in. For breakfast, I made myself oatmeal, green tea and a glass of water mixed with Vega protein powder. I have not yet figured out the ratio of green tea to hot water to time steeping -- I have tried what was recommended online and it doesn’t taste right, and neither does my personal experiments with time and amount of tea. I will get it eventually! I should probably go buy macha and whisk it myself. I miss good cups of green tea that aren’t bitter. Today is going to be better: starting at 11, I will be doing reading and taking notes on Bennett’s text; tomorrow, I will be going to Carleton’s library to pick up all my books on hold. The basic plan is to do lots of research until June 1 and then start the writing process while simultaneously doing more research, but setting up that basic foundation first. Anyways, here we go! 

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May 21 EOD Update

I did not do as much work today as I had planned on doing. Yesterday was a tough day-- I am going through some personal issues at the moment and am still processing it all. So yesterday I didn’t have many “spoons” and did what I could with an otherwise difficult day -- I picked out new glasses and sunglasses, bought two summer dresses, had a really productive session with my counsellor, bought shoe polish for my leather shoes, bought a tensor bandage for my sprained ankle, did groceries, made dinner (a great vegan sweet potato and squash stew from Angela Liddon), watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale (so good!), went out for drinks with a lovely friend, and then watched more HT and fell asleep around 12:20am. In hindsight, I should have gone to bed at 10:30pm when I got off the phone with my boyfriend, but I was kind of wired still and kept going, thus messing up my entire sleep schedule and making my May 22 day start later than planned. I need to have more self-discipline and stick to my schedule. Something to work on :) 

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May 21: Research Diary

Reading: 

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett 

This text was introduced to me by a kind scholar at the 2019 INCS conference in Dallas, TX. I am excited to keep reading, especially since I am curious to see how Bennett brings philosophers (especially Spinoza) into conversation with ecology. 

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May 21: Status Update (Day 1)

Today I start my major research project (MRP) in earnest. The past few weeks have been both hectic and restful, but I am now finally ready to begin the last semester, the last project, the last challenge of my Masters degree. I intend for this place to serve as a place for accountability: to document my time spent and how it was spent, what I learned, who I read, and where I want to go from here. I now know that procrastination grows out of uncertainty: a feeling that what needs doing is too amorphous and too difficult to tackle, and so it is delayed again and again because of fear of oneself and one’s own abilities. I want to design a project schedule that tackles these issues head-on so that procrastination is kept to a minimum. I want to put into practice everything I have learned about myself and my work habits over the years and try and make a change. A new start with old knowledge. I do not want this project to be about the acquisition of knowledge; rather, I want it to be about self-cultivation and self-betterment.