Weekly Summary 11/5/10 - 11/11/10

Not a terribly productive week, but I am getting better. I completed chapter 13 of The Journals of Ayn Rand and chapter twelve of Good Calories, Bad Calories, completing four conceptual exercises, and part of the third chapter of The Logical Leap, which I didn't finish since the dense information could only hold my attention span for so long. Additionally, I unintentionally constructed six posts for the blog this week since I was in a writing mood. Generally I have been nicely productive; the issue is with quantity. I'm getting better and am getting back into the drift of things, so I need to merely intensify my efforts to restore things as they were. The Circumstance is still hindering my efforts, though.

I noticed that there seems to be a strange attribute with my concentration where I'll be able to intensely concentrate on something for a sort period of time before I inevitably burn out and catch myself staring at the same sentences for a long period of time. Oddly enough the period of concentration sets me in a thinking mood, so it's not that I transfer from concentrating on my study subject to fruitless daydreaming but rather that I get tired of reading and need to think. It's not always the case that I become contemplative about the subject at hand; I just think about things in general. This is probably due to some issue of absorbing information vs. digesting it mentally, so I need to be more careful to balance things. In the future when I catch myself getting in this dazed state after intense concentration I'll pace around and see if I can harness the contemplative mood and direct it towards intense dissection of the subject at hand. I think this has the potential to greatly enhance my thinking and learning capabilities.

A bit of good news on the personal front is that my mind is still largely clear of thoughts about the Circumstance. Except when I'm exposed to it, I've been able to concentrate pretty well on my endeavors and have been quite content. I'm not sure whether or not any of my "up" cycles have ever lasted this long before, but it looks promising. If it continues it will certainly make up for the months of suffering I have undergone constantly concentrating on the Circumstance in such a miserable fashion. Perhaps I might even be able to start living my life once more as if the Circumstance were irrelevant. But truth be told: That might not be necessary.

Perhaps the best news is that I think I might be able to once again give a time frame for my Project. It's possible that I could complete it by early January and finally bring to an end nearly a year's worth of effort, though I'm still debating with myself on the means I have planned. You see, in order to establish this time frame as definite it would also carry with it the risk that my Project could fail in a major way in a short few months, so I don't know right now whether it's such a good idea to initiate the means I have in mind to bring things to absolute completion. It's still a very confusing issue, as on one hand the completion of the Project could improve my mental health to the point that I would be infinitely more fit and able to prevent its failure, but on the other hand there's still the risk that such fitness could ultimately amount to nothing and leave me with another significant problem to deal with, perhaps even bring the Circumstance back into my life and make it worse than ever. I still need to do lots of thinking and talking with other people about this.

Needless to say, the thought of getting my Project done in the next two or so months strongly appeals to me. I've been working on this Project since March 2010 and am utterly sick of it. I also feel a guilty sense of envy towards those that are able to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish in dramatically shorter periods of time. A person I know that accomplished the same thing that I'm currently trying to do had started way after I had began my form of the project and managed to get done in about a month. My situation angers me, and that the Circumstance has driven me to it is more angering. Regardless, I'll get done what I need to get done in my own way and at my best pace, so I'll just take the damn lumps and deal with it.

Again you'll have to be left in the dark about the specifics, but I'll let you know about any advances in my thinking and decision making. In the best of all scenarios it's possible that I could have something happen which will make the contemplated means utterly unnecessary -- and there is a chance of that -- which I am honestly hoping for since it would put me in a much better position and put me at less risk. I don't know what the odds are of it happening or when I could expect it, so it's still up in the air. In any case, the sooner I can get my Project finished is the sooner I can start living my life to the fullest again.

I have to confess that this possibility of knowing when the Project could be finished is kind of distracting and comforting. Wednesday, for instance, was largely spent pondering some specific tenets of the aftermath of my Project. I doubt it'll all be so distracting as to prevent me from going at my pursuits, but it is on my mind nonetheless. It should be on my mind considering I'm contemplating a somewhat risky means of achieving my goal, but I should take care not to let it dominate my thoughts.

Given the considerations of my Project, I'd like to continue my pacing for my goals this week: One of every section in my study subjects -- not exceeding the current chapter in TLL -- with emphasis on coming up with an answer to my Project conundrum, and perhaps some continued emphasis on my blog post writing. Life is going good right now, but I must make it better.