Crunch time

Let the time between the last entry and today be proportional to my ability to make rational decisions regarding my own time management. When the time between entries is equal to or less than one week, the optimal level has been reached. A list of high-level goals for myself when I start over in a couple days:

- Make more rational decisions regarding my own time management.

I believe that this one difference, when enacted, will send everything else reeling into position, so that my *real* list of goals for myself will naturally occur. If you find this vague notion to be absurd, it's because you're imagining the process to exist in some incorrect form.

I will be on an airplane in 28 hours, and have the following goals to accomplish beforehand:

- Participate in my last day at work.
- Begin packing, which should include doing an inventory of what I need but do not possess.
- Obtain what I do not possess.
- Decide on a relatively small number of books to take. (10?)
- Finish packing.
- Get travel documents and information organized.
- Get everything transferred onto my computer or external hard drive.
- Trade iPods with Mum.
- Buy winter (waterproof) shoes.
- Celebrate New Year's by seeing everyone one last time.
- Take pictures.

There is a separate list for the planes and then trains. I haven't even started meditating on these items, though...

Sad Music

As part of an experiment, I have decided to stop listening to "depressing" music for a period of time. The period of time is not set; basically, I'm going to go cold turkey, and I think a time will come about when it is obvious to myself whether it is working or not. The primary artists that I will STOP listening to are:

- Antony & the Johnsons
- Sufjan Stevens
- Joanna Newsom
- Sigur Ros
- Radiohead
- Arcade Fire
- Jens Lekman

And really, I don't know what I'm going to do about artists like Animal Collective, though my instinct is not to listen because ultimately they open me up in the same way and I usually get depressed.

Anyway, the ultimate goal is that this will work quite splendidly and then I will go to Finland without ANY depressing music available to me. Hopefully at that point, I can formulate a strategy going forward. I think that it is no coincidence (for worse) that all the bands listed above are amongst my favorite musicians...

Research; slip-ups

I never gave much thought to the intricacy and inherent difficulty that exists in the concept of "research" until I was in college. Now, I can see just how difficult it is to cut off the excess meat of any information to what can be considered reliable and representative. For someone who knows these concepts conceptually but hasn't yet had much chance to exercise them academically, these lessons can be hard to apply to less formal information gathering.

How does one actually go about finding out what a foreign country is "like"? Read a thousand accounts? Find one person you trust that has knowledge of it? Maybe the answer is that you don't do any of this; you find out the basics and whatever specifics people seem to convey (ask ten people about a specific place and they tend to notice the same things, don't they?), you accept that a good deal of it will not prove to be reliable, then you suck it up and leave. You can add the optional step that you forget some specific item of importance if you're me... (say, a camera?)

I seem to have slipped-up on Friday night. If loose lips sink ships, then locked doors make people justifiably mad. (No ragging on me for laziness with that couplet, please.) Speaking of research, I think I will soon be able to make a case for a causal relationship between $2 Long Island iced teas and this big "slip-up" bucket.

I laugh to realize, too, that other people were struggling with locked doors at around the same hour. I do love the dichotomies that humans manage to find everywhere.

Apocalyptica

Last night officially marked the beginning of my research into Finnish culture, as I attended a concert of the string-metal band "Apocalyptica", from Helsinki.


Although my research is by no means complete, I am shocked to find that Finnish people seem to possess more energy, not to mention bravado, faux-indignation, finger-tapping speed, bow dexterity, and testosterone than the average member of our local culture. They also appear to receive a greater-than-average amount of enjoyment from polyrhythmic drum solos and inciting mosh pits, not to mention responding to repeated calls for encores.

So where does this leave me? Perhaps I should re-visit the option of school in Belgium, where the biggest local oddity appears to be sustained accordion music.

Application

Tomorrow I turn in my application to go to Finland for the Spring semester.

4 hours of daylight in January
20 hours of daylight in June?

I have to admit to being a little scared by the summer portion of that equation. Have you seen "Insomnia"??

For the 1000th time, "The Immortal" has really tightened a hold on me. Damn dead poets.

First Post

I guess it's how I first feel when I think about taking a semester abroad:

"The cities we passed were a flickering wasteland
But his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless
While down in the lowlands the crops are all coming;
We have everything
Life is thundering blissful towards death
In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness"

- Joanna Newsom

I couldn't possibly explain why or how THAT relates to how I feel...