I Am Back

I'm back from a week of being busy with other things. Last week was hectic in many ways. I had assignments and tests and I also had one or more appointments almost every day. Life is more relaxed this week and I am looking forward to posting more often.

I just came back from another trip north. The weather was not the best for making a six hour trip each way, but I had an excellent reason for braving the winter storm. I left very early in the morning so I missed the worst of the weather. On Sunday morning, my partner and I returned home together.

My Sunday Morning Meditation

Last night’s snowfall dressed up the neighbourhood. The snow was light and fluffy enough to have stayed where it fell, and there was no wind to scatter the flakes. I am enjoying the view out my back window. Even though we live in a city, there is a small wooded area behind our house. Other than a shed or two, there is very little evidence of being in the middle of an urban area. There are very long lots on the two streets that run across each end of the block where we live. Most people do very little with the far end of their yards, which is what gives us our oasis of nature. Sometimes I can even forget where I am, and think that I have escaped to a quiet rural spot. I get up early enough that I am able to enjoy the morning stillness. The solitude and calmness help me quiet my mind and focus on the beauty beyond our back yard.

ADD

For several years I have suspected that I have ADD. Sometimes I look on the possibility of having ADD as a problem and want to fix it. At other times I look at it in a positive light. I have learned to live with the way that I think and learn. Most of the time I am very happy with my brain and we get along just fine. As long as we both know who is in control.

Two things happened this week that reminded me of some of the effects of being the way that I am. First of all, I went for a preliminary ADD assessment to see if it is worth going for a full psychological assessment. The assessor recommended that I have the full assessment. One of the things that clinched it for her, is the fact that I had not had any coffee for two years and drank a cup one day because I was having a lot of difficulty focusing on an assignment and getting started. After I drank the cup of coffee, I sat down and did the assignment in three hours after having spent parts of three days trying to get somewhere and failing. Most people, who had not drunk coffee or any other caffeine containing beverage for about two years, would not have reacted the way that I did. People who have ADD would react the way that I did. I have had a difficult time focusing on my writing lately and this is my third post today. Have you guessed that I started this morning off with a cup of coffee?

My Blog and my Journey

Originally, I started out with an idea that I would just write anything that I thought was of interest to me and to my potential readers. I had also thought that it would be good to be disciplined and write something every day to improve my writing. Very soon after I began, I decided to focus on my returning to university. That decision worked very well last term because there were many new things for me to comment on. There was also the life changing event of September 13 and the aftermath of that. It had a profound effect on me. I looked at my life and what I thought was important. I re-examined every aspect of my life. I put everything on the table. I just dumped it all out and went through everything, asking myself what was important and what was not. I surprised myself. At the end of the day, I had one very small pile and one very large pile. The small pile was the important stuff. In no particular order; family and friends, my relationship with my partner, my health, writing, learning, nature and gardening. That is about it. Most of the rest is either just one possible way of meeting my needs or it is not important. I am committed to staying focused on the small pile but it will take work and constant vigil to keep the insignificant minutiae from taking over my life again.

Reflections on Writing

I am often a person of few words and I find it difficult to part with them in writing. Talking with my family and friends is another matter though. I can talk forever about things that I am passionate about. I just find that the act of thinking about and composing my thoughts for posterity heightens my usual reticence somewhat. I also tend to get self conscious about what I am writing and end up thinking about my readers reactions far too much for my own good. It is one thing to be conscious of my writing and to be aware of possible reactions to it, but I tend to go overboard. I did mention that I am introspective, didn't I?

Math

Our math prof is somewhat disorganized and tends to go off in tangents when he finds something teachable. He was reviewing previous work this morning and found parallels between two different sections of the material and demonstrated how they were related. He was really teaching the material. I understood it much better after he was done. Unfortunately, most students want to be told what formula to use when and don't bother me with showing me how the formula is derived or other hard stuff like that. I happen to love being in a class like his. I love to know why I am doing something instead of just doing it because that is what I was told to do. A couple of students, who sit behind me, were complaining about not being able to take notes because of his style. A third student told them that she just gets notes from a friend in a different section. That prof gives her students lots of stuff to write down. I think that I like my math class partly because I also tend to find interesting things and go off in tangents. I am supposed to be touching up some paint upstairs and decided to have a hot chocolate break, and here I am, off on a tangent.

More About Writing

I enjoyed my day at school. My writing class is going very well and we are learning quite a lot. We spent an hour this afternoon looking at ways to improve sentences. It might sound very boring and dull, but it was not. I love to write and I love to learn. What better way to spend an hour of my time than to learn how to write better. The primary purpose of our writing course is to improve our writing, not to get bogged down in theory. We did spend some time analyzing sentences, but just enough to be able to put the information to good use when we revise our own writing. I feel self conscious about my writing in this post. It is hard for me to learn anything without reflecting on how well I do it. That certainly is not a bad thing but it does get in the way of whatever I am doing at the time. Like, right now.

Writing

We had a two hour writing class today. We brought in drafts of our work and broke up into small groups to critique each other's writing. We spent most of the two hours doing that. I am glad that I dropped by to visit my prof before class. Her comments were very mild and restrained compared to some of the comments that my classmates made. Part of the process of teaching us to write is to have us learn to read someone else's writing with a critical eye and be able to offer suggestions for improvement. The group that I was in worked very well together. We offered our suggestions in good faith. One guy even apologized to me for his choice of words when he commented on a section of my writing. I accepted some of their suggestions and did some rewriting after class. I still have more work to do, but I am happy with the changes.

I Am A Boring And Dull Person

I notice something very interesting a few moments ago. I took a break from working on an assignment for my writing class and checked out my blog stats and found this interesting Google search result. My post Dull And Boring ranks number two for the search term "I am a boring and dull person". Who knew that being dull and boring is something that others would emulate or want to know more about.

Second Term

I am off to a good start this term. I have a routine that works for me most of the time. My schedule is very workable, with enough free time, but not too much that the days are long. I like my two new classes, writing and finite math. I will need to work at both of those and not get behind. Writing is quite fast paced and there is a lot to cover. Finite is slower paced but there is a lot of homework to do. I do not find it very difficult but it does take time. I am comfortable with French and psych and the expectations of each of the profs in those two classes. When I started last fall, April seemed so very far away, but now it is just three short months until classes are done for the year. I am not planning on taking any courses this summer. I have enough other things to do and I want to take some time off and relax.