05.15.08
Miserable day
I struggled to wake up this morning and I felt like I was catching a cold. I’m feeling the effects of too many late nights and early mornings. They make for a horrible combination for staying focused and being on an even keel emotionally. The weather didn’t help either. It was cold, rainy, and oppressively gloomy all day. My head throbbed with a dull headache, my contacts felt dirty, and my neck and back ached. Two meetings kept me away from my desk and every minor frustration nearly drove me to tears. Some days I just want to throw up my hands and run out the door, never to return.
I’ve been struggling to find time to read the May issue of Wired Magazine. It’s one of the many new journals that have been mysteriously appearing on my desk with my name on a routing label. Somehow I’m collecting routed journals and I didn’t even try. (Maybe there’s a sign on my back…)
The cover article discussing how to Get Smarter contains lots of fascinating long and short articles, so I hate to pass along this issue without reading it. Some points of interest: I can relate to how panicking makes you stupid. I was surprised to learn that reading too fast (i.e. speed reading) affects your comprehension level. But the most interesting article of all is the one on remembering everything you’ll ever learn. It says the best time to commit new information to your memory is right before you forget it– which is nearly impossible to do in everyday life. Now I won’t feel too bad when I forget something. I can just say I forgot to remember it at the right time.
05.12.08
Workload exceeds maximum!
Each time I got a voice mail today, my voice mail system gave me an ominous warning that my inbox was getting so full, it was considering not letting me hear any messages. It told me I had to delete or move emails first in order to free up space. It came down to my basic curiosity– how bad did I want to know who the caller was or what they wanted? Would it be worth it to free up inbox space just to find out I had a new task, project, or problem to handle?
Hmmm… curiosity got the better of me. I decided to squirrel away some unread newsletters that were piling up. I stuffed them into a folder on my hard drive, along with dozens of other unread newsletters from the same sender. Sigh… wish I had time to read them. Maybe someday…. Wait- forget that daydream of getting caught up– the voice mail beckons. After hearing it, I was right. I have a new project to work on and a phone call to return. Guess I’ll have to read those newsletters later, whenever that is…
I’m so far behind on reading my blogs I might as well clear out the aggregator and start over. When I worry about what I may have missed in unread blog posts, I try to tell myself if it were that important, I’d find time to read them every day. Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when the voice mail and email inboxes are full to bursting.
In addition to emails, voice mails, and newsletters, I tried desperately to keep up with new projects today by writing them down on a pad of paper. It was a great idea– until I remembered I had several pads of paper scattered about my desktop with lots of old projects written on them. Guess it’s time to consolidate them on one large piece of paper and figure out which ones need to be done first.
I’ve tried putting new projects or tasks into Microsoft Outlook’s tasks and assigning due dates, reminders, and priorities. But they only end up annoying me when the reminder pops up and I don’t have time to do the task or project right then, usually because something else has come up. I know I can change the reminder or even dismiss it. I can also ignore it and have the software tell me how many hours, days, or even weeks I’ve been ignoring it. There’s nothing like being reminded you’re really far behind on your to-do list–and like a true packrat, I can accumulate overdue reminders like nobody else.
04.13.08
Love that nonfiction
One of the best things about reviewing vendor cataloging and processing is that I get to see all of our new nonfiction titles. Nonfiction is my favorite genre to read. I love to learn and almost everything interests me, from Attention-Deficit Disorder to Zoology. Quite often, I hear about an interesting book on our local NPR affiliate, then I check for the title in our catalog and place a hold on it. Other times, I discover an interesting book or two (or three) on my truck and flag them with my hold. A day or two later, I’m walking away from the circ desk with an armload of knowledge.
Our database vendor EBSCO has released a new product called NoveList Plus, which will profile narrative nonfiction. This means it would list a book that was a personal account of travel, rather than a travel guide. Our library will subscribe to it in the near future and it’ll be interesting to see if it profiles any of the nonfiction I like to read.
I also saw a post in the Everything is Miscellaneous blog, written by David Weinberger, about a beta website for book lovers called Booklamp. Booklamp expects to analyze patterns in writing and recommend books to registered users, much like Pandora analyzes patterns in music and delivers music according to your profile. My nonfiction reading interests jump around so much, I don’t know if there’s a reader’s service out there that can recommend new nonfiction to me, but I’m willing to try them all. If I find a good one, I’ll be sure to share it here.
