Quite a different day.
I thought Swinburne (my charming university) had totally destroyed it before it began. This morning bought an email letting me know – two days before the official term goes back – that one of my classes had been moved and that the one I originally chose simply now no longer exists.
My timetable up until now has and always has been very carefully orchestrated to maximise work time, homework time, spare time and to minimise days spent traveling. That is, I try and squash my full time load into two days preferably, this time I had it down quite satisfactorily to three.
As things are, my beautifully structured Thursday now has a gaping 3hr gap in the middle (of me stuck at uni) and my Monday has a 1hr lecture scar in my mid afternoon. I was ropeable and so close to writing a cranky email back asking them to pay me for the extra half day’s work that I lose. Class options for the change became: Monday or Monday. Thank you for the endless choice.
In honor of Analise (Boy I hope you see this): Monday Monday Monday, I say damn your mood swings.
This now (best case scenario) means that I go to work on Monday and leave at midday’ish to make my lecture. Go to work Tuesday. Do an online class on Wednesday mornings, now cue ‘homework afternoon’. Go to uni on Thursdays have a 1hr lecture have a three hour gap have a three hour tute. Go to uni on Fridays freaking early and have solid classes for 4 or so hours then I am free for the weekend.
As I don’t live exactly close to uni this is less than desirable. I often wonder if my attitude (which sucks by the way) would change if I lived across the road. Probably not.
Dear Rebecca, in truth you have a sweetly small full-time study load.
Anyway, my day turned happy by me going off and doing something quite different by hanging out with my sister-in-law Anita and her two bridesmaids-to-be for dress shopping. No I am not going to be a bridesmaid and it was still a fairly painful memory to re-engage in, because it was pretty painfully similar to my unsuccessful hunt, but I had a lot of fun. I got along well with Julie and Tash and it was great to finally spend some proper time with Anita.
On Sunday, we showed the youth the Nooma DVD – Noise. They coped remarkably well with a dominantly reading-the-screen type of movie. It is about silence. We managed 5-10 minutes of it afterwards.
I don’t make a habit of silence, not a set habit anyway. I can sit at home for hours in front of a computer screen with or without music on, but it doesn’t count. I am the kind of person that gets so utterly engrossed in something that I lose track of everything. Making an effort to be silent I do not think includes letting myself be so engrossed that I forget to listen to that nothing. To just be.
I picked up a book a bought ages ago about Youth Spirituality. Oddly enough it was full of all the stuff I’d been looking up online (stations/labyrinth). There was a section on silence.
So I did it. For an hour. I didn’t limit myself too much, I could do roughly what I wanted. No music, no computer. I could read (and I did) and not just Christian stuff, I could write (and I did), I could sit (and I did), I could pray (and I did).
It felt long. But it felt different.
Did God speak? Perhaps. If he did it was about disciplines in general.
On consideration, my rock solid discipline for the past few years has been blogging. This has probably been better for me than I realise. Ultimately, it tells me that I can be an extremely disciplined person. The sad thing is that this disciplined part of myself doesn’t extend much further.
So I was thinking about what does discipline actually mean? And how is it different from simply living an organised life and is it just the specific ‘God’ stuff? And how I don’t think good discipline necessarily is just the prayer/silence stuff and about how perhaps it’s more about a mental shift and an application of yourself to somethin.?
I’m not sure though.
I’d like to try and be more disciplined this year in all kinds of areas, however it seems that it would be far too easy for it to slip in to me just getting into a freakishly organised life (which has happened before in stints) for a while.
So, what is the difference. What are good things to be disciplined about?
dis·ci·pline
After my bout of silence, I put on a movie called ‘The Snowman’ by Raymond Briggs. He is a cartoonist but these are animated short films based on his books and set to amazing music.
In essence, it gave me an extra half hour of silence. There was music and image: it was a boy’s quiet adventure. It begins at home where simple things are delightful. The boy and the snowman share each other’s worlds, fly across snowfields and party with other snowmen, at the end the boy is left with only the reminder of a scarf and that is all. His snowman creation came alive and gave him more of life for a short time, you don’t know the implications.
It was interesting.
Post of the day to this ripper from Julie Clawson
And check the controversy on my recent post Trade – Heague & Moran. It makes blogging feel weird.