Fuck yes! Thank you, this is exactly what i need right now.
I thought that you were serious in this post--the content falls within the realm of where I'm going, so I didn't see the sarcasm here that apparently exists. Indeed, I was pleased to see that you took my advice and gave yourself a kick in the ass with it ... not so, however (if our cohorts are reading this better than I, which I suspect they are), so let's unpack this a bit.
You have the shovel of planning and the luxury of time. Start digging yourself out and you'll be able to look back in 3-6 months and have something to show for your effort.
Set an attainable goal--one that you can hit with about a week's worth of work, and one that will help your long-term plans--and then go meet that goal by putting in some work each day. It's really quite lame, but all the literature surrounding--for instance--how to write A SHIT-TON of articles say the same thing. I looked at rather a lot of books on this by some very smart people. Damned if they didn't all say this same thing: set up short-term goals, then do
something each and every day to meet these goals.
And limit yourself to two projects at a time. This will help you, and I'm trying to do this with myself right now as well.
Just over a week ago, I had thought about an article I wanted to write and had done some preliminary literature review for it. I hadn't touched the text in about 2 months, and it was very clumsily stuck together--words vomited onto the page, really. I set myself the task of meeting a hard deadline--September 1--and wanted to give myself breathing room before that deadline. Hence, I figured on a deadline of August 24 "or so." I put a couple of solid days work into it (8-9 hours actively writing and thinking about it in front of the computer) and was able to bang out a rough draft that I had a couple friends review. Now, as soon as I head off the ADISC site for the morning and put another 1-2 hours into it--mostly spent in creating 2 figures that will help orient and guide the reader--it'll be ready to go. All in, I've got about 15-20 hours of sit-down-writing time invested, and much of this was done over a period of 4-5 days when I absolutely refused to let the day pass without at least touching it, beating up the words, sketching out a new figure, adding a table... I think that you could accomplish something measurable in just over a week if you work on one small sub-project and kick it along daily. And I think you'll feel much better for it, too.
If you want to be rich, I can tell you that raw hard work far surpasses talent, skill, intellect, wisdom, knowledge, or any other cerebral gift you may have. I've known some exceptionally intelligent and well-read fiscal nobodies, and some extremely well-off idiots. The thing that differentiated these two groups, if any one attribute, was the capacity and tolerance for hard work. Unfortunate, that. So--engross yourself in your work for the next 8 days, then next weekend come out and call up that DL-friendly girl. See if she'd like to meet up for coffee or listen to live music or go to dinner theater.
I get the sense that the approach is where you'll screw this up, though, so I'll suggest that you get an extra ticket or seat or what have you, and let her know, "I'm going to go XXXXXX. If you'd like to come along, I'd certainly be glad for the company, but no biggie if you don't feel up to it. Let me know what you'd like to do." I give this advice to you because I myself probably would have mangled the approach in a similar way as you will when I ... (crap, I'm gonna say it. I don't believe it, but I'm going to use The Phrase here) ... when I was your age.
