Lack of the Virtue of Industry Makes Cory's Work Extremely Late.

Alright... so after many days of being switched into summer mode and not being able to make myself sit down and actually do any work whatsoever... (and the worst part, not even really having that bother me... usually I beat myself up a lot if I have something overdue... not this time at all for some reason...) I decided that a fitting virtue to dissect in its relation to my habits, and my life in general, would be Industry, simply because it is one thing that I generally lack in all facets of life. Truly, if I could achieve being Industries in regular intervals, and not just in short huge bursts when I absolutely need to, my life would end up being a lot better (not to mention my GPA!). So, here goes the experiment.

(Disclaimer: I have the most irregular of days in the summer... I really am not entirely sure when to really call it the end of one day and the beginning of another, because I go to sleep when I'm tired, and wake up when I'm not... which has me having taken my sleep during just about every part of the day, at some point, and also had me awake during every part of many days. My sleeping habits destroyed the ease of this assignment.)

Sunday: Alright, to start out with we have the day before this very assignment was due. I had planned this day out as the one in which I would complete my poetry project for an online course I am taking with Mr.Viles, and then to use whatever time I had left for either some violin practice, or maybe just some kicking back, relaxing and watching some nice films. What happened in actuality though, would be something like this: (These next few actions of mine are something I'm assuming this journal is going to be seeing a lot of) I sat down at the computer after waking up around 1 in the afternoon, and went to go through my usual checking of all my stuff half hour process before starting anything productive. This process extended to an hour. After that, I pulled up the Prophets and Poetry ning page to make sure I knew what I was doing for this project, I did, so I opened up my started version of it... and ten minutes later had finished rationalizing why I didn't need to do this yet and how I had plenty of time before the end of Monday to get all my work done. I then spent the rest of the night in that horrible World of Warcraft that has begun to destroy my life known as (yes, I'm quite ashamed, I did so well for years avoiding getting into it...). Absolutely nothing industrious about this day.

Monday: This would be the day everything was due in both Honors and Prophets and Poetry... I hadn't slept the night before, and by the time I had been able to convince myself that I needed to get some work done it was about 7pm. As I opened up a document to start writing this assignment in, I also opened up my Aim messenger to see if any neat people were up and about. They were. I ended up getting a very small outline of my response to the other part of the Benjamin Franklin assignment by the time midnight rolled in. At this point it occurred to me that I was actually late in doing something, and how very different this Monday had been to my last few with all of my mad dashing to make sure I got each and every little thing I needed to get done actually done, because I don't not do things, that's just not what I do. Then I realized that I wasn't overly caring at the moment and that I'd do it all tomorrow. At about 3 or so in the morning when everyone else had gone to sleep, I was determined to actually get something productive and good accomplished as I'd seemed not to have done in so long, so I went upstairs and grabbed my newly acquired Violin to try and do more stuff with it seeing as how I still am overly not able to make decent sounds come out of it. This lasted only a few minutes before I hopped into my bed and instead of reading anything for this week, instead popped into my DVD player 10,000 BC which my brother had made me borrow when I was off at his apartment last. Absolutely nothing industrious about this day either.

Tuesday: After waking up around 2:30 I strolled downstairs without caring about the two weeks worth of work I had yet to start, and poured myself some yummy cola. Seeing as how no one else was home yet, and there was nothing else to do, I fired up my computer and checked the update for the computer baseball league my dad, his friends and I have, and spent some time making changes to my team (don't ask, hah). Then I popped onto the Prophets and Poetry page to see if anything new and interesting was supposed to be done this week, (We'd moved onto Muhammad) and in fact there was a new video we needed to watch that I had enough motivation to hit play on. For the next two hours I was actually truly entertained, it was a really good video in fact, and that fueled a surge in posting in the discussion boards there, which I had been neglecting a little before (not so much as I'd been neglecting everything else however). I ended up doing random bits of work for Prophets and Poetry most of the day, and managed to get a ton of conceptual, intellectual thinking in before around nightfall when my friend informed me his account for that horrid World was no longer frozen, and I was to accompany him in his adventures, having felt like I semi accomplished something today, I obliged him. After a few hours of that, I headed off to the land of sleep while watching the amazing film that is Kill Bill. A step in the right direction for my industriousness.

Wednesday: This day after beating myself up about not beating myself up about the work I still hadn't done without anything at all preventing me from doing it, I learned that two other very good students (two of the best I know, actually) hadn't started theirs either. Needless to say this did nothing but make it even more okay in my mind that doing nothing and not caring wasn't actually that bad of a thing to be doing. I did however happen to do quite a bit of posting on the Prophets and Poetry forum for the second day in a row, though. I also managed to semi make plans for before I left for Massachusetts on the weekend, so that I wouldn't be stuck sitting in my house like I had been for quite some time (The last time I'd done anything at this point was Saturday), I'm not entirely sure if that qualifies as being industrious because it was plans not for something productive, but for something entertaining... but I took the act of planning as being somewhat productive in and of itself. I also managed to make myself sit down and tune my Violin, (one of the only things I can confidently say I can actually do correctly with it), which is actually a very relaxing thing to do. This day seems to indicate that I am getting out of this it's summer, so I am not going to do anything mood I've been in lately. (Quick note: watched Kill Bill volume two as I was going to sleep, and for the first time, I truly appreciated it as being not only as good as the first one, but actually a lot better... it's much more story, and character driven, and it's got classic Tarantino dialog much more often the the first. Not sure why I needed you all to know that.)

Thursday: I began making preparations for my departing to my Daddy's in Mass for the rest of the summer, until I was informed that I wasn't going to be leaving until the next weekend, instead of this coming one as had been originally planned. So after having my stuff packed, I decided my room was semi already started to be cleaned... so I might as well attempt to chip away some more at the insane level of messiness and disarray it has been in for months. I'll just say that it is now... cleaner but not clean. After that, I went for a walk out in the nice outdoors, and took some nice photos of myself, which I hadn't done in a while (It used to be almost an everyday pastime, no joking.). I came back home, had a nice discussion with a couple of good people, and then headed onto the Prophets and Poetry page for yet more forum posts. That video really did make me get into that class again, after having stopped caring about it do to a few very horrid podcasts. I also opened up that long forgotten document with the crude outline for my other Ben Franklin post, and couldn't bring myself to think of anything to do with it. I then spent the rest of the night in that World I've already told you about, then one that is the exact opposite of industriousness, it truly is very addicting... even when I sit here and I have only negative thoughts about it I kind of want to go play in it. Besides the last part of the day I would say I had the industriousness of a decent human being, which is way more then I usually have.

Friday: A complete and utter fall back into the pit of the summer mindset. I did absolutely nothing productive this entire day. I socialized, watched a film, and then joined my friend in that world till even after he went to sleep. I'm not entirely happy with my list of accomplishments.

Saturday: So, after not sleeping, I headed out with my family to look at things move slowly and loudly down the street in a big line (Otherwise known as a parade). The Egg Festival, wasn't to bad, saw some cool people I hadn't talked with since school got out, got some candy, but when I got home, I was quite tired... which is slightly unusual, because normally after I go through an allnighter I don't start getting actually tired until at least around five, but I fell asleep around one in the afternoon, and didn't wake up until dinner. After that I did some more Prophets and Poetry work, and actually finally made myself realize how little time I had to do work, because I had this weeks assignments to do as well, which included reading an entire book. So, I promised myself that I would indeed do all of my three weeks of Honors work tomorrow, because I really was to tired to effectively accomplish anything at that point. I held true to those determinations, it would seem since I am writing this currently, and it is now Sunday.

Well, I'd like to start off by saying... this week has made me look like a pathetic human being (and I mean more so then I usually am). Not only do I turn into the least productive, most lethargic thing on the planet in a week where I definitely needed to do work, but I also did so on a week that I had to tell everyone just how much of one I actually was. I seem to have, for the most part, for now atleast, have broken free of he it's summer mentality I had gotten myself into over a couple weeks of not really needing to do much. If I was to do this next week, I make a hopeful assumption that it would not shine quite such a negative light on myself, but who knows, I might be even worse next week. I really hope not. This assignment has discouraged my spirit, and damaged my overly huge ego, I just realized. I really highly doubt Benjamin Franklin would have looked at my week of industriousness and have been anything but appalled, though I wouldn't actually care about his opinion at all, so that wouldn't matter quite so much. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this anymore, so I think I'll just end it here. Have fun, all.