Sometimes it all flows out...

[pmb]

This is the kind of crap I have floating around in my head. And I wonder why I'm not as productive as I should be. More seriously, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be able to leave work at the office. I mean, if I were able to do that, I would probably have some form of job, and I wouldn't simply laze around musing about research and the future and awful awful parodies...

Indolence

.

Indolence I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
Indolence $7.50 an hour November 21, 2005
I can't stand my own mind.
Indolence when will we do our part to stop the war
I don't feel like doing anything don't bother me
I won't write my paper til I'm in my right mind
...

Indolence when can I go into a conference and be greeted as an equal with only my vague ideas?
Indolence after all it is you and I who are perfect and not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
My advisor is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.

...
My mind is made up. There's going to be trouble.
...

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Livejournal?
I'm obsessed with Livejournal.
I read it every hour.
My friends page stares at me as I slink by to arxiv.org and citeseer
I read it in the basement of the university library.
It's always telling me about the trials and tribulations of friends and acquaintances. Friends
are serious. Acquaintances are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am indolent.
I am talking to myself again.

Bureaucracy is rising against me.
I haven't got a chance.
I'd better consider my natural resources.
My natural resources consist of 20 years of education, dozens of half written papers, and an unpublishable private literature that goes 1,400 miles per hour.
I say nothing about any work experience nor the millions of underprivileged backs who support my house of cards.
...

... [bureaucracy] will make us all work 16 hours a day. Help.
Indolence this is quite serious.
Indolence this is the impression I get from reading my email.
Indolence is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to work and turn out product, I'm a pedant and not good at taking direction anyway.
Indolence I'm pedaling my bicycle as fast as I can.

Comments

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

      As for Dave, he strung that hammock between two shade trees and put a table by it to hold a frosty drink. He would get up in the morning when he woke, whether it was nine or noon, eat breakfast, then walk slowly to his hammock to rest up for lunch. The hardest work he did was endorsing checks for deposit, and, once a month, balancing his wife’s check­book. He quit wearing shoes.

      He did not take a newspaper or listen to radio; he figured that the Navy would let him know if another war broke out—and another did break out about the time he started this routine. But the Navy had no need for retired admirals. Dave paid little attention to that war, it was depressing. Instead, he read everything the state library had on ancient Greece and bought books about it. It was a soothing subject, one he had always wanted to know more about.

      Each year, on Navy Day, he got all spruced up and dressed as an admiral, with all his medals, from the Good Conduct medal of an enlisted man to the one for bravery under fire that had made him an admiral—let his hired man drive him to the county seat and there addressed a luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce on some patriotic subject. Ira, I don’t know why he did this. Perhaps it was noblesse oblige.

      Or it may have been his odd sense of humor. But each year they invited him, each year he accepted. His neighbors were proud of him; he was the epitome of Local Boy Makes Good—then comes home and lives as his neighbors lived. His success brought credit to them all. They liked it that he was still just “home folks”—and if they noticed that he never did a lick of work, nobody mentioned it.

      I’ve skipped lightly over Dave’s career, Ira, had to. I haven t mentioned the automatic pilot he thought up, then had de­veloped years later when he was in a position to get such things done. Nor the overhaul he made of the duties of the crew of a flying boat—except to say now that it was to get more done with less effort while leaving the command pilot with nothing to do save to stay alert—or to snore on his copilot’s arm if the situation did not require his alertness. He made changes in instruments and controls, too, when at last he found himself in charge of development for all Navy patrol planes.

      Let it go with this: I don’t think Dave thought of himself, as an “efficiency expert” but every job he ever held he simplified. His successor always had less work to do than his predecessor.

      That his successor usually reorganized the job again to make three times as much work—and require three times as many subordinates—says little about Dave’s oddity other than by contrast. Some people are ants by nature; they have to work, even when it’s useless. Few people have a talent for construc­tive laziness.

      So ends the Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail. Let’s leave him there, in his hammock under the shade trees. So far as I know, he is still there.

From the perspective of 20515 days (+ or -)

[canarasekal.livejournal.com]

The excerpt above fairly shouts to me (for some obvious parallel reasons...). It is the key to being satisfied with oneself. Constructive laziness...what a great concept! I'm putting it to work daily.

You're right in the middle of one of the best times of your life. Believe me, it will all work out perfectly. How could it not with such an amazingly brilliant and creative mind at work on it?

[(Anonymous)]

Hey,

I'm doing some hard core procrastinating and hap'd upon your livejournal (is that weird?); this made me laugh. Speaking of parodies, here's a good one that Luks showed us in Automata Theory just the other day, but it seems to be pretty popular so maybe you already know about it. Maybe you have theory friends who haven't and then it can be funny for them. Anyway: "The Longest Path" (http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/fa05/cs475/longestpath-info.html) to the tune of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time". The way you folks procrastinate... It makes me look forward to being a grad student (come on, you know it's fun to write awful, awful parodies).

-Amanda