My husband is now in summer vacation, which will allow me time to work on my GRE studies. I put it on the wayside while I was waiting for him to finish his school year (he’s a teacher), instead indulging in mindless pursuits that atrophies the brain. I feel honestly feel dumber for spending the last month doing nothing more than pursuing facebook and playing a dumb city building game (which was way too addicting).

In an effort to better manage my time, I did a factory reset on my phone. No more facebook. No more games. All I have on there now are just the essentials – banking apps, coupons, and news. If I wanna look at my phone, I can read kindle, NYTimes, or Washington Post.

I did this a few days ago, and man I have been grumpy and listless ever since. Haha.

My phone addiction is out of control, so I’m trying to curb it with limiting what I have on there. My ability to self regulate is nonexistent, so now I have to resort to more extreme measures. I will still have my facebook, but I’ll need to look at the computer to use it.

And honestly, facebook has been pissing me off a lot lately. Not because of political bullshit or anything like that. Just the over-abundance of “internet” shit. Headlines about shit I don’t care about: Do I really need to know that some person wrote a “So. Powerful.” note to their child’s teacher? No, I really don’t. Why is this in my feed?

Just things like that.

So, fuck facebook.

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I’ve been trying to read more. We get the Sunday edition of the New York Times, and a pleasant surprise within is the New York Times magazine. We also subscribe to the New Yorker and the Smithsonian. These magazines and newspapers are an effort to expand the amount of reading material in the house so my kids (although still young) have opportunities to glance through different print media. I think I’ve mentioned this before.

A while ago there was an article in the New Yorker about Nigerian girls being forced into sex slavery as they attempt to find better prospects in Europe. It was so disheartening I couldn’t even finish the article. And it really made me want to get into child sponsorship for those areas. We just don’t make enough money to do that right now.

Anyway, in the Read Aloud Handbook, the author talks about how reading stories and articles gives one the opportunity to see life from a different perspective. To “live” in a way that you would never be able to do yourself. It was one of those “no duh” epiphanies that I’ve been really trying to embrace.

I have a lot on my reading list right now. There are various books that I want to get into, and I really just need to focus on one at a time.

Novels
Pride and Prejudice
East of Eden

Comics
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

Nonfiction
I’m with the Band
New York Times (newspaper and Magazine)
The New Yorker
Smithsonian
Various Linguistic Textbooks

I also have GRE vocabulary to work on and basic math skills to review.

I’ve never been good at having a routine or a schedule. But if I want to get all those read, I really need to get onto one. Kids make it hard, but I just need to designate some “reading” time for them as well.

 

My brain feels better. Maybe I can focus on one of the above books/texts now.