To the seat with the clearest view

I love how I'll sit down to work on my thesis but instead just end up composing all these awesome political rants about related issues to myself in my brain.* Then I feel like I've gotten a non-zero amount of thesisy things done, when really I've gotten zero done.

Also: Brian Eno makes great 'music for working on your thesis to'. (Not his fault that I'm getting zero done...)

* I'm currently writing my chapter on anti-gay (or -lesbian or -bi/trans/queer/questioning etc) bullying, and am not only trying to become a better LGBTQ ally, but I am also, definitely becoming a militant secularist. My committed rationalist and atheist boyfriend and committed rationalist/secular humanist/skeptic brother have been helping me along that path, too. I've also been reading some Richard Dawkins (I highly recommend The God Delusion), some Carl Sagan (I highly recommend The Demon Haunted World) and Richard Wiseman's Paranormality. My boyfriend showed me Religulous and a whole bunch of really interesting atheist Youtube vloggers. Now, when I go to Youtube, its recs section offers me classic rock, David Bowie and atheist videos. You can see I've been reading/hanging around enough skeptics and scientists (i.e. the boyfriend, the brother and the authors/vloggers they recommend) to pick up the phrases "non-zero" and "truth value"...

1) Guh, I feel like every minute of my life has to be spent on grad school stuff - and I'm still not getting anywhere with it; have felt really stalled in my thesis and my research assistant job - and even my directed research on fan fic and copyright. Do not like. I've also had so little time for anything fannish even though I have fics that I want to finish and post, other fan creativity that I want to continue and a couple major fan milestones to mark this week - but noooo, every minute of every day must be spent on grad student-y stuff, guh, why?

2) So the local choir I was in last winter is doing a Les Mis themed concert this June. Now my dad and I have been fanboying/fangirling Les Mis (respectively) like whoah for the last month or so, because, reasons - and I really want to go back to this choir but the music is so damn hard, I barely have the time and I have a massive and extremely important exam just a few days before the concert. Yet, I'd hate to pass up the opportunity to do anything Les Mis themed... *sigh* It's like, saying the buzz word "Les Mis" = me being suckered into it for the whole term. It's similar to how when I first went to the choir last year, I was very skeptical about whether I would stay but our conductor managed to work in a Lou Reed reference thus suckering me in for the whole term... Maybe I should like just print out some Les Mis lyrics and post them up around the apartment so I can sing while I do my housework?

Seriously, I was thinking I'd pass on choir and take some guitar lessons this year instead. I actually found a nice-seeming teacher in the right part of town but have had no time to pursue it (see the point above). Ugh, I hate making decisions...

3) I really hope to hear back from the Reconstructionist congregation (a liberal and community oriented branch of Judaism, and the kind of thing I've been meaning to explore for a while). It's Purim (think Jewish Halloween) this Saturday and I'd like to have something fun and interesting to go to with the boyfriend, who's coming in from out of town this afternoon....