Why I am sucking at InaDWriMo 2008

I am not going to try to make excuses, because if I were REALLY motivated and hard-working, I would not be watching TV in the evenings- I would be working on things that really need to be finished. That said, I am also feeling frustrated about my lack of progress at other times, too. 

I have two work-at-home days this semester: Tuesday and Thursday. The week of November 3rd was shot, because Tuesday was election day (and D was out of school), then Thursday was surgery day. I had actually planned to grade that afternoon, but was not feeling up to it (I thought I would feel fine). 

I spent both of those days last week grading- I had a first draft of papers for one class and a take-home exam for the other. I was glad to get those out of the way and thought, "great! I'll do research next week!" Well, now it's Tuesday again and guess what? I have paper drafts from another class to grade. Plus the few other assignments that I ignored last week. And a letter of recommendation to write. And a student paper to review for an advising meeting tomorrow. And articles to read for my class tomorrow (student-picked). 

I can put off some of this- like the minor assignments that I ignored last week- but the rest of it really needs to be finished today. This means that I won't have much time to focus on some research tasks (looking through a former students data to find something, writing a small piece for a collaborative paper, digging out the paper I am supposed to finish for InaDWriMo). I am not sure what to do. I wonder if I should go back to my EARLY schedule of a few years back, where I got up at 4:30 or 5:00 and worked for a couple undisturbed hours. I can't make that switch immediately- I'd have to gradually shift my wake-up time. That really doesn't sound appealing, though. I don't know, but I am frustrated and feeling like a total loser. It now seems that I will not be able to finish that paper during November, but maybe I can aim for January- before we start classes again. Ugh.

Another problem with my lack of time management is that I am not exercising either. At all. I was using the surgery recovery as an excuse the last couple of weeks (and I would have been too sore through last week, anyway). I can do it now, but I am also swamped with work. I would like to do a short walk on the treadmill this afternoon before D gets home, so I'll have to see how much work I can accomplish. If anyone has any secrets to time management, feel free to share. I used to have a system that worked (the early mornings), but have totally fallen out of that.

In better news:

I am thrilled that I do not have skin cancer (of ANY kind), but also EXTREMELY disturbed about the the dermatologist office that told me I did! WTF? I am tempted to write a letter, but figure it would not do any good, anyway. I could also go write a review on Google, but I never actually saw the doctor- it was the CNP. When they forwarded my biopsy results to my surgeon, he said he couldn't even tell what they meant, so he biopsied the tissue from that one, too (four mole-type things in total).  Everything came back benign- including the mole that looked exactly like the one the derm office tested. Obviously, I will not be going back to that place. It was weird in there, anyway.