You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Reading, wRiting, aRithmatic

I'm not good at not finishing things. Well, that's a complete lie, so let me rephrase - if it's something like reading or watching, I find it very difficult not to try and cram it in as quickly as possible. If I discover a new webcomic, for example, I will find it hard to spend time on other things until I've finished reading all the back-issues. Or if I'm foolish enough to open a newgroup browser, and I start reading a thread like For All Nails... and then it's suddenly 3am, and I know it's going to be really hard to do work tomorrow, instead of finding out how it finishes.

One of the problems that on-line stuff has is that it's got that addictive quality common to slot machines and other powerfully conditioning systems - intermittent reinforcement. Every time you pull the lever, there's the possibility that you might get something really, really cool... and it feels like there's a certain amount of once-only opportunity, since if I don't look at it now, I'll probably never get round to it, and might in fact forget that it's there at all - so I better read it now, and do my actual useful tasks just a little later.

This isn't helpful from a getting-work-done perspective.

Reading normal material doesn't have quite that quality, though if I were getting more books out of the library, that might not be as true. DVDs are more passive books, so it's even easier to just sit and absorb several hours worth of material - but I seem to feel more pressure to watch series than movies, for reasons I haven't entirely examined.

Thinking about it, I'm wondering whether there's a synergy happening between the "hypnotic TV" syndrome (where a television can drown out all external stimuli, causing the victim to come to a halt in the middle of the room or corridor) and the fact it's really hard to see letter shapes and not turn them into letters, words and sentences.

***

What did I do yesterday evening? Well, I got called over to my former flatmate's place to help her and a colleague write a song for their school's staff Christmas party. I had helped them with another ditty while I was flatting with them - a farewell to a friend of theirs, sung to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". This time, we went with "Walking in a Winter Wonderland", with a little drop-in from "A Day in the Life". One of the interesting constraints is that we were limited to songs that my former flatmate could play on the guitar.

I tend to look down on filks (parody songs), even though there's some evidence I'm not too bad at writing them. (It's flattering, but a bit unnerving, that some people still remember some of the stuff I wrote with Erik for the live Vampire game's Malkavians.) The trickiest thing with this song was that I didn't know anything about the stuff I was writing - basically, they just told me some of the funny or notable stuff that happened at school, and I tried to tie it together in comedic musical form. As it turned out, that wasn't a big problem - we managed five verses, plus a bridge and a drop-in. I quite enjoy the kind of constraints that this sort of writing imposes - it's the same kind of fun as writing in a tightly constrained poetry form.

They seemed pretty pleased with the result.

***

I asked Mum whether I could just give her all my earnings, and she could handle my finances. She was underwhelmed by the idea. So I suppose I should get an accountant instead. Bah. (It was weird reading Debbie talking about the Japanese tradition of the woman of the household controling the money, though I had heard of it before.)

Yes, I suppose I could try to keep track of my own finances - Norman has offered to show me his System - but it's the kind of thing I'd be happy to offload on someone else. And there's always the nagging thought that I may not be claiming a bunch of stuff that I could be. I should clarify - I really don't mind paying tax, and would even pay more tax to stop people studying stuff like medicine having the spectre of their debt hovering over their study. But if I had a mortage, i.e. actually owed someone money, wanting to pay that off would be strong motivation to make sure I was only giving the government what I was actually obliged to.

Which reminds me - I should try and find three years worth of financial records... ;)

Posted by svend at December 1, 2004 10:54 AM