Concious Stream

I think it's funny that sometimes I'll be thinking about things, life and research and such and I'll start to think about it in the form that I would write it in my blog. Should this be called blog dreaming? Of course by the time I get down to my office to write it, or by the time my internet time is available I've completely forgotten what it was I was going to write.

Hm, something about not getting up early today. It hasn't helped that my husband has been sleeping in as well. And if it's already almost 7am just 10 mins of internet in the morning is not motivation enough to get out of bed.
I've decided that the reason I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning (besides lack of drive) is because it takes me a long time to fall asleep. I've tried stretching, reading and drinking tea all in hopes that falling asleep will take less than 5 mins but nothing has really worked. I've also tried less stimulates during the day, such as no coffee or alcohol. That didn't work either and just made me sad.

So I've decided maybe I can't fall asleep because I'm not tired. I just go to bed when my husband does. This week I think I'll still try to fall asleep when my husband does, so that I can wake up when he does, but if it's not working I'm going to go . . . work. No pleasure reading but actual work. That should make me sleepy.

Confession

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but I have an internet addiction. Since the move from East coast to Midwest I've been a little depressed (actually I think this started in the east) and felt that my projects were slowing down and although there was much to get done that wasn't a lot "to do". So I spent a lot of time watching online TV, checking my e-mail and pretty much anything else that I could do online to avoid figuring out what work I should be doing.

I broke down sometime in November and made this confession to my husband. It involved a lot of involuntary crying, something I don't do very often, and I think this startled/scared my husband.
Being the problem solver that he is he has limited my internet access. The modem is in his office and I'm on wifi so he has allotted the times between 1:15-2:30pm, 6:16-8pm and something like midnight to 7am. I can't seem to wake up early enough to take advantage of the morning one.

Honestly at first I went through with drawls, and sometimes I still do but my productivity has soared, but I have a different point in posting this. I am really enjoying having a blog and reading blogs. I feel like I'm becoming "friends" with some fellow bloggers, but since I have only a limited time on the internet and need to check e-mails, looks up manuscripts and other random things I write on my to-do-internet list for the day I have been falling behind in my blog reading and my blog writing. This makes me feel like I am not being a good friend, and I miss the connection I get from reading blogs and making comments.
So, I guess to get to the point, I wanted to let everyone know why I'm sort of mia and let you all know I still enjoy the blogsphere and I miss you all.
Hopefully I can start waking up when my husband does at 6am and make the morning session my blog time . . . . . but that is really early . . .

Giving credit

I noticed that I was linked to on The Happy Scientist so I immediately felt bad and decided I needed to be more honest in my side bar. I've listed the blogs that I book mark. Some of them are pretty new to my favorites and I guess it took me a while to put them all up there because I'm fickle. I will book mark blogs until it gets to the point where firefox tells me that it will take a long time to load all the pages in my blog folder, (There is a cool option if you don't know about firefox to "open all in tabs" in a particular folder). When it gets to this point I delete the ones I don't feel I read often enough. This magic number seems to be 13. Of course I have to book mark myself in favorites. I moved a lot of the food blogs I read into a different folder to create more room for women scientist ones. The reality is I read a lot more than 12 blogs but I usually get to those from other peoples pages, and example is Profgrrrrl, and it use to be that FSP didn't get her own special book mark but I've decided I go to her page everyday so she deserves one.
While I'm giving credit where credit is due I should thank my newsletter of AWIS which had an article a few years ago discussing the importance of female science blogs. I don't remember which newsletter but it was at least a year ago, and they profiled a few blogs. The one that caught my eye was YFS, and I would read her page maybe once a week. It wasn't until I moved to the Midwest that I really got into reading blogs and now it's part of my morning routine. I gather this is because I now work from home, leaving my scientific community back on the East Coast. So maybe I think of the blogs now as my community?
So thanks AWIS and thanks YFS. I really get a lot about reading what other women scientist experience.