30 July 2001
Draggy Mondays
For some reason, I am unable to wind down on Sunday nights. I wind up not being able to fall asleep, and the quality of the sleep is poor. And then I drag all day Monday, head home to take a nap, and generally don't get much done (most often skipping a workout, thereby contributing to the malaise). This has been going on for weeks -- maybe a couple of months -- and today was more of the same.
I did manage this evening to edit Chapter Three of the dissertation according to the notes I made on the plane. Now I just need to write a conclusion to the chapter, which I will do tomorrow night, and it will be done aside from final tidying (i.e. fixing quite a few footnotes, which are in a rough shorthand at the moment). I set a goal of finishing this damn chapter by the end of July, and I'm damn well going to make it, despite the best efforts of gastrointestinal nasties and other irritants.
I had a revelation of sorts today, which will eventually make it into some longer writing on my style of learning. Maybe it wasn't a revelation, and maybe it's not even true -- but it strikes me that most objectivist types revel in social occasions and/or conversation with other objectivist types. A conversation with Callie this evening actually crystallized in my mind that this is almost exactly the opposite of my own style and/or preference. For the most part, unless I'm talking about some technical aspect of objectivism (altogether rare these days), I don't find serious objectivist types particularly interesting or useful in terms of my intellectual interests (perhaps because so many of them are intellectually lazy -- things like condemning Nietzsche or Hegel without ever bothering to read them), several notable exceptions to the contrary. Why in gawd's name would an "objectivist" perspective on Hegel or Nietzsche interest me more than the masters themselves (and people who read and think about them as masters)? Or most other subjects, for that matter! I think most people have trouble understanding the distinction I'm trying to make -- and that's possibly due in part to my not making it very well. Subject of a future essay (all tied in to my learning style -- academic value whoring as a certain friend has deemed it). This paragraph is really just notes to myself in that regard.
[Posted @ 11:09 PM CST]
