One of the nice things about being on the quarter system is that right now, when all my friends at semester schools are tearing their hair out with end-of-term stresses, I’m cruising through the first two weeks of a new quarter. That means I’ve got time to do catch up on some reading—and some blog wandering, which is always fun. Dori Smith pointed me to 43 Folders, a blog on time management and productivity that I’d heard good things about. They, in turn, sent me to Bloodletters - Hack Yourself, which is an excellent motivational essay. Here’s an excerpt:
Find the demon.Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the little voice in the back of your head that’s always whispering, “You can’t.” You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don’t. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there’s something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can’t have that.”
What you don’t realize is that your demon doesn’t know anything. It’s an idiot. It’s nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it’s ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You’ll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It doesn’t care.
Exorcise yourself.
The whole essay is great—and it’s right on target for those of us in recovery for co-dependence. (“Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you.”)
So, today? Today I’m working on exorcising myself. Seems like a good way to spend the day.
Today in class I’m showing my students how to use trackbacks to the class web site…
Today’s post on 43 Folders is targeted at sites for bands and musicians, but the advice is useful for a far wider range of sites. Given that this quarter I’m teaching a web design class to students who are likely to want to use Flash for everything, this snippet from the post is particularly relevant:
Use Flash like you would cilantro—sparingly and for a single high-impact effect. Nobody wants to eat a whole bowl of cilantro, and nobody wants an animated death march when they have a “passionate task” to complete. Also, build your pages to make it super-easy to link to anything. Use sub-page anchors, and clearly identify why they’re there.
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