Today's thoughts

UGH. I am so unproductive in my assignments today!!! I wasn't able to accomplish anything solid. Though I finished some chores like laundered the rugs and rags, and also swept and mopped the floor. Also learned a new guitar piece, Billie Eilish's Billie Bossa Nova. It's an extremely easy piece and the melody is nice. Also attended this morning my brain health coaching session and journal club in the afternoon. Hmm. Pretty productive I guess? But the productivity is not necessarily directed towards my assignments and research work. Also did some in-room exercises. Now it's 1815H and I need to cook cacio e pepe. Maybe I'll try to do some work for two hours before retiring to bed. I notice lately that I'm productive in these final hours of the day before sleeping. So my power hours are around 10AM-4PM, then 10PM-12MN. The hours in between are just blah.

Anyway, time to cook! Will be studying propensity scores after dinner. 

Spring Break 2024

Spring Break, for me, is a way to catch up with research work backlog. Ugh. Not complaining though, I love the moments I get to focus and dive deep into my research. What bothers me really are coursework assignments. Ugh. Annoying things that get in the way. Or perhaps they are actually not annoying as long as I'm just doing assignments and not research work. But anyway, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

So the point really of this post is life lately: spending happy time with the husband and catching up with all the research and assignments. I am struggling with my manuscript, especially the discussion section. I'm looking for literature to explain the indirect effects of discrimination on cognitive function with depression as mediator among older adults across different population groups (i.e. NHW, AA, and MA). The thing is, what's in the literature is contrary to what our results are, which is something bothersome as it makes us question whether our dataset or analysis is wrong. The thing is, both me and my adviser have analyzed the new dataset separately, and we both have the same results (yay! that means I ran my analysis correctly!). Anyway, I guess right now the challenge is digging through literature, sorting them out and  organizing them into a coherent flow of words. In short, what I'm writing must make sense. And the hard part is that there are so many sources where I am getting my arguments, it makes me confused. Just writing a few paragraphs takes me at least 5 to 8 hours of intensely focused work. Anyway. 

Just putting in here a collage of Mico and I, at night in bed, laughing and giggling about nonsensical things. It's just so nice to be in love and committed and in-sync with someone whom you really trust, the person whom you know has your back and commits to be there for you forever. Cheesy, yes, but there's that peace and contentment, knowing that no matter what, this person is someone whom you can fully trust with your whole, unabashed, and uninhibited self. That feeling is just... beautiful. Mico gives me that feeling. 💓 I thank the Lord for my most wonderful husband. 💖

11 March 2024, Monday, 0218H. First weekday of Spring Break

Today's thoughts

I am fatigued. Ugh. My hormonal changes make me feel exhausted. I also have a brain fog right now. I hope it clears up later today. I don't know why today is exceptionally heightened. I get fatigued when I'm in my ovulation period but today it's worse. Am I getting old? What triggered this outlier feeling? Does it have to do something with my diet? The stress I'm in right now? Yo no se. Je ne sais pas. Ich weiss nicht. 

The brain fog. Ugh. Brain fog. My mind isn't performing as it should. I can't quickly connect the dots. I feel lost. The train of thought isn't train-of-thought-ing. The brain isn't brain-ing. The mind isn't mind-ing. 

I just want to sleep. Curl into a ball under the sheets in this cold, dreary, rainy day...

Today's thoughts

I woke up at 7:30AM because of a bad tummy. Went to the toilet. Then went back to bed. I couldn't immediately fall back into sleep so my mind was still active, thinking of the things I need to do today. Then I remember Mico's alarm went off at 8:30AM. So at this time my brain was still awake but almost ready to doze off because next thing I knew, Mico kissed me goodbye at around 9:00AM. 

Then I woke up at 10:48AM. I just stayed in bed, rolled around, and refusing to get up. When I finally felt guilty of being unproductive and lazy after doom scrolling on my phone, I decided to get up. It was almost noon. Ugh. An hour wasted. Ick. Got up, fixed the bed, opened the blinds, got my sink shower paraphernalia, and went to the sink to wash my hair. Yep. I wash my hair in the sink on days where I don't want to do a full body shower. A work colleague of mine used to tease me that I'm like a cat - I don't like getting wet. Well, there's some truth to that I guess 😅

After that ordeal of washing the hair and face and and pits and feet in the sink, went to the toilet to wash and soap my V and B (oooh, like the initials of Vic Beck). Then did my AM skincare routine, prepared coffee, and at 2PM, I'm in front of my computer ready to work. 

Wow. It took me almost three hours upon waking up to start working. That's an AWFULLY LONG TIME. Okay, let's review where my chokepoints are.

1. The time difference between waking up and getting up: one hour. Fuck. This needs to be addressed. Let's try to decrease this time difference to, hmmm, part of me wants to take a drastic cut, like 15mins. But a part of me also doesn't want to shock myself. So... hmmm.. let's do 30 MINUTES. Let's get up within 30mins after waking up.

2. The sink shower method takes up more time than the usual in-shower shower. I can hear Mico right now in my head telling me that I'm being inefficient with the sink shower 😂 He kept on telling me about this but really, I just don't want my body getting wet 😂😂😂 except of course, when it's swimming time. I love swimming. But anyway, how do we remedy this? I could try ways removing some steps... but I'm not sure what steps... Or you know what, maybe this sink shower method is here to stay. I mean, I just do this like once or twice a week. The rest are in-shower showering. So I guess for today, it just took longer because I needed to do the sink shower. 

Other than these two, I don't see any chokepoints remaining. I guess the task that took the most time was the shower. It took me almost two hours to do that shit. That's a very long time. WTF. Maybe because I was taking my time in shampooing and conditioning my hair? Also, I did a hair leave-in treatment so that's why it took long. But two hours??? Man, that's a lot of time.

I should really be more conscious of the time I allot for my tasks. For the mundane ones, I don't feel they take long, but they actually do! Ugh. I should be mindful of this. When I work on assignments and research projects, I feel they take sooooo long, but I've only been at it for two to four hours. Perhaps I feel this because my brain consumes a lot of energy and effort when I need to concentrate on something, versus when I am on autopilot doing mundane things. Time goes by but I don't feel exhausted because the brain doesn't need to engage so much, compared to when I'm thinking. Time still passes but I notice everything really clearly. Hmmm... interesting.

Well, lesson learned for today is to be more efficient with time by tracking time vis-a-vis daily tasks. I've read something about the time blocking technique. I used to do this when I was in ANU, tried to revive it in the start of my PhD in 2021. I had a hard time following it and I'm not sure if I became more efficient. Anyway, we can try it one more time and try to be more mindful of what I'm doing.

Until then,

A weekend in the life of an international PhD student in the US

Fell asleep at 2 AM, woke up at 9AM, got up at 9:40AM, put in the laundry, showered, did morning skincare routine, and sitting on my desk at 10:30AM. That seems pretty productive, I guess? Though I'm really trying to wake up earlier and sleep earlier. But my body just doesn't fall asleep before midnight.

I start the morning with either a cup of tea or coffee, then I'll check my Supernote planner and see what's the agenda for the day, the tasks I need to finish. After which I go to Pomofocus.io, input my tasks, and set the timer and get to work. Usually, I have 50on/10off workflow (it used to be 25on/5off but found it too quick now). I work for about 4-6 hours, but anything longer than that, I am not as productive anymore. I sometimes get distracted by chores in between, but I try my best to work on the chores in the 10min rest time. 

Anyway, today I'll work on my significance section and a portion of my 6312 paper summary on propensity scores. I hope I get to finish the Significance paper today so tomorrow I can proceed with my Do Nothing Sundays. It's good for my mental health and well-being <3

Let's go!

Calories burned chart from Harvard

 I just want to put this link in my blog for future reference:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-for-people-of-three-different-weights

Different activities and age groups, with the corresponding burned calories. Good reference.