What to do about it? Make lists. Make goals. Do.
Sometimes it's not enough to set goals. Sometimes it helps to let others know your goals. Then they can ask if you've accomplished them. Annoying when you haven't. But sometimes just knowing someone will help to keep you honest, makes all the difference in the world.
I was writing a new novel, but the holidays have put a crimp in my writing. Right. In truth I'm procrastinating because I'm not sure where I'm going with the story. So I find other things I must do, and take a lot longer doing them while avoiding what I set out to do--which is write the new novel.
The muse isn't going to jump out and hit me on the head and say here I am, here's the story, here, write it. Sometimes it does. But most often it doesn't. So I have to make it happen. The laundry won't clean itself, neither will the pots and pans. The mowing has to be done, the weedeating too. Christmas cards? Argh.
Organization is the key. Make a list of what you want to accomplish, and try to stick to it. It's amazing how easy it is to get sidetracked when we don't set goals. Even if you don't accomplish everything in the day, keep track of it and have weekly goals, monthly goals.
What is your biggest time waster? Playing video games? Watching tv? Surfing the net? Allow for only so much time to do these things. Better yet, make it a gift to yourself. Work first, then play.
That's how it was when I was growing up. Go to school, come home and do homework and then the rest of the time was free time to play. Somehow the Internet has made me lose sight of work first, and play later. :)
So make a list, and then do what's listed. Fight procrastination! Make it happen!
Okay, waiting to hear from bloggers who have etsy stores for my code to be functional. Getting ready to execute my IF illo, just need a little inspiration. And...I'm procrastinating. I'm finally rewriting my proposal for one of my books and well, I'm putting it off. Everything seems so fascinating to me. Look at that fly. Oh, I need to do laundry. What if that tree outside has healing powers to get me grounded! I wonder if I paid that bill....etc. etc. I have brain pollution and need to brain vomit.
You see, the problem is lately I seem to be taking too much in that I can't even process. I have 20 books from the library on everything from Sacred Geometry to Color Pencil to Art Journaling to yes, Writing a Proposal. I've gone to two meetings this week for networking. I feel like I've been starving and I finally made it to the candy store with this move to this new town. There's 5 of everything, where before, there wasn't even one. So, I guess, I am overdoing it all. My brain is buzzing.
Which leads me back to that proposal. I guess I don't want to do it because I thought it was just fine how it was and now my inner child artist is rebelling. Will see...
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I have discovered a lovely new way to kill time: Shelfari. It's like Library Thing, but more community oriented like MySpace. Go on over, look around, and then join my group, Children's Writers who Read. I thought that this was a great opportunity to start a book group. I've been wanting to do something that lets us all reccomend really well-written book, and I decided that this was a great opportunity. And if you do join Shelfari, be sure to add me as a friend. I'm buriededitor, of course.
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wait - what do you mean transferred to ipods? Overdrive is ipod unfriendly - do you mean via burning to cd and then into another, separate computer, and then into the ipod? To me, that equates not ipod friendly because it is just too ridiculous.
Yeah at some level if you have patrons with ipods you have two options, maybe 3.
1. lend them a different MP3 player
2. burn the digital media to CD and put it in their ipods
3. tell them they are screwed because we went with a vendor that make their media incompatible with the most popular MP3 player in the world.
While I think #2 is a little ridiculous, it’s less ridiculous than #3 which to my mind is insane.
I imagine someone could come up with some other workarounds. I also imagine, though, that many of those workarounds would be copyright-unfriendly. Maybe put some pressure on Overdrive to get with the program?
The Washington State Library has a similar program in the works for this year, called “Off the Page: Downloadable Audiobooks for Washington.” I think consortial arrangements like this are awesome, and I’m glad to see them working with cool formats like downloadable audiobooks. Yet another way libraries are totally rad.
It’s not really an option of putting pressure on Overdrive. As I understand it, they would love to purchase the rights to Apple’s DRM format. However, Apple is not interested in licensing it to anyone. Hopefully, something will change eventually.
Eric, that’s my understanding too.
However, part of the issue is that Overdrive’s check in and check out and expiry mechanisms currently only function with Windows Media Player for the PC. This means they made a business decision at some point to not develop something that worked on Macs and something that worked on iPods. I understand that’s how they wanted to do it and it makes sense with their plan, but I don’t see it as Apple standing in their way as much as them making a choice that was going to require information from Apple that they didn’t have yet and couldn’t, as it seems, get.
I don’t think Apple has a DRM option that allows for expiration of content, do they? However iPods do play standard media formats like MP3 in addition to AAC files which have Apple’s DRM on them. The problem is that you can’t wrap MP3s in a DRM wrapper using any mechanism, to the best of my knowledge and so Overdrive and Microsoft partnered to get this working.
Overdrive may have no actual way to get content check-out-able in a Mac or iPod environemnt, but I still think it’s appropiate for individual patrons and even librarians to say that we’d like them to find a way to make it happen, or that they made a bad decision. I think that pressure is one of the reasons Overdrive made a decision to have so much of their content burnable to CD, to appease people who didn’t have an MP3 player, or who did have an iPod and iTunes.
The Green Mountain Library Consortium is almost formalized, and already at work on project two (customizing a Koha-based catalog for members) and project three (additional databases for members). Hurrah!
Jessamyn,
I don’t agree that they made a bad decision, just one that was economically feasible at the time. When you are starting up something new, it’s hard to throw a lot of money at it right away. I definitely agree that it is important for us to remind them that we would like for them to find a way to make mac/ipod compatibility possible though:)