Avoiding Insanity: Not So Easy

Don't forget! I'm revealing the cover to my next romantic adventure, Acceptable Risks, next Tuesday, 2/7, at Everybody Needs a Little Romance. Make sure to come check it out!

I'm struggling to find a way to manage my time better. So I remembered an idea from a long-ago time management program that said to touch everything just once. Handle it immediately, instead of setting it aside. So I tried that yesterday.

It was a DISASTER.

It was the first of the month, therefore the deadline for submission of listings for the column I do for a trade journal. Of course, everyone waits until the day of the deadline to send me their stuff. (I tweeted yesterday with the realization that maybe they do it on purpose. Seriously, people, you can send stuff EARLY. You don't have to wait for the deadline to arrive.) I fired off a frustrated reply to an e-mail, then read the next one—and it would have completely nullified the frustration if I'd read it before replying.

So I went along, not looking at my inbox, just the next e-mail. I did proofing jobs for clients, gathered column info, jumped over to websites and back, filed electronic bills, etc. And every few seconds another e-mail clicked into my box. Let me tell you, this way was NOT more efficient.

Usually I read through all my e-mail, saving the ones I have to handle. Then I do all the column stuff at once, all the promo together, all the client work in a cluster. I've been doing it that way for years. I don't know why I decided trying something else would be better. It wasn't.

So that definition of insanity, trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results? It can go the other way, too. Trying something different and expecting the same (or better) results.

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I started watching Revenge recently, because it's been getting raves and people with similar taste to mine have been loving it. I've saved it until late evening, when it's inadvisable for me to try to work because out of two dozen words that should have been changed to UK spellings, I'll only spot one. The problem with that is that I do the "just one more episode" thing and stay up late despite my continuous good intentions.

So I'm really enjoying the show, obviously. I've got 2 more eps to watch before new eps return next week. I'm glad Tyler finally got his. I was feeling pretty violent toward him. I just wish Emily would be nicer to Nolan. I don't get her hostility, when he's the reason she has the resources to do this in the first place, AND she's always making him help her. He might actually be the most interesting character on the show, though none of them are without their twisty depth.

The other problem with liking the show so much is that I'm watching on iTunes on my iPod, and the longer I watch, the worse my eyestrain gets.

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Speaking of eyestrain, I went to the eye doctor today. It's nice to hear that part of my problem is that my sight is overcorrected, another degree past where it was last time, so my contacts are too strong. I'm not going to get new ones, though, because I think I'm doing LASIK.

o.O

I had an opportunity about 9 years ago, when my mom died and I got a small life insurance payout. I got chicken, though—it's less about the blade slicing open my cornea and more about the hydrating brush sweeping over my exposed eyeball—and bought a laptop and paid some bills instead.

But I'm tired of it. I've had seriously poor vision since I was 6. I may not be able to get full correction because of the degree of my nearsightedness, but anything is better. And I'm approaching the need for reading glasses, and I'm not ready to face bifocals or monovision and all that crap.

So I'm ready. And yet... I wear rigid gas permeable contacts, which reshape the cornea, so I knew I'd have to wear my glasses for a little while before the evaluation and the surgery. But SIX WEEKS?! Seriously, I'm going to be pretty lonely by the end. No one will be able to stand looking at me. I look RIDICULOUS in glasses, again because of the degree of correction. No matter what kind of frames I get, the thick lenses distort my face so it looks narrower behind the glasses than it really is. So I look like a funhouse mirror, but in real life.

The there are the two weeks of drops and not rubbing the eye and wearing goggles at night, not to mention the expense, and it almost sounds like it's not worth it. But being able to tell which bobbing heads in the water are my kids' when we're at the beach? Waking up and being able to see across the room? Not having lint and dust killing my eyeballs? Best of all, not having to deal putting in and taking out contacts? Oh, yeah, it will be worth it.

Have any of you had LASIK? How did it go for you?