Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with lazy

Messy question from a person who is a mess

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:03:54 -0800

Please help me make a decision. I am exhausted and stressed and maybe I am not thinking clearly. A friend gave me Adderall. Should I take some? Basically, I have been working very long hours (12-14 a day) without any time off (including weekends) for a couple of months. Long story short, worst semester of law school yet. I have three days before yet another exam and I am so tired and unprepared. I can't make myself do any work, and I really need to do this work.

Con side, I do not have a diagnosis, nor am i totally convinced that ADD is a "thing" or a thing that we can reliably diagnose. I am not trying to be insulting, sincerely, but I am ignorant and my ignorance makes me skeptical. Especially because I feel like it's cheating to declare that I'm not undisciplined, weak, lazy, spoiled, and so on, just "ill." Maybe some people are, but not me. I am pretty sure I'm just those things I listed.

Another con is that I don't even feel totally comfortable taking Advil... I have an irrational fear of pills. This sounds silly to me. We're taking about a 5 mg pill. I think that's the lowest available dose. But it still freaks me out.

I also fear that it either won't do anything or will be revelatory and life-changing and boom: dependency.

On the pro side, my three days to study are now 2.5 and I've made very very little progress. I also have been struggling for such a long time with what I think could fairly be characterized as a total inability to focus... part of me wonders if it really is "cheating" to take a drug that helps with that. Isn't that just a character flaw? But what if it's not? I don't know.

I think maybe this is a ridiculous question. I apologize. I'm probably just being ridiculous because I'm so tired, and so stressed, and feel so bad about how little I am able to do, and I feel like this is maybe me being tempted to do the wrong thing.

So here I am in the library surrounded by people who are sitting there doing work for minutes and hours at a time. It makes me feel inadequate and ashamed. The bottom line is I need to get my work done. I don't know what to do. I do not feel like I am thinking straight at this point. Please share your wisdom with me.

What would happen to my lawn if I just didn't rake the leaves?

Flunkie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:15:35 -0800

What would happen to my lawn if I just didn't rake the leaves? I don't particularly care if my lawn is covered in leaves. But will it actually damage my (normal grass) lawn if I just leave them there until they blow away or disintegrate or whatever? Come Spring, will I have a barren patch of dirt where there used to be grass?

i am fat and happy, and want to be less fat and more happy

radiosilents — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:58:01 -0800

lazy slacker who dislikes people wants to start home fitness routine. the wii and some "move your butt" titles are less money than, say, a nordic track, but... what's the best return on investment in in-home fitness equipment for the money?

i understand that motivation is the primary concern, and i think that not having to sweat in front of other people will resolve my lack of drive.

i'm not terribly overweight or terribly unfit, but i'm not exactly running marathons, either. i'm looking for an entry-level experience that will possibly inspire me to want to pursue further avenues.

a wii + some fitness titles w/ a balance board will run somewhere around the $350 range. the excercise equipment i've been looking at online (treadmills, recumbent bikes, the aforementioned nordic track) seems to start around $700 and go up rapidly from there. i also know that a step, some freeweights, and one of those giant ab balls would give me all the workout i need, too, if i knew how to properly use them all, but i'm also not sure rolling around with a giant ball is quite where i'm at yet (though i admit it looks intriguing).

what do you have in your house? how happy with the results have you been? how much did it cost? how long have you been using it?

i'm also interested in people who have integrated the wii into their fitness routines, and what impact they think it's had on their overall fitness. i've googled quite a bit and seen some of the opinions out there, but i'm always interested in what the hivemind thinks.

i see an awful lot of friends with expensive equipment that they use as a coat rack or "place to stack things". i'd like to avoid that, so i suppose a followup question would be what equipment would you NOT recommend? what failed you, let you down, didn't work as advertised?

How do I deal with a lazy employee?

cronholio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:02:09 -0800

I am a team leader in an IT company. One of the guys in my team is giving me a headache because he turned lazy all of a sudden. He is a very good developer, though very geeky and a bit antisocial, you know the type. He's been on the team for 3 months now and he is one of the key developers in the project we're currently working on. For 4 or 5 weeks now he has been working maybe half as much as before, probably even less. He comes to work very late and leaves early. He surfs the web most of the time. In our company the atmosphere is very relaxed, nobody cares if you don't come in from 9 to 5 or if you play browser games or whatever. What counts is the work that you do. And this guy stopped doing more or less anything. I've had a serious talk with him about the issue and he apologized and said he didn't see it that way, but he would try to improve. Nothing has changed since, if anything, it got worse. I keep reminding him and he seems to be alarmed when I do but other than that doesn't seem to care much. When asked if there is anything about his work that he doesn't enjoy, something that could be improved, he doesn't give me anything.

Now it would be easiest to fire him and it probably won't be long before I do just that, but I was wondering if I could motivate him somehow or try something else to get through to him. As I said, he's one of the most valuable developers and though I don't like him too much personally, I would hate to lose him for the sake of the project.

Too lazy to google, not too lazy to go to the gym.

Oktober — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:28:19 -0800

Where do I buy gym shoes in the (Chicago) Loop? I trashed my Nikes at Lollapalooza over the weekend, and I don't want to show up to my "Personal Fitness Assessment" tonight with busted kicks. I'm at Monroe & Franklin, so the closer to there the better.

no longer pretending my kitchen floor is't revolting

A Terrible Llama — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:50:39 -0800

How can I do the best job cleaning my floor for the least amount of effort? We have a white kitchen floor of your standard kitchen floor material. It's pitted with these grooves that are basically just little paths of dirt, and it's old and whatever was supposed to happen and keep the non-pitted part from getting etched is way gone, so basically it's a gray floor with deeper pits of darker gray.

Plus, we're a high traffic outdoorsy household, and while in general we're quite tidy, nobody ever wants to clean the kitchen floor and haven't done so in over a year.

The last time we did it we used Dr. Bronner's cleansing suds and scrubbies. It's not a small kitchen and took forever, but it wound up looking pretty decent. Mops don't work. ("Do you want it to be clean or do you want to use a mop?")

What are your tips for the best bang for my buck, in terms of time, effort, or materials, for cleaning my kitchen floor?

Why am I incredibly passionate about learning things but dread actually putting them to use?

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:45:59 -0800

Why am I passionate about learning things (mostly IT-related) but dread actually putting them to use? I love learning new technologies, programming languages, concepts, etc. I absolutely love proving the concept. I'm talking serious rush here, raging endorphins and all. I feel that with these newfound skills, I can rule the world, profit!, etc. Then I just get bored and find something new to study.

Instead of putting the new skills to use, I move on to the next thing. I take great pleasure in knowing I can do these various things, but when it's time to actually do them, I become disinterested. As soon as it turns into work, it's no fun any more.

A random example is that I get great pleasure out of installing and configuring various CMS systems and testing out their configurations. Yet, I still don't have a web page or a blog. Yet, I know how to do it and I'm ok with that, should the 'need' arise.

Is this laziness, or something else at work? I'm in the IT field. I'm considered quite good at what I do but am always looking to be doing something else. I also have a pretty comfortable and unexciting job. Should I be considering something else?

creating an uber-archive of twitter updates

mecran01 — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 09:26:38 -0800

I am trying to scrape all 77 pages of my twitter updates and put them on a single page in chronological order, automagically. I think I can figure out how to scrape all of the pages using curl, but I'm not so sure how to get them in one place, and was wondering if there is something obvious that I am overlooking that will let me bypass the tedium of doing this manually, or (heaven forbid) learning a scripting language.

Is there an RSS reader that will capture all 1,000 plus twitters to a single page? Or some other clever method?

Help me make better decisions in the morning

dcrocha — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:14:23 -0800

How do I make better decisions in the morning? I hate waking up early in the morning, and because of this I end up screwing up a lot of things when getting out of bed. Some examples of stupid decisions taken just so I could sleep a bit longer: missing classes and exams, medical appointments, not going to the gym, missing (many) flights, not answering important phone calls, and the list is very long.

I seem not to have good judgment when deciding whether or not to get out of bed. How can I improve that?

Do lazy people change?

mjewkes — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:01:40 -0800

Do you know of anyone, yourself included, who has actually made significant positive in terms of optimism, discipline, and ambition? How did this happen? Ask MeFi is replete with questions of getting ones life together, building discipline, overcoming laziness, and developing ambition, direction, and purpose. [1][2][3][4][e t c].

Anyone had any luck? What prompted the change, and how did you do it? Any lasting change?

Personal stories only please. Lots of advice out there - does any of it work?

How can I make myself do stuff?

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:53:49 -0800

I can't make myself do anything. I've never been able to. I want to accomplish so much, I have goals, but for some reason, I just can't make myself do all the things I know I'm capable of. How can I turn this around? Is there a name for it? What should I do? I managed to get through high school, get into a good college and I'm graduating this semester with an average GPA. But I feel like that's not good enough. I'm pretty sure the reason I've been able to make it this far is because I'm actually smarter than most people, and I've been sliding by on that alone. I always write papers the day before they're due no matter how intense they are, and I always get the middling grades I deserve.

I'm capable of functioning just fine - I keep myself and my apartment clean, I can hold down a job, I've only ever flunked one class. But even so, I only ever do the bare minimum of what's expected of me and I know I'm capable of so much more. Even getting around to writing this short question took me a week. My parents have given me basically everything I've ever wanted and it's going to stop soon. Heck, I want it to stop.

I've tried plenty of things - compartmentalizing my life, coming up with rigorous schedules, taking notes, but I always throw them out within a day or so and go back to goofing off until I absolutely have to do something. I'm appalled at how much time I waste, but I just can't stop doing it.

I stopped drinking (I used to drink way too much, alone) a few months ago and I feel like that's a step in the right direction, but now I just do nothing while sober. I generally have a happy disposition and don't think I'm depressed, nor do I think I have ADD (but maybe). If I had to chalk it up to anything, I'd guess that no one ever pushed me as hard as I needed to be pushed when I was a child (though my parents did a wonderful job all around).

I genuinely think I'm an intelligent and capable person, but I'm so profoundly unmotivated that it hardly matters. I need serious change in my life and I'm not sure how to effect it. Therapy? Drugs? I want to get shit done, but I don't even know who to talk to because everyone just thinks I'm lazy.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:58:40 -0800

What's the best approach to take with the a lead software developer after being left holding the ball? About a month into a new full-time development gig (after almost a decade of contracting/freelance for me) the lead developer left for a two week vacation with assurances that we were more or less feature complete and the only thing left to do before launch would be cleaning up a few bugs.

Lies. (duh)

While on vacation we've found huge areas of functionality that were unimplemented, and others that were implemented so fragilely that they were bound to break. It's been a week of hell scrambling to get everything finished while at the same time not throwing lead-developer under the bus with the higher ups.

Lead developer has a huge amount of seniority. I'm the only other member of the team with any experience in the software industry (other developers have less than a year of professional experience). There's no formal project management at the company.

I'd like this job to work out. What approach do I take with the lead when he gets back? Do I point blank (in private) confront/talk-to him about the the lack of organization/management and what I view as a lackadaisical attitude towards developing code that actually works? Do I accept this is just his MO and work around it while covering my ass at the same time?

Any advice on ways to deal with this situation in a positive way would be appreciated. I'm used to being brought into situations like this as a contractor where I can drop in, hurt feelings, get something done, then move on to the next gig. I don't think that works in a situation you'd like to work out long term.

Why am I so useless?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:14:04 -0800

I am a useless procrastinator, I see it happening, and I can see the outcome but I can't help it, I feel out of control almost. It's something I tend to deal with okay at work (a more direct task-based environment I guess) but at home it's terrible. My wife and I have had the same argument many times, about me not doing enough around the house. She doesn't ask a lot, and I have no objection to what she asks, but when it comes to doing it I just put it off and then either don't do it at all, or do a half-assed job. About the only thing I can do regularly is the dishes, but even that isn't great most of the time apparently.

From my wife's perspective I am simply choosing not to do it. She thinks it demonstrates that she and our son aren't important to me, but nothing could be further from the truth really, but at the same time I can't blame her for that feeling.

I don't know how to deal with it. These should be fairly simple chores - I am certainly capable of it - but when the time comes I just don't do them. I put them off in favor of other things. I seem to justify them to myself, or say 'in five minutes' but at the same time it doesn't even seem like a conscious decision I am making, and then it's all too late. I can almost hear my inner monologue saying "man, you really really have to do this now" but that seems to make no difference.

I don't even know where to begin in dealing with this, and more importantly in making my wife see that I really do want to change this behavior.

I've tried things that seem logical in the past - making myself little schedules, or reminders, but that seems to come to nothing, they just get put off like everything else. Thinking about it logically it almost seems pathological to me, I feel completely out of control in this.

I'm considering seeing a psychologist about it or something, but will that help me change my behavior?

The obvious answer is "just do the stuff" and it's the one I scream at myself but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I don't think I am lazy, but it's hard to see it any other way.

This is seriously jeopardizing my marriage now and I really really need to make some progress.

Lazy, bored, worthless.

giggleknickers — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:30:45 -0800

Why am I so lazy? If anyone has seen Office Space, I'm exactly like the lead character. There is nothing in the world that I want except to do nothing. I have tried and tried and tried to find something that I enjoy, or that will motivate me. Everything I can find is painfully boring. Travelling, a career, hobbies, meeting people - all of it bores me to tears. I only do the minimum in life to get by and it grates my nerves to do that much.

Sometimes I go hungry for a couple days because it's just so damn boring to go to the grocery store. It boggles my mind how some people hop out of bed and go about doing things, when it takes such enormous will to do something like washing the dishes.

I get by in life by scavenging and I have never held a job for more than a few months because the boredom overwhelms me. I'm so ashamed of myself and I'd give anything to feel motivation and drive for something. The only reason I do anything at all is so that I can keep a roof over my head.

I tried all the obvious solutions:
-Exercise
-Therapy
-Depression meds
-Blood test
-Healthy food

No, I don't have ADD, much as everybody loves to tell everyone else that they have it.

Nothing works. Please, somebody help me. There must be something.

Around the world but still stay in one spot?

pianomover — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:59:12 -0800

If the right helicopter were to exist, could I rise X number of feet (not to far mind you) above the earth point myself in the right direction hover there and then watch the world go by underneath me? How fast would I have to go and should I bring a change of clothes?

Fantasy Baseball for lazy retards

c:\awesome — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:37:51 -0800

So my friend and I want to do fantasy baseball this season, but we don't know the first thing about running one. Compounding the issue is the fact that we're too lazy to rank players, and too busy to constantly be tracking stats. What's the easiest, most low-impact fantasy baseball system for a couple of lazy fanatics?

quantum pathology

nihlton — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:55:00 -0800

quantum physics. what am I not getting? my understanding of quantum physics is that on the really small scale, our traditional laws of physics aren't so cut and dry so we had to develop probability models for how stuff will behave in order to make testable predictions. is that even approaching accurate?

if its not pretend my question is a request for a layman's explanation for quantum physics. If its close enough, read on for my actual question...

isn't that kind of lazy science?

I mean, my understanding is that in traditional physics, nothing is random. coin tosses, dice rolls, all of it can be predicted if you've got enough data. seems counterintuitive that this would change just because you're getting really small.

appearances aside - it seems to me sort of defeatist to say "stuff happens that we don't expect. there is no way we can know how or why, so lets just gather enough data to be able to say how its probably going to happen next time" Like if we never understood how gangrene happened, but instead of searching for the cause, we developed a probabilistic model for how and when it would strike. quantum pathology? that would never fly.

are we even still looking for the forces or effects that cause discrepancies at the quantum scale?

I don't know, maybe this question is silly and I don't understand the science well enough, but it seems like just declaring something unknowable and moving on isn't very scientific at all.

Help this impatient person learn how to cook from a book.

mintchip — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:50:25 -0800

Help this impatient person learn how to cook from a book. I don't know how to cook. I am extremely lazy in the kitchen and want to learn to make good, tasty meals that require a MINIMUM of preparation* and utilize as many shortcuts as possible (e.g. frozen veggies, pre-made stir fry sauces, etc.).

I love vegetables, chicken and fish but don't eat red meat. I prefer ethnic flavors such as thai, indian, asian etc. I'm thinking learning some stirfry techniques might be a good place to start, but I'm open to other ideas.

What are the best cookbooks for me to try? In addition to a lack of cooking technique, I also know very little about basics such as stocking my kitchen. Thanks!!

*Ideally 10 minutes or less.

SurvivalistFilter part 3: Homemade MREs

jytsai — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:05:48 -0800

Survivalist/LazyStudentFilter: I need advise on the feasibility of making my own "canned" meals (but without the can), using boil-able/freezable/microwavable plastic pouches, a vacuum sealer, and a pressure cooker. May interest cheap and lazy students, busy people, and survivalists - if it works. Details inside... So the theory goes: I cook the food and put it in a pouch (specs), vacuum seal the pouch, and pasteurize it in the pressure cooker. If this works, I would be able to make a big batch of food when I have time, split em up into smaller portions that are durable and don't require refrigeration, and be set on food for days. Cheaper, and certainly more nutritious than pre-prepared frozen foods. These food pouches would have the added bonus of doubling as MREs, for long term disaster preparedness.

The questions are:

Safety: How safe is this? I'm assuming the bags are hermetically sealed so air leakage = contamination, and conversely no air leakage = no contamination. But this assumption only works if the bags are sterilized. Assuming that I follow the homemade canned food guidelines for pressure cooker pasteurization (125 degrees celsius for X number of minutes), would proper sterilization have occurred? Or is home canning more of a "good enough, but not completely sterile" process?

Nutrition: How nutritious is the food, post processing? Will the pressure cooking significantly alter the nutritional content beyond that of normal cooking? Also, can I fortify the food with ground up multivitamin pills? Or would that significantly alter taste?

Shelf Life: Given a cool, dark environment, what's the shelf life of the plastic pouch, as well as the food? And would vacuum sealing all of it in a second mylar pouch (specs) significantly improve the shelf life?

Bonus questions: If I were to use the same process on dried fruits, would it significantly alter taste/nutrution? And would pressure cooking adversely affect the function of oxygen absorbers or desiccants that are packed with aforementioned dehydrated fruits?

Get Me Off The Computer!!!!

zacharyseibert — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:20:14 -0800

Help me get off of my computer every now and then... OK so here's the deal. I am a college student who pretty much spends most of his time in front of the computer and the tv. I live in a dorm so there really isn't much else to do when I'm not working or in class. Basically what I'm looking for is some motivation to get off the computer. By motivation, I mean some sort of software that will lock me out of my computer at a predetermined time everyday and make it semi-difficult get back on it. I do need to be able to override it just in case the occassional assignment comes up or it's finals week or something. Also, I'm on a Mac.

So does this software exist?

Nom Nom Nom

quin — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:59:06 -0800

I'd like to learn to cook. The Background: For the first thirty-six years of my life, I've subsisted mainly on frozen food. This worked for me because I'm A.) Lazy, and B.) was a long time smoker and had completely destroyed my taste-buds.

However, I've subsequently quit and am discovering that this thing we call "food" actually has a "flavor". It's interesting.

I have no background in food making, but I have access to most of the acoutriments of cooking.
The Question: What kind of meal should I invest my time in learning to make? Google has provided an overwhelming number of suggestions and I don't have any idea where to begin.

The Caveats: As I said above; I'm lazy, so I'd like to find food making projects that are not all day affairs. Specifically, I'm looking for a couple of simple, easy to make meals, that are also tasty.

I like meat, but the wife doesn't, so I'd prefer to make something that we both can enjoy.

So where do I start?

How to Stop Slacking

raisons de coeur — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:05:58 -0800

Is there anything besides 'willpower' to grab hold of if you wanted to stop being ruinously indisciplined? Do you know people who've managed major personal change on that front? It's difficult because it feels like it's literally ALL IN YOUR HEAD so how do you change your own mind? Say you slacked. Say your life was literally ruined by this: that you had the best possible education and life circumstances your parents could possibly manage, which is a lot more than the background they came from--a hell of a lot more--but because of how you mismanaged it all, your childhood friends are now generic yuppies while your current peers by position/income are now generic service industry clerks (I'm early 20s).

Say it didn't matter whether it'd be education, work, or even things you'd take on for fun--you just never followed through. That it was pervasive: it didn't matter whether the issue was personal calls back to people, filling out a plain form, doing the dishes--everything from things like that to showing up to high-powered meetings 20 mins late (and thus managing to get yourself shut out of future such meetings since they all gave up on you).

Say you've heard this hundreds of times before: "you're so damn smart, I can't believe you didn't [pull through on whatever the issue was.]" It'd be almost cliche: no matter what it is, you'd have the capacity to do it but fail nonetheless. (Literal quote from a few weeks ago: "I can't believe you [didn't manage X issue at Y place.] NOBODY [doesn't.]" Again, it wasn't so much that I didn't do X to its requirements; I just didn't do X.)

Say that the wrecking effects this had were wildly disproportionate to the causes, eg. getting around to submitting the form would be trivial but not having done it suddenly colors your whole life status.

Say every time you got a chance to begin anew--and you get them again and again--you blew it.

So you were barely functional; anonymous--obscure--fading away.

Is there anything you could do besides wake up hoping to 'somehow' spend today differently.
I guess not.
Damn.

I need to do all the normal things that constitute life, but I sit on my butt!

stormygrey — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:05:41 -0800

Please help me get my schedule organized... or something, whatever you call it. I am extremely flighty or forgetful or spacey, whatever you want to call it. I very rarely remember to do things like take my medicine, pack work out clothes, etc.

For example I make lists like:
Brush teeth 3 minutes
Jump rope 5 minutes
Elliptical 15 minutes
Wash face 2 minutes
Retin A, Vitamins, Meds, 2 min
Get dressed 7 min
Drive to work 18 min

Now, I make these lists twice a week or more to try to get me on track and yet I never do these things, ever. I get up 10 minutes or less before I need to be at work, throw on clothes and put on my make up in the car. ALL THE TIME. So I make another list at work about going to the gym, cooking a healthy dinner, applying self tanner or whatever. I obsess at work about all the things I didn't do and all the things I am not doing, see cause I just sit and don't do anything at work too. Then I get home and sit on the couch. ALL THE TIME.

The weird thing is if I have to do something its not a problem. For example, I just hired a personal trainer, she shows up at my house twice a week at 5:45, we work out to 6:45, I take a shower and get to work by 7:30. Or on the weekends, I bartend and I do all the things that go along with it just fine, then I go home and sit.

I just wish I could be productive at home and at my "real job" like I am at bartending or what not. Bartending is easy because really their is no question what needs to be done next. I pick up after myself and my customers and serve with gusto, why am I so crippled at home?

I do a little better with Adderall, but I have a crazy high heart rate and just got a prescription for Beta Blockers, so no go on the stimulants right now. We'll see if that does anything at all.

I am looking for practical solutions like "tape the list to the mirror in the morning" to little rituals, or what worked for you, or whatever. I have talked to doctors about this, but since I am seen as "high functioning" or whatever they see it as more of a quirk than anything else and say things like "well, I'll make you a deal, if you go back to school, I will prescribe you adderall." I already have one master's and graduate certificate, I am not really in a place where I can go back to school at this point.

I know this is long and rambling. I am just feeling a little frenetic right now. I look forward to hearing your ideas.

I feel as though I've become lazy and complacent. How can I get back to my "old self"?

tundro — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:40:08 -0800

I feel as though I've become lazy and complacent. How can I get back to my "old self"? To cut to the chase, I'm in my late 20s and have what most could call (myself included) a happy and successful life. You know, the fulfilling job, beautiful wife, nice house, great friends, etc. For as long as I can remember I've been optimistic, aggressive about getting what I want and rarely sat still. Yes, I'm a Type A personality. Sure, nothing is perfect... but I have more than most and I'm grateful for it.

That said, now that I'm getting a little older I find myself becoming what I would consider lazy and complacent. I find that I'm starting to settle for things that I wouldn't have been happy with years ago. I lack the desire to fight as hard as I used to, opting instead for what's easy. And I HATE IT when I do it but I can't make myself stop. As a response, I've tried to convince myself to change my ways (as I consciously know that I am the only one that has control over how I act)... but I'm lacking the discipline to see through these changes. Whether its proper exercise, eating better, cleaning the house or even getting around to doing my taxes I just don't have the energy or drive to get it done. Hell, I even started looking at volunteer to help others and get outside of my head but I keep making excuses and haven't done it yet.

I know in my head what I think is the right thing to do, but I'm failing miserably at turning it into an actionable reality. Am I depressed? Am I just a moron? What has worked for you when you're stuck in a rut a looking for a way out?

Did I ruin my car?

sutel — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:35:11 -0800

Did I totally screw up my car? It got all wet inside and I'm worried that I've ruined it. About six weeks ago, we had a wicked ice/snow storm here in Boston. My car was parked on a really busy road, at the end of a block, and during the intial storm the plow piled on a whole bunch of ice and snow and some rocks thrown in for fun. I only drive my car occasionally so I didn't dig it out right away, thinking it would melt in a couple of days and I'd be able to get it out.

Well. The ice and snow all over the car did not melt, but the ice and snow under the car did. I left it like this for probably three weeks. When I finally decided to attempt to dig it out, I got in the car only to find that the floor was soaking wet. The puddle the car was sitting in was probably six inches deep. I did manage to get the car out as most of the ice around the car had melted by that point.

It's been two weeks or so and the floor and the floor mats are still wet. Did I totally fuck up my car? Is it going to rust up and fall apart underneath me tomorrow? It's a 96 Nissan Sentra. How can I dry it? I know I can leave the mats out in the sun to dry, but what about the interior floor?

I know I was lazy - trust me, I've been kicking myself for being such a dumbass about it. Plus, it smells really musty inside the car so every time I drive the car I get to remind myself about being lazy again.

Thanks for any advice you might have.