Part of the process

Last night, I went out with a group of grad students from my department. My classmate's wife came out with us, and she told a story about how she stayed home from her real job one day, and her husband was just watching videos on Hulu.

Then we all jumped in to defend him, explaining that watching Hulu is an important part of the academic process because internet videos prime the brain for intellectual thoughts. But she was not convinced.

I'm glad that nobody monitors my work schedule except for my cat -- but, lately I've been less distracted by the internet than usual.

A few days ago, I was working with data for my advisor's project, and I needed to look something up on the internet. I looked around for Firefox and then I realized that it wasn't open -- it was 3 p.m. and I hadn't opened a browser all day. That's when I know that I'm really fucking focused.

With quantitative data, I get obsessed with "figuring it out" and I can work for hours without feeling bored... once it's time to write, though, Hulu becomes very important.