inspired.

My housemates have inspired me to become more self-disciplined and to not waste as much time doing nonsensical crap.  I should be working on getting my certification in Cytogenetics.  But... I haven't been doing much to work towards this goal over the past year and a half or so; instead, I've been devoting the majority of my free time to my social life and other distractions that I didn't get much chance to pay attention to when I was in school.  But it's now gotten to a point where I feel like I'm overdoing it.  So... alas, I am going to force myself to take a break from this lazy lifestyle.

One of my housemates has been going to church every week and sometimes goes to study groups to help himself grow spiritually.  My other housemate makes it a point to go to the gym every freaking day.  He isn't some insane body builder or anything, but he is determined to be the healthiest he can be, and so he exercises every day to help improve himself physically.  So, he is working towards making himself grow... muscularly?

Anyway, watching how they've both taken the initiative to better themselves or make themselves grow in some way has made me feel like I should start spending my free time to improve myself in some way, too.  I mean, I feel like I've been coasting these past couple of years, and have spending my off-work hours self-indulging in shopping and food (I've been eating out a lot), while not working very much towards any particular goals.  I guess you could say that I've been spending the last two years increasing my expenditures and growing horizontally.  But that's not really improving myself in any way.  I think maybe my brain got overworked and burned out in college, and all it wanted to do after graduation was to veg out completely.

So, in an attempt to undo this, I've decided to start training myself to have more self control and to create some sort of study schedule for myself that I will stick with.  Perhaps whenever my housemate goes to the gym in the evenings, I will use that block of time to focus on studying; using his departure from the house as a signal to myself that my study period has begun, and now I have to keep studying until he returns. Kind of like a school bell that signifies the beginning and end of each study block.  Eh, I don't know.

Personal Mission Statement: To study and pass my certification exam, so that I may get a major pay raise and garner some job stability.

Gah. Self-discipline has never been one of my better qualities; studying didn't come naturally to me in school, and usually I didn't do any of the readings for classes but somehow luckily managed to figured things out.  I can say for a fact that I've never done any self-studying successfully; usually, if the professor didn't have time to lecture about a topic, I wouldn't feel motivated enough to read up on the rest of the material, and so I would usually miss those questions on exams.  And the bad thing is that I wouldn't care. :-/  But now I need to learn how to self-study for the first time in my life; there is no professor for this review course, there is no one to grade me or my assignments to help keep my progress in check, there is no way for me to figure this material by myself without doing the readings, and also no one to explain the materials to me if i don't understand it, i will have to figure out how to understand something fully on my own, to the point where i feel so comfortable with it that i won't doubt myself!!!!  so now i need to figure out how to create a study schedule/syllabus for myself that I will actually adhere to, and hopefully do all right on this certification exam, because it will at least prove that these past two years were spent working towards SOMETHING.  It's stressing me out a lot, but hopefully once I get myself a little more organized/better oriented with everything, I'll start feeling less stressed/anxious about the next few months and begin feeling like i'm making progress for the first time in a while. :|

Wow, i am so tired right now, i have no idea what i am typing.  Maybe i should switch to using a paper diary instead of a blog.  Meh