elainegrey @ 2011-03-24T06:41:00

2011-03-24T15:31:18Z

Yesterday was obsessive day.

First, i got frustrated with the great huge lump of twitter accounts i follow. I resorted them in my RSS reader so that they would flow in with other prioritized reading clusters. This means i can read at one time tweets from folks i really know (that includes DW/LJ connections) and then later read the folks i've met in different interest circles.

Then, i decided that i really needed to be tracking my state again. A few years ago i filled out a grid to track health trends, which gave me confidence to know how long a canker flare was and some other details. Tracking on paper had some challenges: it was desk bound, and annotation space was limited. If something came up mid month, i'd scrawl in the margins. I'd found a pain assessment form some years ago, too, and had thought how helpful it would be to use that on a regular basis. There were other things i used to journal about regularly, different disciplines. I was always frustrated that the data was unstructured, that i could not easily track my responses across time.

I thought of a number of ways i could generate an interface: make my own web page and write CGI that went to a comma separated values file, graph in excel. (That seems so 1998.) Google Docs? I've never used the data form function, but i knew it existed. Buy an iPad and use the spreadsheet application that was so impressive? *cough*

Surely, in the data driven web, there have to be versatile tracking tools?

Wow, the answer is YES. I experimented with many of them. The ones that came closest to meeting my needs were:

http://trackulous.com/trackables/allTrackables
http://www.trackngraph.com/www/Features.aspx
http://daytum.com/about/features
http://beta.me-trics.com/
http://42goals.com/goals/

Then there were other sites that didn't meet my needs, but seemed similar:

http://www.rescuetime.com/
http://www.getgoaling.com/
http://www.stickk.com/
http://www.43things.com/
http://www.traxitall.com/gs-ip/
http://www.traxitall.com
http://www.sparkpeople.com/

In the end, though, i've gone with Google Docs. It's about as flexible as the most flexible, and i can get the data out.

The one thing i wish i knew how to do would be use numeric responses to calculate numbers on the fly when filling out the form (to support a daily spoon calculation), but that is not supported as of 1/1/10. I'll note with a little javascript the CGI method could make that work. 1998 wasn't bad, just bespoke.

Armed with this Google Docs form, i'm able to fill out the form on-line from laptops or phone.

I spent HOURS intensely working on this little project, which reminded me to track "obsessive engagement" events. I'm rather satisfied by the outcome, and pleased that i had previous tracking forms easily available to transfer to the new format. It meant being significantly distracted from work again, like Monday afternoon when i was obsessively focussed on what the day of Christine's surgery would be like.

I became very aware of a tension in my sense of satisfaction as i was not doing "what i should do" and was obsessively engaged: the engagement was rewarding, better than addictive chips or surfing the web or so many other things. It was ENERGIZING in many ways. I could plow on despite a headache. What i'm identifying as "obsessive engagement" is good in so many ways.

Yet it's countered by the stack of Things I Need to Do: Evaluate whether certain machines are needed or not, file for airfare refund, file for flex expenditure refund, some phone calls for Oversight.

Is this procrastination at work? Some sort of recovery process?

I'm hoping my tracking is helpful as i both frame our experience of Christine's surgery and, in a month or so, withdraw from Prozac. I think the Prozac helped me create the space to reframe my understanding about my work environment: i hope going off is not an issue. I believe the canker flare was really due to the iron deficiency, so i don't expect a flare when i go off. However, "stress" is a "cause" of so many of my complaints, that loosing the prozac's shield from being overwhelmed may cause stress.

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