Business English: The C Word

Hello everybody!

This superlong post is in two parts just in case there is a person willing to read the whole thing (LOL). I have figured that will save you time scrolling down to get to the glossary.

Have a fabulous weekend!

K.

PART 1

In the latest season of America's Next Model, the finalists are taught, among other things, that in order to establish a successful brand you need for this brand to be associated with one single word. What follows is that the aspiring models labelthemselves with words such as 'girlfriend', 'survivor' or 'daring' and then try to personify them: they act in a friendly way, are brave or bend every rule of the competition. Another old business mantra is that 'sex sells', which can be expressed by a simple formula: any semi-functional product + hot chick = jackpot. Noah Kerner and Gene Pressman, the authors of Chasing Cool, believe that what sells products today is 'cool'. All successful brands and their products are thought to be coolby their respective audiences. However, when you ask the authors if there is one definition or formula for cool, they say no.

Coolsells because young people gravitate towards it and older people covet it. In boardrooms, product managers try to find a shortcut for cool. They spend money on focus groups and trend reports. They cooperate with hip advertising agencies. According to the authors of the book, it is all in vain. Coolcan't be hunted down and bottled. It is not the outcome of a chase. You can't find it if you look for it. But if you are passionate about your brand/ product, have a strong authentic vision and are brave enough to follow you gut, cool will find you.

Don't Be Mr Me Too

If you want coolto find you, don't imitate what your competitors have. Don't look at another person's backyard. Instead, change the rules of the game. You need your product to stand out and therefore you need to give it a point of difference. Come up with a disruptive idea like the one the producers of the Grey Goose vodka had – to import their vodka from France, shipit in wooden crates and market it as the best vodka in the world; or like the editor of Us Weekly, who was the first to show that celebrities are just like us – they can be caught picking their nose, with a beer gut or dirty nails.

GLOSSARY 1

among other things – między innymi

to be associated with – kojarzyć się z

to label yourself with one word – tut. opisać, dosł. przyczepiać etykietkę

daring– odważna, śmiała

to personify – uosabiać

to bend – naginać, zginać

to express – wyrażać

a formula – wzór, przepis

semi- – w połowie, częściowo (half or partly)

a hot chick – seksowna laska/ dziewczyna

a jackpot – najwyższa wygrana (the largest prize offered in a competition, hit the jackpot – to win a lot of money

respective– odpowiednie, poszczególne

to gravitate towards – ciągnąć do czegoś

to covet something – pożądać

a shortcut for – skrót (take a shortcut – iść na skróty)

hip– supermodne

in vain – na próżno, nadaremnie

to hunt down – dopaść coś, upolować coś (to search everywhere for someone or something until you find them

an outcome – wynik, rezultat

a chase – pościg, pogoń

to follow your gut – postępować zgodnie z intuicją. przeczuciem

to imitate – naśladować

a competitor – konkurent, rywal

a backyard – ogród, podwórko (small space surrounded by walls at the back of a house, usually with a hard surface)

to stand out– wyróżniać się

a point of difference– element wyróżniający

disruptive– destrukcyjny, tut. wprowadzający zamieszanie

to ship– przewozić, transportować

a crate– skrzynka

an editor– redktor(ka)

to pick one's nose– dłubać w nosie

a beer gut– brzuch po piwie, brzuch piwosza

PART 2

Don't outsource too much

Coolcan't be served on a silver platter by trend spotters, coolhunters, field researchers or social scientists. Those outsiders don't know your company and what it stands for. They don't have the understanding of the nuances that make up your company's DNA. If you need to ask young people about what is cool, ask your employees who are part of the company's internal culture. If they can't answer this question, then you know you have to start surrounding yourself with inspired and curiouspeople who can. Next time you hear street kids say that mesh back trucker hats titled to one side are the shit, make sure you don't use them in your advertising campaign. Let your competitors use them and think about something else that will better represent your brand image.

Gimmicks can only work so long

It is true that viral marketing can buy you buzz and attract consumers' attention. You can get thousands or even millions of people from the YouTube community talking about your brand or product within a few days. However, if the product you promote doesn'tdeliver on its promise – isn't what it claims to be, customers will soon lose the interest you have generated and the product won't be cool. As a result of viral marketing gone wrong, you may also alienate your existing customer base. Also, instead of paying celebrities to show your product on the red carpet or on the streets in front of paparazzi, create a product that celebrities will want to buy with their own money. Trunk, for example, which reproduces vintage rock t-shirts, never pays anybody to wear their tees; rarely gives anything for free and requests their shirts back after any photo shoot. Still, celebrities are willing to wear Trunk even if they are not paid to do so.

There is no such thing as a quick fix for cool. You can't find it , engineer it or buy it. However, if you've got a strong vision and are gutsy enough to follow it, your brand may one day become the epitome of cool.

For more advice on cool, go to http://chasingcoolbook.com/

GLOSSARY 2

to outsource– zlecać część pracy innym firmom

a platter– półmisek, (served on a silver platter– podany na tacy)

to stand for– reprezentować, wierzyć w coś

a nuance– niuans

to make up– stanowić, składać się na coś

curious– ciekawi (interested in learning about people or things around you)

mesh– siatka

to tilt– przechylać, odchylać
a gimmick – sztuczka, chwyt
(can) only work so long – działać tylko do (pewnego) czasu

viral marketing– marketing wirusowy

buzz – rozgłos

to deliver on one's promise– spełniać oczekiwania

to alienate– zrazić

vintage– klasyczne

a tee– a t-shirt

to request something back– prosić o zwrot

a photo shoot– sesja zdjęciowa

a quick fix for something– prowizoryczne rozwiązanie, rozwiązanie na skróty (something that seems to be a fast and easy solution to a problem but is in fact not very good or will not last long)

to engineer– zaaranżować, uknuć

gutsy– odważny

to be the epitome of – uosobienie, najlepszy przykład czegoś

The Revision Zombie

And so I rise from the semi-dead. I'm not talking about vampires either. Or are they all-dead?* I'm talking about my sepulcher of revisions. I learned the word "sepulcher" by reading The Pilgrim's Progress.

Yes, I have been in a tomb of revisions. Which hasn't been too friendly, trapping me in its cold stone walls. And I'm not talking about Cold Stone ice cream, which I have never tried. I have heard it said that

WRITING IS REVISING

Heh. In that case, I feel like writing and I are going to need to have a little DTR. Because drafting is so much easier and funner** than revising. For me, anyways.

And because of the pain and general not-knowing-withal of revising, I've let the fun and general have-a-good-time of blogging slip through my fingers. My apologies, Captain Needa. Star Wars Reference. And I'm not even close to being finished with my revising anyway. 

So, in case you haven't noticed, the only real point of this post is to be a dork, and to let you know what I'm up to. Sort of. 

So, tell me something about revising or Cold Stone ice cream or Star Wars. But not about zombies or vampires, please. I really don't like either of those very much, even though I'm sitting in a sepulcher right now and there may be some around. 

*All my asides are in slightly smaller type so you can ignore them if you want. Or you can ignore everything.
*I don't really accept "funner" as a word, but for the flow of the sentence, I've made a noble sacrifice.

What's all this Clabber about?

(The following is a post from a guest blogger. Not just your ordinary guest blogger, but a person I would like to put into the category of a quintessential  Southerner. Very proud, and a great resource for me when I want to get the Southern perspective on anything. We have talked many times on many subjects, Yankee vs. Rebel, North vs. South. The civil war, Gone with the wind, Mason & Dixon, Dukes of Hazzard  and much more.

So I give you, from my Southern pal and all around good guy.....Berkeley  Clayton and a blog post on)..

Glabber!

I will start at the beginning…. With the cow.  When I was about 8 or 9 I would get up early in the morning like 5:00 a.m. and go with my grandfather out to milk the cow.  (Yankee - when I was 8 or 9 I did not see 5:00am once!) This was way cool when you are that young.  You got to drink coffee with lots of cream and sugar and help milk the cow yourself. 

My grandfather would take a pan of warm water and a wash rag to wash the cow’s bag before he milked her.  I would get to carry the stainless steel 10 quart water bucket that the milk went into.  He had two buckets for milk, one for milking and one for pouring milk into. When he went into the shed where the cow was locked up, he would talk to her so she would not get agitated before being milked. This was a gentle old cow and you could pet her like a cat or dog.  He would pull his three legged stool over and sit down and wash her bag.  I pulled my stool over to and got ready to milk.  He would take his hand and push on her back leg so she would back it up so he could milk while she was eating.  I would grab one teat (Yankee - hold on now Berkeley, this is a family blog!)  and he would grab the other.   I lay my head against her belly and milked.   Be sure not to let the tail hit you in the head when she swatted at the flies.

Of course I could not do it as fast as he could and it took about 15 minutes to fill the bucket.  He did that every day.

After the bucket was full he carried it into the house, placing a cloth and a strainer over the other milk bucket, poured what we had just milked into the second bucket.  It sat there while the first one was washed and put away.  Then he would take the milk and pour it into 3 or 4 half gallon jars, two of which I had the responsibility to take to my house every day either in the morning or at night.  I had to do it in the afternoon most of the time because I was in school unless it was summer time. That was my job and I hated it because it messed up my cartoon watching on TV.  I had to go get the milk just when....

............Deputy Dog was on.  That was a great cartoon, but I digress.

Now to the clabber.  Clabber comes from raw, unpasteurized milk or what comes directly from the cow.  (You can buy raw milk in Florida but you have to look for it.  Of course the Yankees who run things in Washington DC feel that it is not “safe”.  I drank raw milk until I was in college and it never hurt me, but again I digress.)  (Yankee - Berkeley keeps on digressing, is that a southern thang?) 

Granddaddy would take the blue enamel pan sometimes 2 depending on how much he wanted at that time and pour the milk into the pans, cover them with a clean dishcloth and leave them sitting on the counter.  When you do this, raw milk will sour which is what it is supposed to do.  Pasteurized milk on the other hand will rot which is why you can’t make clabber with pasteurized milk. 

After about 4 or 5 days ( Yankee - Days!!??) depending on the temperature in the kitchen, my grandmother would check the milk and if it was firm feeling and smelled sour she would taste it.  When set, clabber looks a lot like flan for any of you that have seen or know about flan. It is firm but not runny.  (It can also be firmer like cheese depending on how long you let it set up.) She would put the clabber in a glass bowl, cover it put it in the refrigerator to eat.

Clabber is vilest stuff you have ever put in your mouth!!   It makes me gag to this day just thinking about it.  My grandparents, great grandparents and my father would take a piece or two of corn bread and break it up in a glass, and taking cold clabber from the refrigerator, spoon it on the cornbread mix it up and eat it from the glass.  (A different take on this is to mix the cornbread with regular milk.  My father trained my children to eat saltine crackers and cornbread like that.  My half Yankee wife was appalled the first time she saw them eating that, saying what is that nasty stuff you are eating?)  That was just about the worse thing in the world.  You could smell that sour milk all over the house.  I tasted it one time and had to run outside and spit it out. My great grandfather would eat it with some sugar or cane syrup on it right from a bowl, just nasty stinking clabber. 

If you ever eat clabber you have to brush your teeth about 5 times to get the taste of sour milk out of your mouth.  You should try it sometime just to say you have been there and done that. 

(Yankee - The Clabber association is not very happy with you, Berkeley!)


Thank you, again  Berkeley!! 

  

Cute Kitten Pictures 2012

Cute Kitten
Wow cute kittens are very beautiful and charming for every one.Last sunday I was bought three kitten like this but suddenly they will died and make me so sad.Now I have tow Dogs for replacing in the watchman.My family like them so much and me too.If you like it so please give your comments and make my day.

Pictures

 Cute Kitten

 Cute Kitten

 Cute Kitten

 Cute Kitten

 Cute Kitten

Cute Kitten

Do you keep a journal?

Heck, yes. I've been keeping a journal every.single.day. since I was 12.

I mean every day. Like, I haven't missed writing about a single day. Sometimes I'm busy and have to write an entry on the day after it happens.  At one point in my life I had to catch up for about 4 days' worth at a time. But every day has its own entry.

I took out this box from my closet, just for you, guys. So enjoy.

The box.

 
I was expecting...maybe 20 notebooks at the most. As I took them out of the box, they just kept coming. I believe my exact words were, "Oh, my freaking goodness." I'm not a "freaking" kind of girl. I don't use the word "freaking" unless it is freaked out of me. I have 24 completed journals, 25 with the one I'm using now.

Here they are.

Some reoccurring themes are cats, flowers, brown, and purple. (I don't know if you've noticed, notebook-makers really like flowers.) There is only ONE non-spiral bound journal in the pack. That's because I tried it once and hated it. Too bad the spirals don't fit in boxes that easily. And too bad all the cool journals are book-bound.

Are you seriously trying to count these?

For the heck of it, I made a notebook tower. It was not easy, but I did it for you guys. Because I love you.

So, you probably want to know what's INSIDE the journals, right? Well, here's the thing. I don't even know that. I have never, ever read through one of them. Even taking them out and looking at them, I still don't feel the urge to read them. I opened to a couple different pages at random, looked over the words and closed them again. The past is the past, you know?

So why do I write an entry every day?

Why not.

(Extra hint: I'm a writer.)

So, do you keep a journal?

Photo credits to Monique, my beautiful Mac computer.

The Skin I Live In: Almodóvar meets Seneca

Elena Anaya and a blurry Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In

This week, with my friend Selena, I went to see the latest film by Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In. On my way by ferry to the cinema, I read a short essay on the Stoic philosopher, politician and playwright Seneca, who served the emperor Nero as tutor and advisor, and was ordered by him to commit suicide in 65 CE. As chance would have it, this turned out to be the perfect prelude to viewing Almodóvar’s film.

Most critics have not known quite what to make of The Skin I Live In, admitting that they enjoyed it, but at the same time complaining that it seems cold, and lacks the compassion that usually characterizes Almodóvar’s work. It seems to me that this confusion clears if The Skin I Live In is read as a drama in the spirit of Stoic tragedy. It is not designed to elicit compassion, but rather to generate what the Stoics called apatheia. In doing so, it is a salutory alternative to mainstream cinema that stickily endorses revenge rather than letting us see it, clearly and even joyfully, for what it is.

The apatheiacultivated by the Stoic is an attitude of happy indifference toward external events, designed to free one from passions, particularly anger and grief, that might otherwise arise in the face of undesirable changes in fortune. Seneca tells us that the person who achieves this emotional control is rare; the Stoic sage is like a phoenix, appearing perhaps once every five hundred years. He gives us no portraits of such exemplary figures in his tragedies, but swings to the opposite extreme, depicting the extremes of human passion, cruelty and suffering, to the point where some readers, including Erasmus and Diderot, have (mistakenly) speculated that playwright and the philosopher must have been two different men.

A contemporary rewriting of Seneca’s drama, Thyestes is showing as part of the Sydney Festival – the story involves bitter sibling rivalry for power, sexual infidelity, murder, and, the pièce de résistance, cannibalism, with Thyestes lured by his brother, Atreus, to unwittingly consume the cooked flesh of his own children. This might be read as a heavy-handed moral warning about the dangers of giving in to the lust for power (or haute cuisine), but Seneca’s dramatic style is far from such earnest didacticism.

There are didactic Stoic voices in his plays: nurses and advisors counsel Stoic dispassion – but their message is typically distorted and thrown back in their faces by the passionate and the powerful. And the spectator can only feel grateful for this, since his gory tales of greed, deception and violent revenge are undeniably enjoyable. As we see outrages, betrayals and acts of violence piling upon another with the kind of flamboyant excess that was later imitated by the playwrights of the Elizabethan era in England, the mood in the audience typically becomes increasingly cheerful and serene.

Perhaps Seneca is training us in Stoic indifference, not by providing us with impossibly tranquil models to imitate, but by parading extreme fluctuations of human emotion at such a rate that we cannot sustain a passionate response ourselves, but let go of any personal distress and settle into an engaged, but calm and light-hearted mood. This, it seems to me, is close to the apatheia the Stoics sought, which is misunderstood if it is seen as involving cold detachment from worldly life.

by Louise Bourgeois

Almodóvar’s film achieves a similar effect. It tells a fantastical tale about a plastic surgeon who uses transgenesis to create living skin, and experiments with it, illegally, on an extremely beautiful and flexible young woman who is living as a prisoner in his house. The story proceeds, and turns back on itself, via narrative twists involving rape, madness and murder, and secretive, violent family relations. As in the Thyestes, a major motive for the characters’ actions is the desire for revenge, which is depicted without moralistic judgment or justification. This being Almodóvar, there are also fabulous clothes, beautiful people, quirky jokes, gender puzzles and many appreciative references to the work of other artists, particularly that of the French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

In suggesting that Almodóvar’s film, like Seneca’s play, is likely to produce a response of apatheia, it should be clear that I’m not suggesting that it will put you in an ‘apathetic’ state – the connotations of the English word are quite different. It would be more apt to wonder whether the pleasure to be had from watching family members destroy one another isn’t uncomfortably close to the disreputable emotion of schadenfreude – malicious joy taken in the suffering of others.

A disturbing amount of contemporary film and literature seems to depend for its impact on stirring up nasty emotions, particularly that of morally justified vengefulness: we are encouraged to take pleasure in the suffering of certain characters because they “deserve” it, and to share in the vindictive joy of the ultimately triumphant hero, or often heroine, as she takes her revenge – I’d put Verhoeven’s film Black Book in this category, to take just one example. But such moralistic vindictiveness is not schadenfreude, and it is at the other end of the emotional spectrum from apatheia.

Schadenfreude is not moralistic. On the contrary, it is an amoral, even a guilty, or at least naughty pleasure. We know that morally, we’re not supposed to react to the suffering of others with delight; schadenfreude is never self-righteous, it is a joy that bubbles up, often in spite of efforts to appear more appropriately sober and sympathetically concerned. It can have a malicious, even sadistic edge, but it can also be quite innocent, the kind of spontaneous joy that makes us laugh at slapstick – or take pleasure in watching events driven by the worst elements of human nature unfold with relentless, unstoppable logic, on stage or on screen.

In part, such pleasure may come from feeling that we are safe on the shore, watching a shipwreck in the distance – most troubles of our own are mere soap-bubbles in comparison to the suffering of Thyestes. But if the Stoic playwright succeeds, then our enjoyment will extend to include our own suffering, regarded as part of a grand spectacle that can be watched with interest and calm delight.

After seeing The Skin I Live In, I left the cinema in high spirits. My book of Seneca’s essays remained unopened on the ferry ride that took me back across the harbour. Instead of reading, I sat outside and let the wind blow my hair about while I admired the delicate, luminous shades of lilac and purple produced in the evening sky by gleams of late, golden light between the clouds, and their undulating reflections in water stirred into wide ripples by the movement of the ferry. I felt a buoyant and expansive pleasure in the beauty of nature, an enjoyment that strangely enough – and Stoically enough - seemed connected to having just watched a stylish film about the hyperbolic suffering wreaked by the human desire for power and revenge. 

Louise Bourgeois 1911-2010

One day on the sea beach

A guy is drowning and people are taking snaps. If you have a camera you can join them too.

via facebook

In the meantime a couple his having sun fun bath.

via facebook

Another turkey couple ...

via

Let me know if you had some interesting experiances

Story of My Life: Cezar the Doggie

Hello everybody!

Let's talk cats and dogs today, shall we? Are you a dog or a cat person?

I am definitely a dog person. I have been sure about that ever since I was a kid and got back from my friend's place with a few scratcheson my cheek. The scratches came from her cat, which attacked me unexpectedly. OK, I did tease it a little and the attack was probably well-deserved but I was just a kid. I didn't know any better ;)

Can I have a bite of what you're eating?

Then, a couple years later, there was another cat in my life. My friends had an overweight black cat named Gudi. And I somehowliked her. For one thing, I felt sorry about how big of an appetite she had. I also liked her name, which I chose to pronounce and secretly spell in my head as “Goodie”. But even the most adorable cat can't compare to having a dog. There, I said it! :)

I love my pink toy-shoe.

My family has a yellow Lab called Cezar. And let me tell you that he wasn't all that great in the beginning. At first, he was a high-maintenance poop factory. My mum and him seemed to be attached at the hip. Wherever she went, he kept her company. But the minute she was out of his sight, he pooped and guess who had to clean that mess... He also hated walking on a lead and made me carry him half the walk every time I walked him.

Fattie

The list of misdeeds in Cezar's short but eventful life is endless, including anything from scratched walls, chewed onstairs to ruined shoes and a half-eaten bus pass card. I asked my mum which of Cezar's bad deeds she remembered best and she told me the ones that stuck in her memory were when Cezar sneakily stole a piece of raw meat from the kitchen counter and when he would pluck leaves from her plant while running frantically around the living room.

Being naughty as always.

Having said that, I still love my doggie with all my heart – the morning pitter-patter of his paws on the wood-panelled floor, which I call 'tap dancing”, – him being excited about each new day, him nudging me with his nose when he needs attention, him wagging not only his tail but his whole body when he's happy, his wet nose against my cheeks (haha), his sighs that are so much like human sighs, him playing fetch without actually fetching the ball or stick, him sulking when someone has shouted at him and told him off, him rolling on his back instead of following commands, him playing with his pink toys even though he's a boy....

Hi!

Most of all, I like it when it's just the two of us on a walk – him sniffing the grass and bushes, me – listening to music on my mp3 player and pulling him away from other dogs ;) And then, in the evening, when it's bedtime, I can snuggle up to him to keep me warm. He loves cuddling as much as I do.

Sleepyhead

No pics today!

dog treats/ dog biscuits

a collar and a lead

a pooper scooper

GLOSSARY:

a scratch – zadrapanie, to scratch – drapać

a cheek – policzek

to tease somebody – psocić się komuś

well-deserved – zasłużony

I didn't know any better– Inaczej nie potrafiłam. (know better – be wise enough not to do something, to reject a stupid/ silly idea)

overweight– otyły

somehow– jakoś (for a reason which is not clear)

for one thing – po pierwsze (used to introduce a reason for something)

to pronounce– wymawiać

to spell– literować

adorable– uroczy

a Lab (Labrador) – labrador

high-maintenance– wymagający, kosztowny w utrzymaniu

poop– kupa (to poop – załatwiać się)

attached at the hip– przyczepieni do siebie (Two people who are always around each other, whom you never see one without the other) attach – przyłączać, hip – biodro)

to keep somebody company– dotrzymywać komuś towarzystwa

out of sight – poza zasięgiem wzroku

a lead– smycz

a misdeed– czyn karygodny, przestępstwo

eventful– bogate (w wydarzenia)

to chew on– obgryzać

a bus pass– sieciówka

bad deeds– złe uczynki

to stick in somebody's memory– pozostać w pamięci (stick-stuck-stuck)

sneakily– podstępnie

raw– surowe

the kitchen counter– blat kuchenny

to pluck– wyrywać, zrywać

frantically– szaleńczo

a doggie/ doggy – piesek

pitter-patter– tupot, stukot

paws – łapy

tap-dancing– stepowanie

to wag its tail– merdać ogonem

attention  – uwaga, zainteresowanie

a sigh– westchnienie

to play fetch– ćwiczyć aportowanie (to fetch – aportować, przynosić)

to sulk– mieć focha, być obrażonym, dąsać się

to tell somebody off – zbesztać kogoś

a command– komenda

to sniff – wąchać

to snuggle up to– przytulić się do kogoś

cuddlesomebody – przytulać się do kogoś, tulić kogoś

Can I have a bite? – Mogę gryza?

naughty– niegrzeczny

a fattie – grubasek

a sleepyhead – śpioch

dog treats, dog biscuits – psie przysmaki, nagrody

a collar – obroża

a pooper-scooper – łopatka do sprzątania psich odchodów (a tool like a small spade, used for picking up and taking away a dog's solid waste from public places)

Amazing Things I Learned (2)

Let's talk about Cheerios. Remember how I mentioned them in my last post? How sometimes trying to write can be like eating a 20 gallon bucket of Cheerios one by one?

Well. Today I expound.

Sometimes it's really, really hard to get those words out. But the first thing to remember in this situation is that Cheerios are tasty. (Or you can use Goldfish, if you don't like Cheerios. If you don't like Cheerios or Goldfish, you're just plain picky, and I'm not talking about if you have gluten allergies or something.)

Cheerios are tasty, so savor the moment. If you're a writer, enjoy the difficult times. Revel in the hardships of drafting and revising, and remember them on your victorious days. If writing were always easy, what would be the fun in that? If it were always easy, your accomplishments would go out the window. Because they wouldn't be accomplishments.

The other thing I learned about this scenario is that I can't always write the scene I want the very moment I want to. I can struggle with a scene for hours before I give up. And the next day I might just sit down and write the whole thing in half an hour.

That's because we're not robots. We're fickle little things. So I learned to be a little more forgiving with myself.  A little more patient.

That doesn't mean I don't have to relearn it every day.

Do you force yourself to work on things, or do you wait until you're ready to do it?