My room is a mess. It’s a *disaster*. Clothes on the chairs, on the shelves and on the floor; Lego on the floor and on the desk; papers piled up on the table, and even an ice cream dish perched on the monitor.

This, however, is atypical.

I’m not a neat freak, but it’s my pattern to be within 30-45 minutes of “very clean.”

So here’s my reasoning about the current state of affairs.

### Which Tired?

I see myself as having two very different types of exhaustion.

A day of physical activity will wear me out and make me sleep. A day of agonizing over a software algorithm will burn me mentally and yet leave me full of energy.

I can’t sleep on only “mental exhaustion,” so I do physical tasks. Cycling, cleaning up, or [cooking some dinner](http://uwmike.com/articles/2005/10/14/three-dollar-deep-fryer). Maybe even just vegging out for a bit with some [awesome](/articles/2005/09/24/dr-browncoat) [television](/articles/2005/12/12/shes-a-marshmellow).

It was a workable strategy until a new activity kicked in.

### Subversion

Earlier this month, a classmate posted a really neat [NASA video](http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/docs/CEV1.mpg) about a type of gimbal joint. It had been developed for use mounting correctional thrusters and solar panels on satellites.

I got a real bee in my bonnet about it, and now there’s an operational gimbal sitting on my desk, and Lego just about everywhere else.

That’s my explanation. Playing with Lego supplanted “cleaning up” as the more fun wear-me-out activity. Even though making a rugged triangular base out of Lego is *unbelievably* difficult, there’s still lots of time spent just finding pieces and duplicating elements.

By next week I’ll have it working *better* and photographed for your amusement. Likely as not I’ll also have my room cleaned up. Maybe even some [studying for midterms](http://tron09.com/calendar/2006/02/), too.

But there really are *so* many [interesting projects](http://www.shapethefuture.ca/) to [distract](http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html).

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 8:53 pm to LEGO, School.