I have plenty of time left, really.
At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself the past two weeks. I had promised myself that I would spend at least 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday, working on my thesis. This was before I got my wisdom teeth pulled, before my relatives were in town from Canada, before my cousin’s graduation party, and before I rescued a betta fish from certain death and became obsessed with all things tropical fish.
It’s amazing how things just pop up in your way when you’re trying to be productive with life. Two weeks ago, I had finally decided to get my act together spend the day walking around downtown Santa Ana (the study site for my thesis) to absorb the vibe of the area and hopefully gain a few insights for my research. I’d literally just stepped into the first (discount) shop I found, when I spotted about 20-30 betta fish on a dusty metal shelf, moping in abnormally small betta cups. I had to stop and look.
I had no intention of actually buying one. I was scanning through the cups looking at all the beautiful fish; but when I noticed that one of the fish’s water was extremely cloudy and had food/feces floating in the bottom of the cup, I knew he’d be the first to die if his water wasn’t changed soon. Of course, I bought him… which meant that for the next two hours of researching downtown, I carried around the fish, probably stressing it out even more than it already was.
I’m not going to bore you with the details (already did that to my boyfriend), but basically for an entire week all I could think about was making this poor fish happy. I WAAAAAY over compensated and went for the full-blown 10 gallon fish tank with a heater, filter, driftwood, AND aquarium plants. Hey, apparently I really wanted to be distracted!
So, it’s officially been 2 weeks since I rescued the fish. I’ve since named him Diego Rivera. Naming him after a famous Mexican muralist is my way of hoping the city will merge revitalization with respect for the Latino population that uses downtown. In my opinion, the revitalization efforts are too focused on making downtown Santa Ana a “place for the arts” and are effectively excluding the Mexican/Latino population from the space by the way they are going about it…
The name Diego Rivera also provides a wonderfully abstract connection between the betta fish and thesis… ridding me of the guilt of having spent too much time on the betta fish and not enough time on my thesis. 
Oh, the joy of distractions…
Diego Rivera, the betta, in his mansion.
