Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2010-05-11 06:53 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2010-05-11 06:53 pm
I don't know whether I'm okay
Yes, it could be stress making me crack, but this has been coming for a long time and it's of my own making, really.
I did my databases project at the last minute and did a crappy job of it, because it turned out to be more work than I could reasonably do in the time I had left. Also because--surprise!--when you have not slept or eaten in a while, you can't think as clearly. I thought it just kept getting harder and harder the more I worked on it, then when I had finally sent the code off to the professor at 11:36pm (minus the PDF report explaining my work, because my computer crashed for realz when I was in the middle of writing it and I'm stupendously lucky I was doing all my code on a remote server), I went down to the kitchen and tried to read Balzac while I ate and I couldn't. The words did not make sense. It wasn't a particularly difficult passage, in fact it was in the part of Lost Illusions that I've already read, but my mind could not assemble the words into sentences.
And instead of doing anything today like, oh IDK, actually writing that report, or finding out the due date for my OTHER GINORMOUS PROJECT that I haven't started yet, I farted around reading and eating endless quantities of toast and managed to do this so long that I was late for my Tuesday class. Not that it mattered because my Tuesday class was not meeting today, apparently last week was the last one. So I went and had a nervous breakdown in the school bathroom. Then I cleaned myself up and went off to the Smith building to pick up my power cord and proceeded to have another nervous breakdown.
The thing is that this is not me worrying that I won't be able to do my project on time, it's me realizing thatI am a horrible slothful waste of space whose life is a meaningless void when left to my own devices I do absolutely nothing. I am hopeless without direct supervision. It's not like I put off the projects for so long because of all the stuff that was going on in my life, I had nothing going on in my life, I spend all my time in front of the goddamn computer. I curl up in a ball and play dead and take the "if I close my eyes you can't see me" approach to anything that even vaguely resembles an obligation or a responsibility, even stupid things like replying to LJ comments or checking my email. Every single paper and large homework assignment I've turned in this year--every single one--was done at four in the morning the night before it was due. I have no study skills, I compulsively avoid tasks and obligations, so that I can fill my life with... what? Endlessly refreshing the same half-dozen websites? I hardly go out, I haven't been to the theatre all semester except for Les Mis in February and what I've had to do for class, I haven't taken advantage of BEING IN FUCKING PARIS, I've just shut myself in my room and done pointless things, and now it's all coming to bite me in the ass. And the thing that's making me freak out right now isn't the giant load of work crashing down on my head, it's the consciousness that it's my own fucking fault and I still can't stop procrastinating.
I... I think I need help organizing Barricade Day. I need someone to make the lunch reservation at the Cafe Procope and figure out how we're going to manage the bill for that (I suppose the easiest would just be to ask everyone to bring cash), organize the tricolor sashes thing if that's still going on, get a final show of hands for trips to Montreuil-sur-Mer and/or Montfermeil (Montfermeil should be easy, it's in the Paris suburbs), I don't even know what else. I need to go through the group tickets and figure out who's still coming and find new takers for the abandoned tickets. I'm still doing the tour of course, and once I've got my schoolwork cleared up I'll spend a few afternoons revisiting all these places and devising an itinerary for the tour. And in terms of pure practicality I need to find meeting places. Meeting places nobody can get lost getting to. For the Procope it'll be easy, the Danton statue outside the Odeon metro stop is hard to miss, but for the others... the site of the barricade is right on top of the biggest and most confusing metro station in all of Paris. I'll have to work something out.
I work okay when I'm under direct supervision, and a lot of these things I've been putting off and avoiding are things that I actually find enjoyable (see: Barricade Day, fic writing, computer programming, etc). It's when I'm left to my own devices that the sucking void of time-wasting starts consuming everything. If I have only little scraps of free time in between scheduled things like classes, I do take advantage of them to maximum effect, it's when I have to organize my own time that I just completely, utterly fail. Not coincidentally, my first major depression episode was at Simon's Rock--yeah, there were other circumstances there too, but being left on my own with a pile of work and no one who gave a shit how I managed my time didn't help. In high school I spent a lot of time feeling like the square peg getting pounded into the round hole, but at least there was structure.
Argh, I don't even know, the more I think about it the more I want to spend a few weeks this summer in a cabin in the woods with no internet. I need to spend some time away from my time-waster of choice.
I did my databases project at the last minute and did a crappy job of it, because it turned out to be more work than I could reasonably do in the time I had left. Also because--surprise!--when you have not slept or eaten in a while, you can't think as clearly. I thought it just kept getting harder and harder the more I worked on it, then when I had finally sent the code off to the professor at 11:36pm (minus the PDF report explaining my work, because my computer crashed for realz when I was in the middle of writing it and I'm stupendously lucky I was doing all my code on a remote server), I went down to the kitchen and tried to read Balzac while I ate and I couldn't. The words did not make sense. It wasn't a particularly difficult passage, in fact it was in the part of Lost Illusions that I've already read, but my mind could not assemble the words into sentences.
And instead of doing anything today like, oh IDK, actually writing that report, or finding out the due date for my OTHER GINORMOUS PROJECT that I haven't started yet, I farted around reading and eating endless quantities of toast and managed to do this so long that I was late for my Tuesday class. Not that it mattered because my Tuesday class was not meeting today, apparently last week was the last one. So I went and had a nervous breakdown in the school bathroom. Then I cleaned myself up and went off to the Smith building to pick up my power cord and proceeded to have another nervous breakdown.
The thing is that this is not me worrying that I won't be able to do my project on time, it's me realizing that
I... I think I need help organizing Barricade Day. I need someone to make the lunch reservation at the Cafe Procope and figure out how we're going to manage the bill for that (I suppose the easiest would just be to ask everyone to bring cash), organize the tricolor sashes thing if that's still going on, get a final show of hands for trips to Montreuil-sur-Mer and/or Montfermeil (Montfermeil should be easy, it's in the Paris suburbs), I don't even know what else. I need to go through the group tickets and figure out who's still coming and find new takers for the abandoned tickets. I'm still doing the tour of course, and once I've got my schoolwork cleared up I'll spend a few afternoons revisiting all these places and devising an itinerary for the tour. And in terms of pure practicality I need to find meeting places. Meeting places nobody can get lost getting to. For the Procope it'll be easy, the Danton statue outside the Odeon metro stop is hard to miss, but for the others... the site of the barricade is right on top of the biggest and most confusing metro station in all of Paris. I'll have to work something out.
I work okay when I'm under direct supervision, and a lot of these things I've been putting off and avoiding are things that I actually find enjoyable (see: Barricade Day, fic writing, computer programming, etc). It's when I'm left to my own devices that the sucking void of time-wasting starts consuming everything. If I have only little scraps of free time in between scheduled things like classes, I do take advantage of them to maximum effect, it's when I have to organize my own time that I just completely, utterly fail. Not coincidentally, my first major depression episode was at Simon's Rock--yeah, there were other circumstances there too, but being left on my own with a pile of work and no one who gave a shit how I managed my time didn't help. In high school I spent a lot of time feeling like the square peg getting pounded into the round hole, but at least there was structure.
Argh, I don't even know, the more I think about it the more I want to spend a few weeks this summer in a cabin in the woods with no internet. I need to spend some time away from my time-waster of choice.