In Preparation.

I wasn’t in bed for long, but I could already tell I wouldn’t be able to sleep. What was I going to think, anyway? Why was I thinking that?

I can tell I’m judging myself. It’s hard to tease out, and it’s hard to recognize. I’m feeling uneasy about my long-term goals, which is effecting my short-term responsibilities. I feel like I need to explain myself to people. I have a tendency to prethink things, organizing my thoughts so that if I need to say something, I’ve already thought it. Lately, I find myself mulling over the fact that I’ve been in college for five years and I have little to show for it. As if pre-emptively defensive over the perception that someone would put me down.

It’s all an internal thing, of course.

I remember how I failed Computer Architecture twice. I wonder how many people have failed a class twice. I think what gets me is the way I failed it. It’s not even like trying and failing. It was like being unable. Being handcuffed. It gets in your head. I remember sitting down to take an exam, looking over all the questions, and realizing I hadn’t a clue what the answer to any of it was. I wrote my name on the top, handed it in, and left. Probably made someone in the room nervous, thinking I was done. I don’t know why I keep thinking of this. Maybe to rationalize what I’ve been through.

I’m not fully convinced I’ll survive. I mean. I have this goal of moving out, getting a job, and being independent. I don’t know if I can do it.

I thought I was over the fact that I used to think I’d be the one to finish college in four years, bag a chick, have kids, and otherwise have an uneventful life. So to speak. Letting go of that was a hard thing to do, accepting my reality.

Which brings me to the tasks at hand. I find it funny how last semester’s big triumph was discovering how to study. Seriously, I finally got it down pat. And what do I have this semester? Projects and papers and speeches. My achilles heel. Shit, I’d do better if I had five classes that required heavy studying, rather than being forced to do projects. Studying, I can focus on because I want to learn the material. I got a 98.5 on my Kinesiology midterm. Or something obscenely high.

Maybe I’m just kind of out of gas. You can only rally yourself enough times before you stop caring. Which explains why I feel like I’m collapsing. I don’t intend to fully believe it, because it’s self-defeating. If you think you’re sunk, you’re sunk. As long as you still have hope.

More immediate to the How To Learn How To Do New Things is the fact that I don’t do jack shit over the weekend. I know this, and I’ve learned to respect it. I do not do work at home. Period. Does not happen. Every time I try to make myself do work at home, I get frustrated and ultimately depressed because I fail myself. 8 straight hours at the library, no problem. But try to find fifteen minutes to start research at home? Fat chance. So STOP THINKING YOU CAN MAKE AN EXCEPTION.

So, there’s another week ahead of me, and the same stack of work in front of me that I had last week. I remind myself that if it’s taking this long for there to be reprocussions, it obviously can’t take that long to do. Positive thinking. When I sit down and do things, I do them relatively quickly. I continually surprise myself with the speed at which I can do things. Allotting time and getting started, now that’s hard.

It’s a different kind of apathy, but I won’t try to pretend it’s somehow different. It doesn’t matter. I mean. It feels different because I don’t quite have that fear, that dispair. It scares me, because that dispair used to be what drove me. That feeling of being on the edge, being so close to the bottom. I almost wish I had that, so I’d feel some sense of urgency. But searching to make myself believe I’m closer to the bottom doesn’t matter. I mean. Hell, I don’t even know what I mean. What matters is the end result. I have to get my act together before it’s too late.

It was three years ago I had my massive collapse. I can’t let that happen again.