Twenty Minute Tuesday

Crap. Today I found out it's week 9 of my 10 week school quarter. This sucks extra because I've been planning my entire life for the last month around this week being week 8. I may be somewhat screwed, actually.

Such is the life of a raging procrastinator. There's no one to blame by my own, sweet self. This, of course, makes it all worse because now I must punish myself for the lack of foresight and planning and days of living as though I'm not, in fact, a student. It's tempting, actually, to lock myself in my closet and beat myself silly, like one of those crazy Puritan preachermen who falls in love with the resident hotty widow. But, seeing as I can't stand up in my armoire and the coat closet is full of vacuum cleaners, that level of punishment isn't an option.

I suppose it will be punishment enough to have to miss the Toys for Tots motorcycle parade with the husband this weekend and the canceled (on my account) Big Sur weekend with a few high school buddies.

Poor me.

There's a sort of meloncholy that accompanies this stage of my educational journey at Antioch. Two years ago, when I started, we had just lost my sister and it must have taken well over a year before I really felt like I was in school. I look back at the work I did during those first several quarters and can barely believe I did it all. It couldn't have been me actually doing all that stuff, could it?

I had a great couple of quarters earlier this year, where I felt pretty damned on top of the world as a student. Now we're back to the fog. Back to the "what's happening to time"and "why can't I seem to keep up with anything" experience. I feel so sheepish, sometimes, for not taking full advantage of the time I have with certain professors. A few years from now I'll be pulling my hair out over some story that won't come together and I'll find some clever way to link it all back to that Fall '07 quarter where I lost track of time and forgot that I what I was doing for a couple of months.

It's a little unsettling to consider that this schoolwork procrastinator identity of mine is foreshadowing my identity as a writer. I know it doesn't have to be this way, but it is. This is simply how I be.

Herein lies life's challenge at this moment: embracing shitty habits and allowing them to just be habits so I can move on and get things done already!

Cause, really, who am I hurting by being a procrastinator? Nobody, really. It only hurts me on days that I realize that I can't read a calendar and have lost another week to have fun while delaying the ineveitable.

For now, I will keep the faith that things don't change. If that, indeed, is really the case, then I'm golden. The procrastinator within always manages to step aside just in the knick of time so that Rita can get her work done -- and get it done well.

Fingers officially crossed.