procrastinators anonymous

hello, my name is deyi, i'm 22, and i am a chronic procrastinator.

another round of midterms have come and gone, and it has made me acutely aware of this fact.

for a long time i've tried to fix this habit. i've seen many a youtube video listing tips and tricks and psychology mumbo-jumbo. it's because you have adhd, it's because you're bored, it's because you don't really want to be doing what you're doing. i've tried the planners, i've tried the pomodoro method, i've tried it all! and to no avail! here i am again, the night before my blog is due, trying to come up with a three-minute read.

i just couldn't figure out whether or not i was a lazy bum. i will say that the time spent procrastinating isn't all care-free, a lot of it is anxiety-ridden. i can't fully let my guard down when there is something else i'm supposed to be doing. there is a paranoia that the loan-sharks (professors) are coming to break my knee-caps (give me a suboptimal grade).

but it's hard to quit something that ultimately works out. there is definitely a part of me that enjoys the adrenaline of a hard deadline, as well as the satisfaction of pulling it off. if i'm being honest, my grades are pretty good. it feels like i'm cheating the system. sometimes, i even marvel at the beauty of a discussion post hastily typed in ten-minutes.

at the end of the day, this vice is relatively harmless. if it's the adrenaline that gets me, i must be the most tame adrenaline junkie in existence. i could do other things, you know, like sky diving or hard drugs.

in fact, there are some benefits to this affliction. i don't really get any testing anxiety and i don't mind a presentation. it's just homework that i find unbearable.

i chose perhaps the worst major for this condition: english. the homework? papers. the midterms? more papers. the finals? really big and important papers.

the bane of my existence is the long-term project. and being the masochistic freak i am, these are the classes i naturally gravitate towards. self-driven and research-intensive. sometimes i wonder whether this habit of "working against my nature" is beneficial. am i gaining a skill? building resilience? or just causing myself to suffer for no reason?

my greatest dissatisfaction is that i am not living up to my potential. that if i could only overcome this plight, i could write the blog to end all blogs, or go to law school ten times over. but saying this sentiment makes me feel like an athlete with a career-ending injury who claims they could have gone pro.

maybe this isn't the case at all. there's the possibility that i tend to work on a tight schedule simply because it helps me work better. just because this system is destructive for other people, doesn't mean that that rule is universal. i had a week to do this blog and chose to spend an hour on it. if i had spent more time on it throughout the week, maybe it would be just the same, or worse. who knows.

so, i've decided to accept my flaws.

at least i'm self-aware, right?

happy studies,

sputnik sweetheart ⋆˙⟡♡

[all images sourced from pinterest]

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