Again.
I’ve never been a morning person in my life. When I was younger, my family used to joke that I would win a gold medal if there were ever an Olympic category for sleeping. I once slept for so long after a flight from Hong Kong to New York City, that the friend I was staying with thought I might be dead. Seriously.
So, it pains me when I can’t sleep. Which lately, is often.
My mind seems to click on around 5pm, and just keeps going until late into the evening. As a graduate student, my schedule permits me to sleep in until 9am, sometimes 10am. I get most of my work done at night, truth be told.
Except that I am like a strange version of a vampire. After the sun sets, my mood starts to turn. By midnight, I’m usually turning the corner into darker territory.
Late at night, when it’s quiet, sometimes I think about all the things I cannot control. Like whether or not people like me, or think I’m smart. Or, I’ll think about things that I have no option to change right now – especially at midnight. Like whether I’ll ever have enough money to buy a nice house, or a car.
On the worst nights, I think quite a bit about getting older. And death.
Which is not surprising given that everyone in my immediate family was dead before I hit the age of 24.
Also unsurprising is the fact that as I get older, the fears intensify. I worry about aging poorly, or not doing any of the things I want to do in life, or not being as successful as I thought I would be at the age of 18. I worry about not being the person I want to be, or making the wrong choices, or having a lot of regrets when I am 83. If I ever make it to 83, which is dubious.
Right before my grandmother died – at the age of 93 – we were sitting alone in the living room of her house. The same house, by the way, that she had lived in for at least 50 years. All of a sudden, she turned to me and asked me if I was happy. I said no. She said that she had thought as much. Then, after a long pause, she said that she never had figured me for the marrying type. She also told me that while she had loved her first husband, my grandfather – who had died from appendicitis, she had never really cared for the second. Then, after another long pause, she admitted that she wished she had never had children. That she had loved her 6 kids, but life would have been different if she had never had them. At the age of 93, she told me that she wished that she had lived more and had had to work less hard. Then she advised me never to have any children. She said that she hoped that I would be happy, and that was all.
I didn’t say a thing. I was stunned.
Growing up, my grandmother never said much about anything that really mattered. She talked about her soap operas, cooking, cleaning, and her family. She gossiped. But, she never idled away her time thinking about her life. Or, so it seemed.
Over the years, as my life has been peppered with more tragedies, I have wondered more about the meaning of life, as I know we all do in our darker hours. I have wished that I believed in something – like a God – to help ease my mind. I have wanted to know the secret to happiness, if there is one.
I think that is why I have traveled so much, and pushed myself to do all the different things I’ve done in my life. And why I have read so much, and sought out a higher degree of education. I want to find the answers.
Now, as I slowly turn older, I realize that there aren’t any answers “out there” to be found – just more questions.
How do we learn to sleep at night? To turn off the worry? To still ourselves?
There’s an old story about learning to live with your wolf. The thing that eats you up from the inside out. That gallops doggedly after you wherever you may run. That haunts you in the deep forests of your mind. The trick, the old wise men and women say, is to stand still. Just to stop and to face the wolf. And wait. If you wait long enough, if you can stand the stillness, then you will discover that you are the wolf, and the wolf is you, and that there is nothing to be afraid of in the shadows.
Procrastination: I’m supposed to be working, but instead, I’m wasting more of my potential.
14 04 2008Alas, it is a beautiful day here in Berkeley, California.
The sun is shining. I can hear the bells of the ice cream truck outside my window. The kids that live next door are enjoying their plastic pool. It’s 75° and a cool breeze is blowing.
I am inside.
Why?
Because I’m supposed to be writing my first field statement – about the anthropology of science. I know, that sounds really cool, right? Well, maybe not exactly.
Instead of actually writing, I’m still “researching”, which involves a lot of Google searches. And it also involves checking my email 20 times even though no one is writing to me because it’s a gorgeous day and other people have things called “lives”. Apparently, they exist somewhere out there, outside the walls of academe.
Also, it involves opening the refrigerator just to “look”. And think about eating an orange. And getting some more water, or coffee, or diet coke. And sitting back down in front of the computer with a firm resolution to: “Just write something already!”
In the back of my head, I keep telling myself that writing this is no big deal. If it sucks, I rewrite it. Emphasis on “re”, after having actually written something. Oh, I have 38 pages of notes and a complete bibliography. But no text. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Zero.
I try to trick myself into writing by thinking that at least I’m not in Haiti lining up for food. That this is ridiculous compared to most people’s troubles. I’m not a hemophiliac, right? Things aren’t so bad. So far, no cancer.
Then why am I making myself miserable?
Do I like being miserable?
I must. Because I LOVE procrastinating.
I also love thinking about all my ‘wasted potential’ while I’m doing it.
‘Potential’ sucks.
It’s overrated.
I think I’m going to dedicate a couple of postings, or maybe another whole page on “Wasted Potential”. Maybe I’ll share stories of famously wasted potentials. Or how to get over the envy that comes along with it, while you are watching other people, not laden with ‘potential’, actually out there doing things and – gasp! – succeeding. While you, me, us, whoever, are all frozen by our collective incapacity to actualize any of our so-called ‘potential’.
Oh, if only I could procrastinate the self-doubt, self-criticism, uncertainty and fear. Or FUSS, for a nice acronym.
If only I could stop all the FUSS, and get down to work.
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Tags: academia, academic life, graduate school, life, potential, procrastination, self-help, writer's block, writing
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