hawkwing_lb (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hawkwing_lb) wrote2008-03-23 11:58 pm
hawkwing_lb) wrote2008-03-23 11:58 pm
Entry tags:
no reason to get excited
What does it say about me, that I've spent the last ten days solidly ignoring - well, not solidly, but certainly not preparing - next week's exams? And my assignments, four of which are due in the next three weeks.
There are three people from Ancient History taking Schols, and of them all, I've worked least. My failing in this does not fill me with joy and hope.
And so, tonight, I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. Do I break my brains, and my heart, striving to finish these exams, and accept the fact that I'm going to be imperfect with my assignments, and snowed under with work for the next month?
Or do I take the hit to my self-image, give up on the last thin sliver of hope for an exemption (and it is thin, thin, thin), drop out of the Schols halfway through and work for my assignments and a solid II.1 in the end of year examinations?
Option 1 has the upside that if I actually obtain the exemptions, manage to hand in reasonable assignments, and go regularly with the programme of exercise, I'll be in an extremely good place.
The downside is that the exemptions are Not Likely at this point, and if I'm pressed for essays, exercise will suffer. Which will not make me a shiny happy person, and exercise suffers worse yet when I'm not on top of my brain-chemistry game.
Option 2 has the upside that I was already planning on taking the end-of-years (this will just make certain of the necessity), it gives me more needed time with my assignments, and thus allows a better chance of getting back with the exercise programme and staying there: active brain chemistry management.
The downside: if I do this without being certain it is for the best, I get to feel like a quitter, and while I'm fairly sure neither my mates nor my authority figures will think less of me for backing out, I still have to deal with (yet again) not living up to the superhero image of myself I have in my head.
It's my own fault, of course. I wanted a holiday: I had it, and now I deal with the consequences arising therefrom. I'm not, it seems, perfect: body and brain and heart and mind still conspire against me, and sometimes I don't even realise what I'm doing.
I do stupid things like procrastinate and drag my heels, and pretend I don't care, when half my problem is I care too much and daren't admit it: want to much and fear not being able to achieve it, so I sabotage myself so that if I fail of my aspirations, I can point to something and say, Sure, if I tried harder I could've done it, but I didn't really want it.
I've been doing this almost as long as I remember. The problem is, I recognise it too late, or I ignore it.
I want so much, it's hard to put all my heart and all my effort into achieving any one thing. Because I'm afraid of having it handed back to me in pieces. And it's too late for me to do that with the Schols, to go forward wholeheartedly with no regrets.
I need to stop looking at choices and seeing only futility and failure should I choose one path, or set of decisions, wholehearted. (Though it's hard not to fear failure when the consequences are years of poverty and soul-killing grind.)
But this fear of failure, and attendant fear of committing myself consciously and wholly to any one course, is crippling me by inches. I can fail big and painfully and learn to live with it, or I can keep failing myself and my personal integrity in small, painful increments, until there's nothing of the latter left.
Sabotaging myself is a poor strategy for trying to keep my self-image. It's cowardice pure and simple, and now that I see what I've been doing, I can't look away.
The path of wisdom, probably, would have been not to apply to sit the Schols, and thus avoid both the pressure and the choice. But now I'm here, I need to decide, and live with myself afterwards.
(That's the hard part, isn't it? Living with an awareness of one's imperfections. One of mine, you may have noticed, is the tendency to talk too much. Even whinge, one might say.)
These are the nights when I could wish I still believed in a deity. In stuff like salvation, and redemption, and the absolution of sins. Because then my life wouldn't be all my responsibility, would it?
But, damnit, it is.
So I need to get up off my sad arse and choose to move forward, don't I?
#
...In a purely practical calculus, it makes sense to count the Schols a loss. Exemptions are theoretical animals. Assignments are concrete things, and need to be done regardless.
There. Decision made.
Now all I have to do is move past second-guessing and what-iffing myself, and live with it.
There are three people from Ancient History taking Schols, and of them all, I've worked least. My failing in this does not fill me with joy and hope.
And so, tonight, I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. Do I break my brains, and my heart, striving to finish these exams, and accept the fact that I'm going to be imperfect with my assignments, and snowed under with work for the next month?
Or do I take the hit to my self-image, give up on the last thin sliver of hope for an exemption (and it is thin, thin, thin), drop out of the Schols halfway through and work for my assignments and a solid II.1 in the end of year examinations?
Option 1 has the upside that if I actually obtain the exemptions, manage to hand in reasonable assignments, and go regularly with the programme of exercise, I'll be in an extremely good place.
The downside is that the exemptions are Not Likely at this point, and if I'm pressed for essays, exercise will suffer. Which will not make me a shiny happy person, and exercise suffers worse yet when I'm not on top of my brain-chemistry game.
Option 2 has the upside that I was already planning on taking the end-of-years (this will just make certain of the necessity), it gives me more needed time with my assignments, and thus allows a better chance of getting back with the exercise programme and staying there: active brain chemistry management.
The downside: if I do this without being certain it is for the best, I get to feel like a quitter, and while I'm fairly sure neither my mates nor my authority figures will think less of me for backing out, I still have to deal with (yet again) not living up to the superhero image of myself I have in my head.
It's my own fault, of course. I wanted a holiday: I had it, and now I deal with the consequences arising therefrom. I'm not, it seems, perfect: body and brain and heart and mind still conspire against me, and sometimes I don't even realise what I'm doing.
I do stupid things like procrastinate and drag my heels, and pretend I don't care, when half my problem is I care too much and daren't admit it: want to much and fear not being able to achieve it, so I sabotage myself so that if I fail of my aspirations, I can point to something and say, Sure, if I tried harder I could've done it, but I didn't really want it.
I've been doing this almost as long as I remember. The problem is, I recognise it too late, or I ignore it.
I want so much, it's hard to put all my heart and all my effort into achieving any one thing. Because I'm afraid of having it handed back to me in pieces. And it's too late for me to do that with the Schols, to go forward wholeheartedly with no regrets.
I need to stop looking at choices and seeing only futility and failure should I choose one path, or set of decisions, wholehearted. (Though it's hard not to fear failure when the consequences are years of poverty and soul-killing grind.)
But this fear of failure, and attendant fear of committing myself consciously and wholly to any one course, is crippling me by inches. I can fail big and painfully and learn to live with it, or I can keep failing myself and my personal integrity in small, painful increments, until there's nothing of the latter left.
Sabotaging myself is a poor strategy for trying to keep my self-image. It's cowardice pure and simple, and now that I see what I've been doing, I can't look away.
The path of wisdom, probably, would have been not to apply to sit the Schols, and thus avoid both the pressure and the choice. But now I'm here, I need to decide, and live with myself afterwards.
(That's the hard part, isn't it? Living with an awareness of one's imperfections. One of mine, you may have noticed, is the tendency to talk too much. Even whinge, one might say.)
These are the nights when I could wish I still believed in a deity. In stuff like salvation, and redemption, and the absolution of sins. Because then my life wouldn't be all my responsibility, would it?
But, damnit, it is.
So I need to get up off my sad arse and choose to move forward, don't I?
#
...In a purely practical calculus, it makes sense to count the Schols a loss. Exemptions are theoretical animals. Assignments are concrete things, and need to be done regardless.
There. Decision made.
Now all I have to do is move past second-guessing and what-iffing myself, and live with it.