I’ve been thinking a lot about college lately. Mostly because I’m trying to cut down the amount of stuff I have from those years. (Do I really need those class notes and homework packets from my second year? Answer: probably not.) There’s nothing like looking at things that I wrote and doodled on years ago to bring back my memories of a class.
One of the classes I was looking at work from was one of the ones I disliked more than any other core class in my major. Some of that was the material itself, but a lot of it was the professor and his deadlines. Or lack thereof. His “deadlines” for our weekly problem sets were ridiculously flexible. The only real deadline we had was that everything had to be in by the final exam (and even that seemed to have some flexibility to it). I hated that.
I do a lot better with rigid deadlines. I’ve always been a huge procrastinator, so I usually put things off until the last minute. Having a deadline fast approaching is the best way for me to get motivated to finish something (it doesn’t help that these last minute assignments, especially in humanities classes, have always been better received than the ones I actually spent time on, but that’s a different conversation). If a deadline is too flexible or too far in the future and if it’s not something where there are other people counting on me (group projects or work for a job), then I find it difficult to actually accomplish anything until the deadline gets closer.
I feel like this is particularly relevant to what’s going on in my life right now. Last year I made the decision to leave my part-time job (which was temporary work with an uncertain future due to budget issues anyway) in order to have more time to accomplish goals I had. Such as learning more through online courses, further developing my computer programming skills to make apps and/or games, getting rid of all the clothes and things I don’t need anymore, doing some traveling, working on my writing, and improving my physical health. My thought was that, since I had a decent amount of money saved up and no pressing adult responsibilities, I might as well. After all, wasn’t not having enough time or energy what was keeping me from doing many of these things?
I’m just about at the end of my savings and working on getting a job besides being the caretaker of our elderly family pets (rewarding to me, but not to my bank account), but it’s been a good time overall. I’ve done some of the things I wanted to: I’ve traveled to a few new places, gotten more fit through plenty of exercise, done a bit of cleaning, taken a couple classes, and done plenty of writing.
The writing is actually the part that I feel that I’ve done the best with. As of this week’s update, I’ve written 90 scenes of my webserial, totaling 300,482 words. There are some rough edges in there and things that need tweaking eventually, but there are also some updates that I’m really proud of whenever I look back. It’s also the longest piece of original fiction I’ve ever written and I’ve been pretty good at keeping to the weekly update schedule for over a year now. I’m proud of myself, regardless of if other people see it as a good quality work or not.
I’ve been admittedly less successful at updating this blog, especially recently. Still, I have had some good moments here reflecting on my process and what to do next. I’ve written some stories for posting that I’m really fond of and I’ve even decided to expand one of them into a novel during next month’s NaNoWriMo (I’m planning an update about that for next week). I’m not ready to give up hope that I’ll be able to get back on track with updating this blog regularly.
A big part of the problem lately might be the growing stress of money issues and part of it might be the stress of not having done much tech related stuff over the past year that I can use to get a job related to my major. Or having to answer the “what are you doing now?” question from people I haven’t seen in a while (made worse by my social anxieties about judgment).
I think another part of it, however, is that I have too much free time and all my deadlines are too flexible. Just like during that class.
All of my deadlines are self-set. There’s no real urgency, because it doesn’t feel like I’ll be disappointing anyone or losing anything if I don’t make those deadlines. Keeping weekly updates of my serial and blog? All up to me. I’ve found myself putting those off until the last minute more often lately. I’m still getting my webserial updates out, but I worry that the content isn’t as good since it’s rushed. Especially after letting myself be flexible about being late with updates or, in the case of this blog, not updating at all.
After all, I’m the only one really negatively affected by doing these things. There’s tons of other web content out there besides mine that people can find to read. So, in the long run, I’m only disappointing myself. Thinking about it like that makes it easy to slack off.
It’s also incredibly frustrating when I put it into words like this.
I’ve worked to build a more positive self-image over the years. To fight all the self-esteem issues I had when I was younger and really appreciate the positives about my appearance and my personality. I believe strongly in the idea that loving yourself is important in order to have any kind of fulfilling relationship with other people. So shouldn’t disappointing myself be worse than disappointing others?
Thinking about it that way, it’s kind of embarrassing how easy it is to ignore my self-set deadlines. Having plenty of free time and no pressing deadlines shouldn’t be an excuse to not hold myself accountable when I don’t follow through with things that I want to do for myself.
I want to work on this. I want to learn to value myself and my feelings enough to take disappointing myself seriously. I’ve read and heard advice that I never paid much attention to about looking at yourself in the mirror and using that as a way to reinforce messages of self-worth. Maybe I’ll start trying to make that a habit.
I’m also hoping that once I start working again, the situation will improve. Once money is no longer a pressing concern and I once again have a finite amount of time to work with, I hope that I’ll have an easier time convincing myself to get things done.
Ideally, the combination of less free time and more respect for myself will ensure that I meet more of my goals and self-set deadlines. I don’t think it’ll be easy, but it’s definitely going to be worth it in the long run.
Another thing about college I’ve been thinking about is how one of my friends would respond to times like this. Whenever any of us were stressed about our course loads she would sing the line “Don’t stop believin’” to motivate the group.
Looks like I owe the young woman in the mirror an apology and then it’s time for some serious believin’.
Skyebun Studio 