Appalachia Year

Forgive me while I talk about self-improvement.

I have always been the night-before type. Really, the morning-of type. It's hard for me to accomplish things unless they feel palpably necessary, flipping my stomach with nervous excitement. This used to make me feel lazy, unmotivated, immature, undisciplined, and generally bad about myself. Guess what, though? No amount of feeling bad about yourself makes you do things you genuinely do not want to do.

I've been in school long enough to be able to eyeball the amount of time tasks will require. I can estimate how many hours it takes to write an eight page paper compared to a five page paper, etc. In college, I'd spend indulgent weekends goofing off through a darkened lens of School Obligations. Now, I'm on the Planned Procrastination plan. I know and accept that I won't write a paper until a night or two before it's due, and I write down in my planner what day has been chosen as the righteous day for paper-writing and research. This contractual inking of procrastination seems to have the effect of exorcising the Obligation demon until it's appropriate to be worried about it. I sort of shake hands with my future self, having agreed upon the terms, and get back to watching Law & Order and eating Cheez-Its and going to bed early.

Of course it's not as easy as writing shit down. Writing shit down could not have saved my 2005-self any grief. It took me years of getting used to the way I work and creating realistic goals and expectations for myself and "taking kindly the counsel of years".