DISCLAIMER: If you don’t want to read another gripey post, you should leave now. Go look at pictures of people stacking stuff on their cats or something.

I swear I’m not always this grouchy. I write more when I’m in a bad mood, is all.

It’s three weeks into the semester, and I feel drained. I don’t have time for anything but school and work. Whenever I do take a break to browse blogs or play piano or whatever, I’m crushed by guilt, because of course there are always twenty other things I should be doing at that moment. But the guilt doesn’t encourage me to get back to work, oh no. That would be too useful. Instead I retreat farther into whatever procrastinatory thing I’m doing, so that maybe for a little while I can forget about all those things waiting to be done and just occupy my brain with some sudoku or an interesting science article. Instant gratification? Absolutely. But in the meantime nothing happens except that every deadline creeps that much closer.

I’ve just realized that tomorrow, which I thought would be a semi-free day, will actually be fairly long—10+ hours of tutoring, proctoring, grading, and of course driving. I leave the house at 10:30 and won’t get back until at least 9:00. And then on Monday school starts again, and I’m teaching Monday night, yada yada.

I feel even yuckier about it because I have the specter of this lab report hanging over my head. Whenever I have a big writing project due, it absolutely consumes my life for days or weeks at a time. I spend nearly all of my time “working on the paper,” though I actually make little progress day-to-day. If this report isn’t finished tomorrow (though I don’t know where I’ll find the time)…I don’t know. Bad things will happen. But then, bad things would happen (are happening) if I didn’t have it finished today. And before that it HAD to be done yesterday. And before that it HAD to be done on Thursday. And before that it HAD to be done before Labor Day. You get the idea. Not only does the report not get done, everything else doesn’t get done along with it. I have a lab report due every two weeks for the rest of the semester. No plan yet on how to deal with this, besides the standard “try harder.”

So what, then? What is it that I want?

A day off? I just *had* two whole days off over the long weekend, and I managed to fritter those away without accomplishing much of anything.

A lighter homework load? I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree, so school is not optional. The work required of me right now is probably the least rigorous I can get without “transferring” to the University of Phoenix.

To work less? I love my job; I’m not quitting. True, I could take on fewer students. I need to learn how to say no—I do tend to bite off more than I can chew, but who doesn’t want to feel needed? This is the busiest season of the year, and we have lots of students who need tutors. I guess they don’t all *need* tutoring, but they’re paying for it, and “getting into a good college” is vitally important to many high schoolers(‘ parents).

More hours in the day? Actually, yes. That would be lovely, thanks.

So I don’t know what I want, except that I want not to feel like this all the damn time. Not to feel like my life is rushing by, opportunity after moment after simple pleasure, and I’m missing out on even the scraps of free time I *could* have because I’m always buried in some escapist retreat, trying to forget that my life even exists, even as chance after chance slips away from me through my own inaction.

Does that make sense? I feel this very acutely, though I’m having trouble putting it into words. Basically, I’m frustrated that I’m too busy to do the things I want to do, but instead of gritting my teeth, doing my work, and enjoying whatever time is left over, I waste so much time trying to escape reality that I (1) ensure that I will *never* have any “real” free time and (2) continue to irreparably muck up every opportunity I’m given. Time is flying. Flying flying flying. I want it not to fly; I want it to drag. My life is short enough as it is.

It’s silly, wanting so badly for time to move more slowly that I fail to actually *live* in the time that I have. But that’s me, that’s how I roll. I…I don’t know what to say to that. I realize that I should make the best of what I have, but…if I think about it too much I get to thinking about death again, and that only leads to despair.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. —Carl Sandburg

The part about other people isn’t incredibly relevant to my situation, but “time is the coin of your life”? That…that’s it. That’s what I feel. That’s what hits me in the gut and leaves me curled up on the floor. Time time time. Life is short. I rail against this (when I have time to think about it, which is less often these days), and I cannot deal with it. It is slowly driving me insane. Dramatic? Yes, yes it is. Judge me; I don’t care.

Tags: brain pills, school, teaching

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