Some people run 26 miles; I quit Facebook for a week. Sure, the running thing takes a lot of training and dedication, but you have to keep in mind that these are people who ENJOY running in the first place. I bet that gets you through the first ten miles, at least.

Here’s the thing: I have little to no self-discipline. It’s appalling. Most of the decisions I make on a daily basis are driven by instant gratification. If life were fair, I would weigh 300 pounds.

Any success I’ve achieved so far in a work or school context has come from my ability to fool people into thinking that I have a near-normal ability to get shit done. If they only knew how many papers I’ve turned in weeks overdue, how often I’m late, how easily I can stare into space instead of writing, how many naps I take, no one would hire me.

Back in high school and for a while afterward, I would make excuses. But I’ve stopped over the last few years because excuses are dumb. My life is not hard. I am not the victim of extraordinary circumstances. I just make one lazy decision after another.

This, um, personality trait of mine has come into focus with the paper I’m writing for journal. I’ll skip the details and say only that it’s the same old story I’ve lived at least a dozen times in the last decade.

I’ve been thinking, in the vast amounts of time I spend not-writing, about how to fix myself. One idea I have, that I’m sure I’ve read somewhere, is that self-discipline is like a muscle: it grows stronger with use. (It’s also like a muscle in the sense that it tires temporarily with use, but I’m ignoring that bit.)

I decided, as I lay on the couch this morning trying to fall asleep so I wouldn’t have to think about how lame it was that I wasn’t working on my paper, that I would exercise my self-discipline. The obvious place to start was with all the piddly little things I spend time on on the internet. When I’m looking for a way to escape whatever I’m supposed to be doing, I pull up Facebook. Or Twitter. Or YouTube. Or Bloglines. Or a podcast.

So I’m quitting all of those things for a week, starting at noon today. And holy crap IT’S HARD ALREADY. Not half an hour after I started my wee experiment, the guy at the Teahouse gave me two sugar cookies when I only paid for one, and I couldn’t share this tiny moment with the world OH THE AGONY.

It was then that I made the unbiased judgment that “quitting blogs” did not include quitting my own blog, because, you know, this is totally a legitimate mode of creative expression. And also, I would end up eating a lot more chocolate if I couldn’t instantly publish my minor epiphanies *somewhere*. Surely this is a sign of mental illness, the compulsion to broadcast one’s mundane observations. A subcategory of narcissism?

Okay, how far along am I—half a mile? *Does the math.* Ouch, not even.

Tags: exercise, school, self-discipline, writing

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