Executive Function in Journal

It’s been cold and windy, and for the second or third winter in a row, I keep putting off buying an electric blanket. My mom even brought it up this year, and last night very sweetly texted: “Down here cold and windy, thinking of you, get an electric blanket if you need it I will pay for you. Let me know what you need for necessary items, I will support you. Keep warm, eat right.” Of course I thanked her for being the sweetest mom in the world, assured her I had more than enough in my account, and that I would get a blanket and eat right.

It’s hard to explain why I do the things I do. Why I get to the point of freezing each year, or occasionally let myself go without eating because I can’t be bothered. Or why I save all my schoolwork for the last-possible-second. It has to do with needing the pressure, the change in contrast - whether it’s reaching an extreme point of cold, hunger, or impending deadline - in order for me to take action. I’ve been long aware that this is Not Good, but as much as I berate myself, it’s been hard-wired into me well into adulthood (past the point of easy change) - so now I balance persistent effort to change with a peaceful acceptance of this-is-who-I-am.

Despite being forewarned by the Abnormal Psych professor not to procrastinate our portfolios to be turned in this past Monday, what did I do? Start on Sunday, of course. Thus commenced a nearly 20-hours-straight marathon of hyper-focus. I finished with around an hour to spare, and was incredibly proud of the end result. In all my years of schooling, I’ve never been punished for procrastinating, so the habit set in and was shaped to be even more efficient as time went on, to the degree that my body/mind senses the precise amount of time needed to produce a product that satisfies my exacting standards. The only time I miscalculated to the point of near-disaster was the thesis for my senior undergrad English seminar on Beckett, which I couldn’t write despite plying myself with near heart-stopping amounts of cocaine. In a panic, the night before the deadline, I went to the basement computer lab without any of the reference books I had checked out, and forced myself to write something. Anything. The next day I turned in a crazy, off-the-cuff “tribute” to Beckett and life, completely going off the instructions for a traditional 20-page research paper. I should have gotten an F, and at that point with graduation imminent, all I hoped for was a passing grade in the class. Amazingly - maybe because the professor loved Beckett for the same reasons I did, or was one of the rare true radicals working in that institution, or pitied me or was shocked by my daring - he gave me a B.

What did I learn from that time? That I detest writing academic papers. Five pages is the maximum number of pages I can write on a subject before I start fantasizing about suicide. And prestigious institutions are kinda bullshit. Which is why I have zero qualms about utilizing community college for my pre-requisites for grad school, and why I’m aiming for a state school program.