no … NOW

Tell me … how soon is “next time?”

I’ll start eating better … after this venti caramel frappucino with whipping cream. Last one, I promise.

I’ll stop procrastinating … after this last quick check of Facebook. It’ll just take a second.

I’ll stop spending money I don’t have … after this [insert any ‘want’ item here]. I’ve wanted it forever.

I’ll start working out … when I’m not so busy/tired/[insert excuse of choice here].

…cliches have an exquisite way of making me ignore them. But cliches are what they are because they hold some truth, if you can sift through the healthy dose of “TRITE.”

Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. That was the phrase for the honors program in our public schools when I went there. I was part of that society because I did my work immediately otherwise I knew I’d forget about it. Since then, I’ve become too lax. Too many excuses.

When is it time to start making the right decisions? Healthy decisions? The best decisions? NOW.

repo: holy crap day, batman

Today … was a bad day. I think I’ll bust out a timeline to shake things up:

• 1:00a| Fell asleep. Didn’t look over notes for fear that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
• 6:15a| Wake. Take meds. Go back to bed.
• 7:00a| Wake. Get out of bed. Dress.
• 7:10a| At dining hall. POSITIVE: ate most of a bagel w/ cream cheese & strawberry yogurt with granola and fresh cranberries. 2 glasses of iced tea instead of coffee.
• 7:30-9:15a| Study. Cramming just isn’t a good idea.
• 9:15-10:05a| Sit in classroom and wait for exam to be administered. Review. Try to not let the people sniffling and shuffling get on my nerves. Fail a few times.
• 10:05-10:25a| Take exam. First done. Got confused on some important details. Feeling insecure.
• 10:35-10:50a| Sit outside next class and try to finish paper due by 1:00p
• 11:00-11:50a| Visual Culture class
• noon-12:30p| Get refund check from school. Open. It is $300 less than my account read. Have lunch. Vegan cabbage roll & veggie egg roll … and piece of cheese pizza w/ Wild Cherry Pepsi. Visit our college’s student money people. They tell me I’ve lost part of my MAP Grant. Leave before crying a little.
• 12:35-12:55p| Finish the paper. Hooray! E-mail’d.
• 1:05-1:50| Theatre History I tutorial. Rad prof, respect him madly. Though my excessive notes are “admirable,” I should “lighten up.” He shoots down my shoddy senior thesis topic…which means I have wasted a month. I cry. Awkward. At least he saved it now before I got backed up against a wall further.
• 1:50-2:15| Add color to one of my lady’s Valentine’s Day gifts: the first print I’ve made on a press! …get a significant amount of gold permanent marker on my Calvin Klein jacket. Emphasis: permanent. The print looks better.
• 2:15-3:30| Fuck my last class. Get ready for work.

Now, here’s the point where I repo my life. I consciously decide that when I go to work, I am not allowed to think of anything else except my job, in the moment. I will have a good work day. I will do the best I can. I will have fun. I will be grateful for my job. All I can say is: I was successful. My place of work strives to create a magical environment … I started thinking of things differently. I thought of myself as a hostess and my department as my house … it worked well. 🙂

My day went back to crappy after I left but that doesn’t matter. All I wanted you to know was that you can own your day if you choose; we’re not in a Greek tragedy. …or are we? 😉

-k

swimmingly

So, I’m trying to figure out what my issue is. I don’t have time to slack off and consume extra calories … I feel as though I participate in self-sabotage too much. Unwillingly … but isn’t that how it goes?

I feel like my brain’s detached from my body when I’m making decisions. As in … when I’m about to do something, I’m thinking that it’s a bad decision and coming up with the right decision but then watch myself making the bad decision. I think I’m addicted to emergency and chaos. Maybe it’s more exciting to me to live in high alert. HOWEVER: it is not more fun … for me OR my loved ones. Particularly my woman. If I made more right decisions that would alleviate some of the pressure she feels to help keep me in line by reminding me of what I said I would do and the great ideas for improvement that I had during a moment of healthy clarity, most likely after a good, productive day.

Well, I’m at the bookstore by my work writing this. I agreed to take a fellow employee’s hours today despite the fact that I have other things that I need to do … and I do need the money. I get paid tomorrow … a big check … the leftovers from school grants, etc. I need to pay bills and even that whopper isn’t going to cover it … so, I need hours. In 45 minutes I start the five hour shift in 3″ heels. What waits for me after is about 3 hours’ worth of a study guide to finish for an exam tomorrow and a paper. At least this time I read the play at the beginning of the week and did preliminary research! Yeah! I’ll end this and research the articles I need to have found by tomorrow.

What’s the good of posting without contemplating a solution first? Well, maybe I should contact my Psychology professor friend and get her take on this suspected self-sabotage bit. I think it’s partially that I balk at the large shadow cast by complex tasks … which grows the longer I put them off. My previous solution was to stuff my fear into a black hole and just get on with it … but I think I have found my combination of a solution in two parts:

The first I learned in this swimming class I have to take to graduate. In order to reserve energy you must relax and breathe. I did it for a split second … until the guy next to me swam into me and I resumed freaking out about inhaling water. Now I try and swim M-F when the pool’s open, usually at noon after my Visual Culture class. It’s working well. I’m working up to excellent swimming and a more fit body.

The second I learned by ignoring my temptation to procrastinate as a result of shadow-fear. I did indeed stuff the fear and did so by just choosing something–ANYTHING–to do off of my list. Ah-ha! I have it. Just like warming up, I have to find something small and perhaps mindless to do to work into a study session. Fabulous…

I must remember these examples and apply them more than the once each that they’ve worked.

Self: Stop being mean to you. Though life hasn’t always been healthy, just make the best decisions … one at a time. Healthy feels better. Just make the next right decision … and all will be well.

readysetGO

today’s repo: privacy and the social networking sphere

I’m exhausted. Just a preface.

I deleted Twitter today. I acknowledge that for some it may serve a greater purpose, but I also acknowledge that for me–it is just another distraction, allowing me to spend my minutes not researching a fact or an idea but living someone else’s life for those moments, taking in generally not productive comments or higher ideas but delighting morbidly on drama and gossip. IF I do join again, I’m not following anyone I know; it will only serve as a news feed.

I deleted almost all of my personal information off of Facebook. This may not sound like anything much but it symbolizes some things for me: no need to update current trending tastes, let everyone know who I am and what I like; no need to sell myself or my ideas; symbolic of taking back my privacy.

I’m not attention-starved; living my life in a showcase is not necessary and living life from comment to comment is not something which I would like to rely on. I am working toward attaining independent thought and conviction as praise, approval and flattery are my weaknesses–conversely: DEconstructive criticism, catty attacks, and overall disapproval affect me more than I wish they would.

And so, I take up logging my activity to better understand it. This coming week, I gather data. I will create a worksheet and log my activity. I will review said activity each night and assess.

Must end…headache mutiny.

today’s repo: social networking

Yesterday I wasted the entire day on Twitter and Facebook. I am incredibly embarrassed to admit that. Yesterday’s freedom was precious and I squandered it when I should have dedicated those HOURS toward a certain 16-page Shakespearian paper that is long overdue so I can move on to my senior thesis…

So, today I shut off my iPhone. I’ve visited FB once and only to check the status of communication I’m having with a speaker I’m arranging for a huge project my Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) is organizing for April. Perhaps more on that later. I scrolled through Twitter once and I wish I could say it was so I could concentrate on The Advocate’s constant Tweetfeed on the Prop 8 Trial, but that is not the case; I looked for the inane details of my acquaintance’s lives in hopes there was a juicy gem, I suppose. But, my repo was highly successful. I went to class, manned our table at the clubs/organizations fair (which seemed like a bust but I ended up eliminating my other two errands: got free lunch and ran into the person I needed to turn forms into for tomorrow so I didn’t have to walk to the farthest point of campus), and time management was a huge success. I’ve very much enjoyed cleaning my room as a reward/break from studying and writing that paper. Maybe nothing tastes as good as skinny feels to Margaret Cho, but for me: few things taste as good as productivity feels alone…alongside feeling skinny, ideally. 😉

Well, that’s all for now–lest I have to repo my soul from WordPress, too. More updates to come.

Stay light, my handsome and beautiful friends! (…as Eric Alva calls his friends. I met and introduced him when he came to speak at my college; amazing, sweet man.) Until next time,

k8

personal soul repo

In May, I will be graduating college with my undergrad degree. My schooling has taught me as much–if not more–about life and functioning as it has about ideas and breaking the sheep-brain, (anti-)thought process plan the government sends public schools now. Teachers are overwhelmed, their idealism and passion brutally murdered, and have since given up, now teaching for “the Test” because Scantron scores accurately reflect how much a student knows and/or has learned; their job’s on the line and the pay is too amazing to give up. Some of them keep hope alive, fighting each day for the possibility that they can positively impact one more life and turn out an influential member of society. But American children are getting dumber by the day; the plan is working. The outcome is depressing and ugly.

My degree involves unfathomable amounts of extra-curricular activity to those not related to the field and I have put in my literal and plentiful blood, sweat, and tears…to the point of sacrificing my academics and threatening my academic scholarship within an inch of its life. My grades for the vast majority are still excellent…but if I lose this scholarship, I will not graduate. At this point: it is all I want to do. Get. Out. And so, seeing as I’ve done my fair share, I’ve eliminated the health-degrading, soul-sucking extra-cirriculars involved with my major and plan to do this thing: Repossess my Soul. I want it back; it’s mine and the department no longer owns me. I own myself now and am taking it back one step at a time.

This blog documents that journey. I write for everyone who feels beholden to and enslaved by a corporation, their career, or any one/thing else…you can be free. You can take charge of your life.

…I am. Just watch me.

Until next time, my beautiful and handsome friends,

k8.

i am k8.

I’m writing again. I’m looking for you. I want to know your story … and it would seem I want you to know mine. I collect stories; they interest me. I’m searching. I’m finding. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll be searching until this life’s over … it’s about the journey, anyway. Follow me on mine, if you so choose. It is good to meet you, friend.

k.