An Exercise in Procrastination

Most days, I have all the time in the world to fill, and I can't think of a single thing. I waste hours on the internet, watch too much television, take walks to get things I don't want or need, and none of it matters. Nothing is produced, nothing used, nothing changes. But on days like this, I can find a whole world of things that are more pressing than what I really need.

I should be studying for a final exam that's forty percent of my grade. I barely have a B in this class. I've never gotten a B in my life, and I don't think I can pass this test. I have never known what this feels like, and let me just say, it's terrible. But the funny thing is, I don't give a shit. I don't feel a thing. Not even a little bit. No regret, no remorse, no fear. Just this hungry, gnawing thing that worms it's way through my intestines, telling me to just bide this time, to not waste it studying something I won't ever be able to understand. A month ago, a year ago, maybe even a day ago, I wouldn't have stopped to write, to eat, to sleep, to talk to my mother... Nothing would have mattered but the work, the getting the grade. Being the best at something, not failing. (In my mind, a B is failing. I know that sounds stupid, but I fail myself. I know I can do better, and yet, here I am. Underachieving. I never underachieve.) In the past, not succeeding in this would have been my absolute undoing. But somehow, without my noticing, the pieces in me shifted. What used to be important just doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I'm at a point in my life where I can't tell if I'm growing up or giving up. I've never been the kind of person to give up on something I wanted. I will throw myself in front of a train if that train is headed to the station where I need to be. (Bear with me. I am awful with metaphors.) I have had this vision of myself since I was about seven, the first time I stayed up in secret and watched Saturday Night Live, that I would be a writer. A female comedy writer, breaking barriers and giving people the single greatest thing you can share with someone else: laughter. Even going to this college, without a developed program for it, I chose the closest major to screenwriting, to achieving and living out this dream that I've had for so long. This goal is so intertwined with my identity that I can't say where I end and it begins, and last week, I gave it up. I quit my major, changed to something that I'm too ashamed to share because I know everyone considers it softer and easier.

Maybe I'm living out another dream of mine, or maybe I'm just scared. I've told myself a million different ways I'm not good enough to do what I wanted to do. I can't write that well, I'm not that funny, I don't have the stomach to take when people say my work is bad. It's all for the best, and besides, at least this way, I know I can support myself. A wannabe writer is the same as a part-time bartender in this economy. I can't tell if it's the right decision. I haven't felt my feet touch the ground since I did it. I feel as if I cut away a half of myself, and the piece that's missing won't grow back. How will I ever know that what I am doing is the right thing? Will some magic ghost come to me at the end of my life, a la the Ghost of Christmas Past, and make me regret, teach me that my world would have been something better if I had just had the strength to believe I could do it? It's not a dream that fades easily. I've been talking myself up to quitting, to throwing it, like so many others, into that deep old well of could-have-beens in the dusky forest of my thoughts. I never thought I would actually follow through with it, but here I am. And I don't feel regret. I just feel lost. Everything seems dark. Not black, but gray, just enough that I can't see through it, and I'm stumbling, tripping over my own feet and thoughts and fears and piles of notebooks of things that I should be learning.

I know this little period of ennui will end soon, that I'll wind up chugging Red Bull and staying up into the night, trying to cram diagrams of foreign proteins into my head last minute. I trust myself to stay responsible, but it's nice to stop and understand what's going inside me, that things are changing, even though I can't feel it every second. That soon, I'll be different. Maybe that I am even now and just don't know it. Some moments, I'm filled with hope for the coming semester. The world seems nicer in this new place. The people are warmer and kinder; there's more promise of a job coming out of it, and you still get to do something you'll be happy with. But I'm afraid that this niggling sense of regret will stick around for longer than I can deal with, that I'll spend weeks or months or years feeling hungry for something that I can't get my hands on.