I have always mostly been all right. I have experienced crappy stuff like everyone else, but I seem to be wired for recovery (occasionally it takes longer than at other times). This has pros and cons.
One drawback: I became very comfortable with procrastination early on. I found that if I waited until the last minute to do my homework or a report or paper, I still got good grades. I even convinced myself that the work was percolating inside me and only when the pressure was just right – it would emerge as it needed to be.
I had my first procrastination failure in college. I was an English major and was constantly reading and procrastinating writing literary criticism papers. One particular night, I was at a loss to start writing. I stared at my references and scattered 4×6 index cards and had no motivation. I was tired. The paper was due the next morning, so I had to do something.
I decided to try coffee. I grew up LDS (Mormon) so I never really drank coffee before. My grandmother (non-Mormon) let me taste hers once when I was little and I thought it was nasty. However, I had seen others around my college campus guzzling it down as if it were a magic elixir.
I needed something, so I went out and bought some instant coffee.
The experience was wild. I think I had 2-3 cups and became extremely jittery. Instead of working on my paper, I went for a drive in the middle of the night and ended up in the parking lot of a church nearly 40 minutes away where I decided to get out and perform a karate kata to burn off some of the energy. I eventually got back to my apartment around 2 AM. The paper didn’t get done. I went and talked to my professor the next morning and was very honest about what had happened. He allowed me another day to get the paper submitted.
So…even that worked out okay.
Procrastinating out of fear or not-enough-knowledge is not an ideal lifestyle to me. The opposite person (and the person I have been striving to be) is someone who actively steps into doing the work. I like to clear things out of the way so I have the freedom to imagine more and to enjoy my everyday life experience.
Another piece of today’s musing was to consider what type of superpower I would I have if I could create myself as a character.
It actually has nothing to do with the above stuff. I would love to initiate healing in others simply by being near them. I would create an atmosphere of lightness and peace that would allow that part of themselves that triggers healing to activate. That would be pretty cool. I like to imagine this is true when I’m in groups of people. It makes me feel like I’m a secret superhero.