09.13.08
And anyone who ever played a part
One summer during my undergrad, compelled by an overwhelming frustration with the delays that had dogged my education and subsequent graduation thus far, I signed up for summer session courses and took on a course overload. It was, all things considered, a rather nice way to spend the summer. The campus was quiet, the grounds were beautiful, and the classes, due to their small size and intensity, encouraged a number of fast friendships to form (never underestimate the power of trauma bonding). The course overload idea was frowned upon at first and I had to spend an uncomfortable afternoon in the dean’s office, stammering out the reasoning behind this self-flagellating approach to higher education and procuring transcripts that proved I was a strong enough student that I wasn’t about to embark on a summer of academic suicide. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t, in fact, about to do just that, but I forged ahead anyway.
It was, therefore, to my great surprise that that summer turned out to be the most stellar couple of semesters of my academic career. Never having nearly enough time and feeling constantly panicked about my workload turned out to be excellent motivators for me (positive rewards such as self-fulfillment and a sense of pride seem to hold little water for me, but time and again BLINDING FEAR OF FAILURE will get me off my arse). It didn’t occur to me that perhaps the sane approach to my situation would be to accept that I might not be able to get the grades I typically expected of myself and to instead call passing, getting the credits, and moving on good enough. Instead I studied, literally, day and night, and hunched over French verbs until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore; each night, I simply worked until I would fall asleep on my text books and then, after waking with the pages of my Bescherelle stuck to one cheek, I would crawl over to the couch to sleep there, still in my clothes. Adopting an extreme version of tunnel vision was the only way to succeed, so that’s what I did. I didn’t go out, I didn’t talk on the phone, I didn’t watch TV, I didn’t cook…But the funny thing was—the crazy thing was—that, in a way, it was relieving to live like that. It was brutal, yet pleasingly simple not to have to expend any energy on managing distractions, on maintaining balance.
And that right there, my friends, is an important insight into the all-or-nothing world of perfectionism. That annoying buzzword “balance” is a little terrifying to us perfectionists, what with all its irritating nebulousness. How can you know whether the things you’re doing to “achieve balance” are the right things? When you feel well and whole, you say? Ah. You see, we perfectionists do not feel well and whole until we are told we can do so through some form of external validation. So, if the relaxed souls of the world could please provide us with an itemized list of the things we need to do (and exactly how to do them, including a grading scale so that we will know if we’re getting an A in Getting Enough Exercise) in order that we may be informed of our happiness and well-being by society at large that would be GREAT.
I wish, for my own sake, that the mid-mark on the spectrum between Sloth and Manic* was my natural set point. But not a lot has changed in the intervening decade between that summer session and now: I excel in unsustainable situations when I am under a great deal of pressure and when there is simply no time for my flair for wasting time to take over. I have at various points in my adult life taken care to set up and adhere to a demanding schedule so that I could bask in the exhausting, tinny glory of being a bit of an overachiever. I am not, in fact, a Type A personality, although I’m just clever enough that at times I can pull it off.** But, in the end, being bright begins to work against me—once something no longer poses a challenge, I bore easily. And, unfortunately, I fundamentally lack the skills to tolerate boredom. (Tolerating boredom, I’ve found, is pretty much the key to being a successful adult.) Time and again I’ve experienced the phenomenon of being able to hum along with startling efficiency so long as I’m allotted just enough time to complete the tasks I’m given. This rule seems to particularly affect office work: If I have eight hours of work to do in an eight hour day, the work gets done well and on time. If I have six hours of work to do in an eight hour day, I might get to four hours of that work. Not because I’m lazy (although I am a little), but because I’m bored and being bored drives me to making poor choices that generally involve things that are superficially amusing and readily available, like, oh, surfing the Internet, but ultimately boring and dissatisfying in and of themselves.
And so commences a downward spiral.
So in the past, like I said, the solution to my own particular time management issues has been to schedule myself half to death, briskly skimming along life at a pace that I can’t help but resent, but also getting to experience the pleasing feelings that come bustling around and accomplishing things. So long as you’re able to pay little mind to your own encroaching misery, that is.
Until this winter. The Winter of Nothing. The Winter of Meh. The winter where it all came crashing down around me and I, with an odd mixture of helplessness and willfulness, watched the Frankenlife I’d created circle the toilet. And, just when the Old Me was threatening to return, when I started taking on projects and signing up for dance classes and hitting the gym, my back went out with a spectacular bang, effectively killing any attempts to perform anything beyond the bare minimum required to get by. It may just have been an elaborate scheme concocted by my subconscious to convey the message NOT YET, idiot, you just SIT YOUR FOOL ASS DOWN and think about how we’re going to do things from now on.
And so, here we are.
I am, for the record, SO OVER being in a slump. So not me. And it’s my experience that the only way out of a slump is to behave as though there never was a slump. I’m not sure why this works, but I have two theories: a) slumps are like schoolyard bullies who become uninterested and wander off as soon as you start ignoring them or b) slumps are a house of mirrors constructed by your own mind; seeing through the distortions that surround you is the way out.
What I don’t want to do, though, is too much. I would like to fill my plate with just enough to have a little fun, to actually enjoy the things I’m doing. I would like to have the maturity to do things I love, like blogging, even if I have the option to embark on a day’s worth of navel gazing instead. It’s a little empty to live in such a way that I will only make time for things I care about so long as that’s what I have to do—make time. In other words, dear reader, it is time for me to put my big girl panties on and sack up. I realize now that taking on too much is just as much of a cop-out on life as taking on too little. I’m now in search of enough.
PS My first order of business is to begin actively ignoring The Slump. Starting…nnnnnnnnnooooooow. Slump? Whatever do you speak of? I am not the sort of woman in engages in such fuckery. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go to the farmer’s market as I am very busy and important. I bid you good day. ISAIDGOODDAYSIR.
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*Just in case this is necessary: For the record, I’m not bipolar.
**I’m also not an egomaniac. I’m bright, but it has limits. These limits are otherwise known as “math.” There are fourth-graders whose jaws would drop at my math skills. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.