Right. I'm so isolated from.. everybody.

The realization has made me very unhappy.

I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I either have to be reading Catch 22 or I have to be procrastinating reading Catch 22, in which I'm still consumed with it. So in both cases I'm concentrating on it immensely. And if I'm taking a break from both of those, I'm obviously consumed with the worry that it will never end - I have so much more to read, so much more extra to read, and so much more to write.

And that was in true spirit of the novel.

What the hell did I get on my Western Civilization exam? When will he post the results? Oh, he did. 164/200. Arrg. I have no idea what that means. He is really confusing about scoring. I know that the syllabus says that 370+ out of 400 points is an A. And I got an A last semester with the same teacher. But I can't work with that until I take my final, cause that's another 200 points.

Sometimes I just can't wrap my head around math. But what's worse is that I don't know what the hell kind of math he's using. I don't even know what grade I got on my final last semester. I sometimes don't check. But on the midterm I told my blog that I got 149 out of 200. And I think I got, what, five wrong but three were taken off because of the curve.

Soooo. I could email him or just wait until class when he may go over the exam or at least explain the score. I'm sure I did well. But I can't BE sure because he has these crazy scores on blackboard. Bah. I know about as much as I did as soon as I finished the test and I told myself "I did well, but there's no concrete A, yet."

Oh well. I got an A on my philosophy exam and an A- on my research report on Hemingway. Fun stuff. But I still have a lot of work ahead of me. :(

I wish I had time to read but I'm serious, if I'm not actually doing the work, I'm worrying about doing the work. I have no time to relax and concentrate on anything else. That's why I watch movies, cause they use a small amount of brain power and yet they can still enthrall you, or distract you in any case.

I've also realized that it is impossible to read in this house. I read so much by the fire when nobody was here but Amelia. And then my parents came home. Then Loren came. Then he left but Tiana came. And every time I sat down by the fire my dad would come out and turn on the TV. Drives me loco. or loca, perhaps.

Other times mom and Amelia would be talking. Or my mom would come out and talk to me. Or Loren and my mom would be talking. I could not concentrate. I want absolutely insane one day reading Collapse for Western Civilization. I was holding pillows over my ears while reading, trying to drown out the conversations. I tried a whole bunch of other stuff, to absolutely no avail. I did manage to get through two chapters but I was immensely stressed out.

I couldn't read in my room at that time because there was no heater so it was freezing cold, too cold for my hands to hold the book. So I basically gave up.

But as soon as they left I was ready to sit down and read. Vacation permitted me to have a few days of semi-relaxation although I've had Catch 22 on my mind every other moment. And the silence has been soothing. I hate sitting down and then getting pulled away from my book every second by some random distraction. But that didn't happen. I ended up reading The Drowning Season straight through. Although it was the middle of the night and would have been quiet anyway, I'm usually so exhausted from school - or I have school the next day and can't stay awake.

I think I'm becoming more of a procrastinator again. It's just that, there's only so much I'm willing to allow myself to slave away. I've got a quota, and when it's filled I stop and the work piles up. I have a memo every week for psychology. A journal entry every week for creative writing. A journal entry every couple weeks for modern fiction. A short story to write every week for creative writing. A short story or a novel to read every week for modern fiction. A couple chapters to read every week for western civilization.

Then I had those three exams all piled up. For western civilization. And I had to read 150 pages on Hinduism and Jainism for my eastern philosophy exam. And I had to study for my psychology exam. Which, in case I didn't mention it, I got a one hundred on. plus the bonus. :)

And that same week I had a three page research report to write on Hemingway. She said it was a little thin, but what do you expect? I never met Hemingway, what can I really say about him? I've only read one of his books but it was a few years ago and of course I didn't like it. I'm afraid the truth is, I mostly analyze modern fiction in negative terms cause I pretty much disagree with the major philosophies and writing techniques from modern fiction.

Well in any case. Although I have tended to the important things.. obviously, since I got A's on them all... I'm still neglecting so much. I have like ten journal entries to write, actually like 20 because each journal entry has to be written twice. And they wouldn't take that long, but because my quota is filled, there's a block. I just don't want to make myself slave away that much.

I need a certain amount of time to be me. To think like me, work out who I need to be. Experience what I need to experience. Yeah, so a lot of it has been James Bond movies but so what?

I shouldn't try to justify my behavior in the first place, I'm still doing well in school despite my procrastination. You'll see my grades in the end. I probably procrastinate less than many others.

But now I have to write all of those journal entries. Plus three or four more for Modern Fiction, probably by the end of the week. And I'll have ten more for creative writing due in the next month or two. Plus a few more short stories to write, and one longer final short story.

Gosh I think Longley said that there would be three or four papers, so that means I have two or three more to write and a final test, but that should be simple. Then I have like two and half more books to read for philosophy and that final exam. And the western civilization reading is pretty easy, I've realized, plus he gives tons and tons of objectives that really help you take in the specific information necessary for the tests.

But I have about ten more memos for psychology, plus about three more exams, plus a six page research report. And I forgot the ten page report for philosophy. Plus the ten page honor's report on Catch 22. And I have to read Love Medicine for modern fiction. Luckily I already read Slaughterhouse-Five and the rest of the O'Connor stories. Plus I read my western civilization homework for the next two weeks.

It's crazy that I know all of my homework for the next two months. It's crazy that I even have two months. I feel like the semester will be done in four weeks but all my teachers think they've got ten weeks left or something. So I'm kind of afraid that the end will sneak up on me and I'll have all of these reports and exams due.

Truthfully, it's not much to complain about. It's not hard work. And the more I go over it in my mind, the more I realize that it's been done before, it can be done again. I can do it, so I should stop procrastinating what will be just slightly more than a breeze. Gosh, I should just get it done and over with. I end up torturing myself with procrastination, which makes things worse than if I just worked at them. I'm always worrying all over the place - I should learn why I'm like this cause it's nonsensical.

I miss the schedule of last semester. I even miss my science class. Well of course I did because it was tons of fun and my teacher was amazing. But I also missed the fact that it's like the only science class I've ever succeeded at. I don't really know if you could say it was easier or harder than other science classes. I think because I respected my teacher, I just enjoyed getting all the work done and I enjoyed learning about the specific area of science, because I love forensic investigations. In some ways it was much more practical than scientific. Practical forensic instead of chemical forensic.

And we had a lot of tests, which I was really aggravated at towards the end but I endured them and did well on them. Sometimes I do things and I'm just happy to fit in. Because I've never been able to be proud of my accomplishments in science, it was obviously a failure for me since I took Biology twice. And in some ways the work was very similar, labs and lab writeups and tests. But I was just ready to do it now and I wasn't ready to do it then. Ironically I absolutely loved my first biology teacher. He was a great teacher.

But somehow I think I enjoyed a different quality in him, his stories and his practical application of how biology relates to us in our every day lives. Those are the things I picked up and I ended up picking up zero biology and once I stopped doing homework and labs, I was screwed.

Actually, that happened with Brian as well. I enjoyed her classes immensely and the things I learned were less strictly educational. They were more applicable to life and I enjoyed her class for it, but I did so horrible on the exam which is strange for me, since I've always been good at English. It's like I ended up only being distracted from all of the educational stuff I was supposed to be absorbing.

I don't know. It's not absolute because I also had another teacher earlier in the year and I didn't like her at all and I did absolutely nothing in that class. I had like an 18 out of 100 for my grade. It might have been a 14 or a 12. That's how little work I did.

Ahh, the good days in high school when I was so willing to participate. Things have definitely changed so what the hell am I beating myself up for just because I do things last minute and spend all the other moments worrying about having enough time milked from that last minute. AT LEAST I do end up doing them. Never late, either.

I feel like I've done every single homework ever assigned to me. That could be where all the A's come from. It's a good system.

Sometimes when I think of all the work I have to do and I feel like I'm READY to do it, I realize that I just won't have enough time to do it all right away, so I'll have to do it all tomorrow. But I always feel like this, so I end up never doing anything. I need to be able to allow myself to do things little by little.

I noticed that I don't like doing that with books. Lindstrom used to read every chance he got. He would utilize all of those extra minutes between classes or during lunch or in study hall. Always reading when he knew he would only finish a few pages. But a few pages add up, seriously. He always got through big books really quickly. I'm always waiting for the day when I can sit down and read eight hours at once.

That's what the winter vacation showed me. I was reading like ten hours a day. Because I don't want to sit down and read 20 pages every once in a while. And because of that resistance, a lot that could be done does not get done. It's the same with writing my book. I'm like, okay, I need just hours and hours during the day to work on it, otherwise I'll never get anywhere. But if I never find those hours, or the energy to work on it for a solid period of time, I end up getting absolutely nothing done. A lot of time could have been utilized over the past two years and I just threw it away. I threw away an entire summer for God's sake. How could I have told myself I didn't have enough time then? I did nothing at all!

Bah. For some reason I have such a firm resistance in my willpower, pulling me away from any enthusiasm to get this work done. That's why I wait till the last minute, because everything is piled up and it's now or never. So I do it now - hours before class and I'm done with it.

It's so odd for me to get things done early. Sometimes I'll feel anxiety knocking on my door questioningly, like, isn't it tea time? Can't I come in? Why don't you need me? You always need me. So I'm still slightly unsettled, cause I feel like I should be worrying. I've been worrying seems like every day of the past ten years. And goodness, I still worry during the summer. I worry for the future and they also give me summer book reports to do, which I wait until the last minute to read and write. Fuck you for giving me something else to procrastinate with.

It's been an unfortunate, long experience.