Empty Cage

I’m trying to decide if keeping a continuing blog is worth it, I like the idea of it, and when I actually get myself to sit down and write things I would argue that I’m not the worst blogger who ever happened to the internet (I would equally fervently argue I’m not the best), but the problem is that I have zero discipline.

I’ve been contemplating this a lot this summer, many of my faults and problems, I’ve always considered myself the kind of girl with no weaknesses. But I think being able to identify them might make them easier to work on.

I’m just going to put this out in the air, because I think it explains everything. (Or, at least more things). Growing up, I was the smart kid. The smart nerdy kid, the nerdy is unrelated, but I’d like to argue that growing up a little clever ruined me for life. Growing up smart, carted me, one way, to a life of mediocrity.

For starters, as I mentioned, I have no discipline, especially when it comes to sitting down and improving myself. Natural talents have absolutely crippled my drive to improve. I find myself thinking ‘I should really read more on this topic to firm up my grasp’ and just don’t bother, because I use the ‘I’m smart; I can figure it out’ reckoning. But, you know what, me, you’re not going to grasp advanced mathematics just because you, at one point, were slightly above average intelligence. You learn this through study, work, and effort, not just because your rational thinking skills are sometimes okay.

It should be obvious how this is ruinous.

The other problem, the twin dragon, is the unholy perfectionism leading to procrastination, leading to epic failure.

Being previously considered quite smart, I developed a certain complex about always being smart. Not just that, always being the smartest. Just, feeding on approval of my brain. In some, very lucky, and very dilligent people, this is a very good thing. If you’re obsessed with being the smartest person in the room, you work night and day to be the smartest person in the room, for me, something very different and very bad happened.

I got a nasty case of perfectionism.

It’s actually quite crippling to be a perfectionist, and for me, paralyzing terror of not doing The Best has completely ruined me for the past number of years. I put things off because I cannot do them to my high expectations, and then cram through them the day before and barely pass. You’d think this would make the perfectionist work harder, but the killing blow ends up being I now have an excuse. ‘Well, of course I didn’t do all that well on that paper, I wrote it four hours before it was due’. These rationalizations will murder you. If I don’t do well on a carefully thought out and researched paper I feel like an idiot, and how would I cope with, given an even footing, not being the very smartest person ever?

The final, related, but not as tightly related way that I went from being a cocksure brainiac to an average joe were the crippling effects of boredom growing up.

My parents had always tried to keep my brain going as a kid, reading, writing, drawing, and playing with technology. But school was always very, very tedious. Even when we covered things I found interesting like Science and History, I was often irked by the snail’s pace at which we covered things and the general lack of depth my elementary schools decided to get into.

Obviously this is necessary, kids are dumb, I was a dumb kid as much as any of the others, but I often wonder if I had felt challenge I would have risen to it or crumpled under the pressure.

Addiction to boredom is as hard to master as any other and you start to lose interest in everything feeling nothing is up to the challenge of your outstanding mind — and I’m not even that smart, I shutter to think how shit would have gone down if I was genuinely clever. Boredom is the worst because it actually starts to affect your mood as well. Eventually you start to get melancholic that this whole wonderful world cannot hold your attention.

And so these three things, lack of discipline, perfectionism, and boredom, stemming mostly from a childhood of being the smartest little bugger in the room have ruined me, and at this point, I’m worried if it’s irreversable. The general apathy towards getting to be someone exciting.

I’ve been trying to consider solutions, but step one, lack of discipline always rears it’s ugly head. Maybe it’s time to get a life coach, or a personal assistant. Or, hell, someone to flog me when I’m slacking off.