anyone here a life mentor?

May 9th, 2006

Here we are again, this is familiar ground. Much too familiar, in fact. An escape from the strange country up north, where everything is on its head, sort of. Here I am, in the heart of Europe, in a cozy little town where the people are nice and the weather is currently making me feel like I'm on vacation. But in this strange and funny country, where I don't speak the language (yet slowly begin to understand), there is no escape, no escape from one self, even here. There was always a great hope in my heart that I would make this move and my life would change into everything I've wanted it to be. Well, maybe that hope was a little less idealistic than I just described it, nevertheless it was big. In some ways it is different here, some things have changed for the better (in fact I keep pondering blogging that sometime). But some things are the same.

It's not easy to blog with a heavy heart. I usually find it comfortable to blog when my head is clear and all I have in mind is some trivial thought which I try to spin in a way that makes it funny. But when I undertake a heavy thought, I often scrape the blog before I get halfway, too often it goes nowhere and the main idea gets completely lost. This may be one of these times, although I've taken a stand to finish this one, I feel the need to put it together.

I'm sure we all feel inadequate in many ways, but the biggest source of my lack of self esteem is not fulfilling my professional/academic obligations. So far in life I haven't worked much, so it revolves around school. I wish I knew why and how it all fits together, I've been over it enough times trying to figure it out. But I suppose it starts at some point with a feeling of enthusiasm about undertaking some piece of work. A thought of "oh this is interesting, I look forward to it". Then a time comes when the enthusiasm wanes, or rather some distraction comes into the foreground and the thought of working at the material is left for "later". I'm rather good at making time go by, I seem to find a way. Tv, movies, internet, where there's a will there's a way. Sometimes it's a feeling of accomplishment and "I got this under control" that triggers distraction mode. But the longer it goes on, the longer work pries on my mind, the more guilty I feel about not working, the less I want to get started. In everything I do I sort of intend to work but never get started. Days go by and I keep feeling bad about it. By now enthusiasm is a distant memory, I just feel a heavy burden. Once I hit distraction mode, there seems to be a treshold, past which point if it goes on for that long, I can keep it up indefinitely. How do I spend the time? It doesn't really matter, it's time wasted. It can go on for weeks sometimes, doing pretty much nothing at all. I usually have an idea of what my commitments are, when my deadlines are, I'm not completely disconnected from the world. But in these periods I gradually feel worse about myself, once I go into them I don't check my deadlines anymore, I don't want to think about it. My self esteem falls, I don't enjoy being around people. I don't want to face anyone, I feel inadequate and I feel vulnerable. In those times I usually fail to show up for a lot of things, I neglect people. Not that a lot of people depend on me, but if they did I would let them down. At some point I either recover, cut my losses and do some damage control or I just flat out fail, miss deadlines, fail exams, get really depressed.

It's been about 2 weeks since I did any work, I have deadlines coming up and here I am again.

:: random entries in this category ::

2 Responses to "anyone here a life mentor?"

  1. erik says:

    Aahh boats. Little consolation, I know...

  2. ash says:

    Well I can say right now that I am *exactly* the same, and I've re-realised all of the above - though there's also a side helping of anger and frustration with myself dumped on top of all that. Tomorrow is my last exam. Am I ready for it? No