lack of motivation

Let's being by stating the obvious: I am not a motivated person.

I don't really know where this bad habit of procrastination began, but it is a huge struggle for me to get things done that I don't want to get done. It's more complex than simply putting off work, but I'm having a difficult time peeling off all the layers and getting to the core issue.

One aspect is that I like to be easily defined and I like attention. In my group of friends, I'm the one who's playfully picked on for skipping classes, sleeping too much, and never studying. Yes, it's attention for the wrong things, but it's attention nonetheless. I don't know if that's uncommon, but I do know it's damn hard to stop. If I start doing my work and going to class, I lose that.. defining characteristic, I guess, that I've created for myself.

I've gone back and forth trying to decide if I'm afraid, either of success or failure. I've always concluded that I can't be afraid of failure, because I've failed many, many times. Although, perhaps I'm not afraid of actual failure, but of failure to meet my unrealistic and perfectionist goals. At times, I was intrigued with the idea of being afraid of success, but I don't believe that's it.

I just got done reading The Boy's essay for his med school applications, and holy cheese and crackers, I am speechless. I mean, since I met him, I knew that he had a passion for medicine - he told me he's wanted to be a doctor since he was eight years old. He's been saving money for med school since then, went to a pre-med high school, and worked as an EMT. So yeah, I know it's what he wants to do. But reading the essay just amplified that passion by one million. It really opened my eyes to how he feels about all this, how determined he is.

My next feeling? One of envy. Not a negative envy; a weird, awe-filled envy. I told him this, too. I told him I wished that I had been lucky enough to know exactly what I want to do with my life and had the motivation to work towards that goal. At first I felt this aspect of his life was intimidating, but now I just admire him for it. Unfortunately for me, though, without a goal, there is no motivation. Accounting was a decision made when I asked myself, well, what else am I going to do? My parents suggested it, I figured I was good at math, and here we stand. I won't say I hate accounting, because I honestly don't. It's just not exactly what I want.

What do I want? Things I can't have. I would have loved to study dance, to become a professional dancer. If I had realized my passion when I was younger, I could have really pursued a career as a dancer. I also yearn to be a wedding/party planner, but my personality isn't fit for that job. I am fearful of phone calls and hate confrontation, so I would lack the putting-my-foot-down attitude that's needed to succeed in that arena.

I'm stuck in this lukewarm state, not passionate enough towards my current career choice and facing too many odds towards my dream jobs. Wonderful.

i sorta got something done, kinda...

Google Reader has simultaneously made me giddy with organizational-type excitement while giving me a shiny new way to throw my college career into the toilet. As someone who checks websites thirty times over during fits of extreme procrastination, it's disappointing to click on my Reader and find that, no, nobody's updated in the past fifteen minutes. You think I would just shrug my shoulders and possibly take it as a sign that I need to get to work. Instead, I decide that if I add more blogs to my Reader, then there's a better chance there will be new entries for me to read.

Instead of constantly just stealing from my roommate's list and claiming them as my own, I'm trying to find my own favorites. Any suggestions would be wonderful, either in the form of a direct link or just advice on where to search for some awesome blogs.

**

I think that I've finally gotten a topic for my Statistics of Economics paper. Yay me! Of course, now I have to print out research, make graphs of data I don't quite understand, and write eight to ten pages about it all. Before Friday. I'm actually proud of myself, because typically, I'd be starting this at around.. ten at night on Thursday. That's what I like to call making progress.

Alas, my efforts to start studying early for my Incredibly Difficult Intermediate Financial Accounting Final have been pretty fruitless. Part of my problem is that the aforementioned paper is due sooner, and I had difficulty focusing on my accounting while my brain screamed "You have a ten page paper due Friday! You have no topic! You are nowhere near having a topic! WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME!?" It's pretty tough to ignore that.

My solution, up until today, was to distract myself with less important things I needed to get done. Like baking cupcakes. Because obviously, baked goods are definitely more important than not flunking this paper or, I don't know, my entire accounting course. I really don't know when my judgment got so messed up.

**

And just because this entry wouldn't be right without mentioning ice cream, Carvel has thought of the best thing ever - mixing ACTUAL CAKE MIX with soft-serve ice cream. And sprinkles. It is.. amazing.

ever-growing to-do list

I really shouldn't be blogging right now, considering it's way past Bedtime. Around midnight I started feeling groggy after reading more about XML and XBRL than I ever wanted to know (and that was just the first seventeen pages!). Despite being determined about going to bed, I proceeded to waste a ton of time talking to my roommates. And now it's an hour and a half later.

**

More progress is being made in my quest to stop biting my nails. I'm at the stage where they seem really long to me, but when I show them to others, they look at me and question my sanity. I also realized that usually this is my make-it-or-break-it point. The reason? They look abnormal to me, like they've grown too long and that it's time to bite them back down to size. So, I'm trying not to think about it that way and hopefully grow them to a normal length.

**

My feet look like they've lost the third world war against my shoe collection. First I made the mistake of wearing my cute adult-sized Jellies when I was showing my cousin around campus, which led the profuse bleeding from the back of my heels. Then today, it was warm enough for flip flops, but I unfortunately had to rush across campus for a meeting I was nearly late for only to leave there twenty minutes later and rush to another meeting. Bad idea, because now I have cuts on the front of my feet, too. But! I cheered myself up about the situation by buying Hello Kitty kids Band-Aids, which are super prosh.

**

Today's RHA (Residence Hall Association) meeting resulted in more projects for me to organize, because I definitely didn't have enough to do already. There's buying bagels and juice for next week's carnival, planning a pasta dinner for our 'Night Out,' and coming up with awards for everyone for our last meeting (which is in two weeks). Right. This gets added to the list I already have, which includes studying hardcore for my accounting final and, oh yeah, starting and completing my EconStat project. And getting an internship. Good.

**

Now that I've wasted another twenty minutes, which could've gone towards sleeping, I'm off to bed.